ESPN.com Report: Tiger Has Daddy Issues
/Wright Thompson is a wonderful writer and researcher and some day will probably wonder how he got roped into months of researching Tiger's "secret history." But you know those Southern writers: the only bourbon better than bourbon is a man with daddy issues.
If you have 15-20 minutes of your life to never see again, the piece is worth your time. If you're an admirer of the craft and a sound wordsmith, "The Secret History Of Tiger Woods" is also worth your time. If you're looking for deep hidden meaning in the form of a book seen in Tiger's wrecked SUV, click the link.
Otherwise, in a nutshell: Tiger has some daddy issues, he liked the Navy SEALS a whole bunch, he's cheap at times, Earl's ashes were buried in an unmarked grave that Tiger has never returned to Kansas to see (maybe) and, he's really into his kids and staying in his mansion these days nursing his bad back.
Most interesting perhaps was how much Michael Jordan blabbed to Thompson, suggesting Tiger really wants to retire but just can't bring himself to do it. And this...
"What does he do every day?" Jordan asks.
He's quiet and serious.
"I don't know," he says, answering his own question. "I haven't the slightest idea. I do not know."
He worries that Tiger is so haunted by his public shaming that he obsesses over it, perhaps sitting up in the middle of the night reading all the things people write and say about him.
"Rabbit Ears," Michael calls him sometimes.
He hears everything. For Tiger, this dwelling on old mistakes is a path to madness. Nothing can take him back to 2006 and give him a second chance. "That bothers him more than anything," Jordan says. "It looms. It's in his mind. It's a ship he can't right and he's never going to. What can you do? The thing is about T-Dub, he cannot erase. That's what he really wants. He wants to erase the things that happened."
