What Do We Know About HBO's Tiger Doc Premiering Sunday?

We know it’s in two parts debuting Sunday January 10 at 6 pm on HBO and HBO Max.

We know Tiger isn’t thrilled about it and did not cooperate (or play in Turner’s The Match 3).

And it’s based on Armen Ketayan and Jeff Benedict’s book.

Ian Casselberry of Awful Announcing on what to expect:

Part 1, which premieres Sunday night (Jan. 10) at 9 p.m. ET, chronicles Woods’ development as a golf prodigy, taking up the game under his father’s tutelage while he was still a toddler. The first 90 minutes follow his rise from amateur star to a professional who changed golf upon winning the 1997 Masters and became a cultural phenomenon.

Ultimately, this opening part of the documentary covers the relationship between Earl Woods and his son, how he practically engineered and conditioned Tiger into becoming a dominant golf machine. Yet being raised with the focus on becoming an all-time great in the sport — and perhaps a transcendent global figure — deprived him of formative experiences in childhood and adolescence.

Woods’s first girlfriend, Dina Parr, is interviewed extensively and arguably the most powerful moments in Part 1 come from home videos she took while they were together, showing Tiger genuinely smiling and having fun with friends rather than pleased with his success on the golf course.

The Athletic’s Richard Deitsch sums it up this way:

If you are looking for a comparison to ESPN’s mega-successful “The Last Dance,” look elsewhere. “Tiger” doesn’t have the close to the scope of “The Last Dance,” nor the personal insight from the main subject. But it travels into the darkest areas of Woods’ story far more than “The Last Dance,” which was co-produced by Jordan’s Jump 23 company. It is an attempt — and I’d call it a successful one — to offer a psychological portrait of Woods. The film examines the father-son relationship of Earl Woods and Tiger Woods; the infidelities of both father and son; Tiger Woods’ search for his own identity amid those around him creating identities for him; and, of course, an examination of the greatness of Woods as a golfer.

James Colgan at Golf.com on the producers’ approach:

Heineman and Hamachek (alongside executive producers Alex Gibney, Sam Pollard, Stacey Offman and Richard Perello) instead relied on several thousand hours of archival footage and 50-60 hours of interviews with more than two-dozen subjects. The directors also leaned on Jeff Benedict and Armen Keteyian’s 2018 Tiger Woods biography (Benedict and Keteyian receive executive producer credits for their contributions to the film).

“There was a constant drive on our part to make sure that even though we didn’t have Tiger, we gave him a voice, and we let the people who knew him well put us inside of his mind,” Hamachek told GOLF.com “What we really wanted to do was reach out almost exclusively to people who knew Tiger and his family intimately.”

The trailer: