One on One

by John Feinstein

  He turned down the invitation saying he was going on vacation with friends.

  “Are you kidding me?” I said to Norton, who instantly took my phone call as he had promised.

  “He’s tired,” Norton said.

  “He’s always tired,” I said, referring to the blow offs at the Southern Open the previous fall. “This is the president of the United States and Jackie Robinson’s widow. You go.”

  “He doesn’t see it that way. He sees it as a last-second invitation, and he had plans.”

  “Last second? He only won the Masters on Sunday. Were they supposed to know in advance he was going to win?”

  “You and I both predicted it in advance.”

  “Very funny.”

  So I ripped Tiger again, this time for turning down the president and Rachel Robinson.

  Which is why I was very surprised a few months later at the PGA Championship at Winged Foot when Lee Patterson, another of the tour’s PR guys, said to me, “How would you feel about sitting down with Tiger?”

  “What?”

  “He told me that if you’d do it, he would like to sit down and talk to you.”

  I was stunned. “Well, of course I’d do it,” I said. “But why in the world does he want to talk to me?”

  “I’m not sure. All I know is he asked me the other day what I thought about you. I told him I liked you and I thought you were honest. That’s when he asked me if I thought you would talk to him. I told him I was pretty sure you would, but I’d check.”

  It was later that I found out more about what had led to Tiger talking to Patterson. One thing about Tiger is that he watches TV all the time and he reads about golf all the time. He sees, hears, and reads every word said about him. He’d been furious about what I had said about his father in the Newsweek story—“I wanted to kill you when I read that,” he told me—and was baffled by the fact that I seemed to be the only person who covered golf on a regular basis who ever took him on for his behavior.

  He also knew that I got along well with a lot of players and that they trusted me. So he asked several guys why they liked me.

  “I told him he should sit down and talk to you,” Jeff Sluman told me later. “I said, ‘Here’s the deal with John: if you’re honest with him, he’ll be honest with you. If he thinks you’re trying to BS him, he’s not going to accept it. But if he thinks you’re being fair to him, he’ll be fair to you.’ ”

  Tiger had that conversation, or something like it, with several guys. That’s why he decided to talk to Patterson—whose judgment he trusted.

  I give Tiger all the credit in the world for making that effort. God knows he didn’t need to do it. He was about as bulletproof at that point in his life as an athlete can be. I first suspected something might be happening when I was standing on the putting green at Winged Foot talking to Bruce Edwards. Tiger had just finished his pretournament press conference in the interview room and was crossing the putting green en route to the range, trailed by his usual coterie of security, photographers, shoe reps, agents, and hangers-on.

  As he crossed the green he veered in my direction. “Uh-oh,” Bruce said. “He’s coming after you.”

  “Will you defend me?” I asked.

  “Absolutely not,” he answered.

  I didn’t need defending. Tiger walked over, hand extended. “John, how’s it going?” he said.

  “Good, Tiger, how about you?” I said.

  “Find out Thursday,” he said, continuing his walk in the direction of the range.

  “What do you think that was about?” Bruce asked as the group trailed after Tiger.

  “No idea,” I said.

  It was the next day that Patterson told me Tiger might want to talk to me.

  It took almost six months to set up the meeting. I was starting work on The Majors early in 1998 and was going to San Diego to do some of the early interviews, specifically with David Duval, Steve Stricker, and Fred Couples. Just before I flew west on Monday evening, I got a call from Woods’s assistant. Could I meet Tiger for an early dinner at his tournament hotel on Wednesday night?

  I told her I’d be there.

  The hotel was one of those boutiques right on the ocean. I walked into the lobby five minutes early and found Tiger sitting in a chair waiting for me.

  “Couldn’t wait to see me, huh?” I said as we shook hands.

  “Actually, I’m just hungry,” he said, not quite picking up on my sarcasm. Or choosing to ignore it.

  We walked into the hotel restaurant, which was small and elegant with a view of the sea. Tiger asked for a table in the corner. There were no hangers-on or agents in sight. It was just the two of us. There wasn’t a lot of small talk.

  I would love to report that the two of us really hit it off, that we bonded and came away with a better understanding of each other. I do think we understood each other better.

  We talked at length about our disagreements. He was upset that I had criticized him for not accepting the invitation from President Clinton. “They didn’t invite me until I won the Masters,” he said. “Why didn’t they invite me before? I win the Masters and all of a sudden they want me there.”

  “You’re absolutely right,” I said. “Because before you won the guy who should have been invited was Lee Elder. He broke the color line at Augusta, not you. But when you won you did something no minority had done before, and that put you in a different category, made you more of a symbol the way Jackie Robinson was a symbol—and is a symbol.”

  We argued that one for a while. I asked him if there was any truth to the rumor that his father hadn’t wanted him to go because he didn’t like the fact that President Clinton hadn’t served in Vietnam. “No, that wasn’t it at all,” Tiger said. “It was my decision.”

  One thing I learned that night was that Tiger made almost all his own calls—for good and bad. In fact, looking back at how he has behaved since the accident that changed his image and his life forever, that night is instructional. People, including me, have said that he should fire everyone around him, and he probably should if only because new people might—might—be more willing to tell him when he’s making a mistake. But in the end I’m not sure it would matter. No one tells Tiger Woods what to do.

  We also talked at length about the things I’d written about his father. I told him why I’d made the comparison to Stefano Capriati.

  “I really don’t think your dad is different than any other pushy, grab-the-bucks father,” I said. “Except for one thing: you’re his son. So I give him some credit for your genes, because you’re smart enough and tough enough to deal with everything he’s pushed on you and still be a great player. Most kids aren’t that way. I think you’ve succeeded in spite of your father, not because of your father.”

  If the comment bothered him, it didn’t show in his face. He disagreed, which didn’t surprise me, and objected when I pointed out that his father had written books bragging about how he had created Tiger.

  “He just did that because so many people asked him, ‘How did you do it?’ He figured it was easier to write a book than try to answer the question a million times,” Tiger said.

  “Really?” I said. “Then why did he write the second book?”

  Tiger looked at me for a second and laughed—probably for the first time all night. “Good one,” he said, the closest he came to conceding a point during four hours of conversation.

  My one regret about the evening is that I didn’t tape it. I didn’t take notes either, because I wanted Tiger to feel as if we were having a conversation, not conducting an interview. Later, after I was back in my car, I wrote down everything I could remember, which I think was most of it. Back then my memory was still very good.

  We didn’t drink, in part because Tiger had an early tee time the next day, in part because it wasn’t a social occasion. But the conversation did loosen up after a while. We talked about other sports and how we felt about different people. Tiger felt comfortable enough to take some shot
s at people, and that was educational for me—in terms of both his attitude and some of the people in question.

  He also brought up the Augusta breakfast when I had walked out on his agents.

  “I have to admit you surprised them,” he said. “I think they really figured going to your boss would get your attention.”

  I explained to him that George Peper was only one of my bosses, that I didn’t work full-time for anyone, and that most of my income came from writing books. “I like writing for Golf,” I said. “But if George had fired me that day, my guess is I’d have gotten another golf writing gig someplace, and if I didn’t it wouldn’t really have been that big a deal.”

  He sat back in his chair as if he had genuinely learned something at that moment. “So that’s it,” he said. “You really don’t need any one job.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Makes it tougher to intimidate you, doesn’t it?” he said, smiling.

  “I would think so.”

  This time he actually laughed. “Well good for you then,” he said.

  At the end of the evening we made an informal pact that wasn’t that different than the deal I’d made with Norton at Augusta ten months earlier: if I needed to get in touch with him, I was to call not Norton, but Tiger’s assistant. She could get in touch with him anytime, anyplace. He would then call me back as long as I let her know what I was calling about.

  “If you don’t hear from me you’ll know I don’t want to talk about it,” he said.

  I’d have preferred dealing with him directly, but I knew he wasn’t going to do that—at least not yet—and at the end of the evening I said something to him that I really meant.

  “I think this was good for both of us. But you deserve the credit for it. You don’t need me to like you or write or say good things about you. You’re Tiger F—ing Woods. I think it says a lot about you that you did this. And I learned a lot tonight, not just about why we disagree on things, but about who you are.”

  He looked at me and nodded his head. “Guys I respect like you,” he said. “I can see why after this, even though we disagree on a lot of things. But what’d you learn about me?”

  “That you’re smarter than I thought you were,” I said. “I knew you were bright. You’re glib and you’re quick, but I know now you’re smart—very smart. It makes me look forward to disagreeing with you in the future, because I know you won’t make it easy for me.”

  “Me too,” he said.

  I also told him that night that I had a minibook coming out in several weeks that was called Tiger Woods: Master or Martyr. It was one in a series of minibooks created by Peter Gethers, who had been my editor at Villard. The book probably wasn’t more than ten thousand words long. It was, not surprisingly, very critical of Earl.

  “I’ll get you a copy as soon as I have one,” I said. “It basically says the same things about your dad that we discussed tonight.”

  “I probably shouldn’t read it then,” he said.

  “Probably not. But I don’t want you blindsided by it. I’ll stick it in your locker when I get it, and you can do whatever you want with it.”

  That was where we left it. For the next few months, Tiger and I were cordial—almost friendly—when we encountered each other. He started calling me “Johnny” because he is a big nickname guy. Sometimes I think he’s a hockey player.

  “Who you got today, Tiger?”

  “I’ve got Maggs [Jeff Maggert] and Cookie [John Cook].”

  His former caddy is “Stevie,” his agent is “Steiny,” his interim Caddy last summer was “B.,” and his best friend on tour is “M.O.” (Mark O’Meara). His favorite reporters are “Rosey” (Tim Rosaforte), “Verds” (Bob Verdi), and “Kell” (Kelly Tilghman). Like I said, it’s a hockey thing: the nicknames aren’t clever, they’re just prevalent. So for a while I was “Johnny.” My mother often called me Johnny, and so do Bob Woodward and David Maraniss. That’s pretty much the list. And, for a little while, Tiger (“Tiggy” or “T-Dub” to his friends) Woods.

  I’m often amused nowadays when I hear other members of the media talk about how well they know Tiger. Many start sentences by saying things like “The Tiger Woods that I know…” or “I think I know Tiger pretty well…”

  Really? Did any of us know about the secret life Tiger was living? Answer: no. Do any of these guys think Tiger has ever really opened up to them, shared what he really thinks and believes? I would make the case that on that night in San Diego I came about as close to getting at least a sense of the real Tiger as anyone in the media ever has. The exception to that would be Golf Digest’s Jaime Diaz, who has known him since he was very young. I also wouldn’t claim for a second that I “know” Tiger. I’m not sure Tiger knows Tiger, but I’m damn sure no one on the outside knows him.

  Our truce actually lasted into the summer. I gave the book to Tiger at Doral. We continued to be cordial, often talking casually on the range when he was hitting balls after a round. (I rarely talk to players much before they tee off.) In fact, during the U.S. Open that year at Olympic, I talked to him about doing a sit-down at the end of the season to discuss his year in the majors for the next book I was writing, called, cleverly enough, The Majors.

  “Can we do it in Atlanta?” he asked (the Tour Championship). “There’s no pro-am so that’s a good week for me.”

  “Perfect for me too,” I said.

  So we planned it.

  In August I was sitting in the locker room at Sahalee during the PGA Championship talking to Payne Stewart. We were actually making plans for dinner that night so that I could talk to Payne about his loss to Lee Janzen at Olympic a couple of months earlier. While we were talking a guy I recognized as being one of Tiger’s IMG walk-around guys—honestly, I don’t know if I ever knew his name—came up and said, ”John, there’s no rush or anything, but Tiger wants to talk to you when you get a chance.”

  I remember Payne looking at me with his goofy wise-guy grin. “Have you been a bad boy?” he said.

  “Probably,” I said. I then asked the guy if Tiger was around.

  “He’s on the putting green,” he said.

  The putting green at Sahalee is right next to the first tee. Tiger was out there putting—this was Monday so things were pretty relaxed—when I found him.

  “Heard you were looking for me,” I said.

  He stopped what he was doing and nodded. “Look, I’m sorry about this because I feel like I made a commitment, but I just can’t do the thing with you in Atlanta for your book,” he said.

  “Okay,” I said. “Is there a particular reason?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I just can’t get past what you’ve said and written about my father.”

  I was a little taken aback. If this had come up in March at Doral I wouldn’t have been surprised. But this was almost five months later. My immediate thought was that Earl had told him not to do it. Of course that didn’t really matter. So I just nodded.

  “You know what, Tiger, I respect your feeling that way,” I said. “He’s your dad. My dad was a public figure not like your dad [he had just retired as director of the Washington Opera], but he’s a public figure and I get pissed off when people criticize him. So I understand. I thought we had talked all that out in San Diego, but I understand.”

  “I thought we had too,” he said. “But I just can’t get past it.”

  To this day I believe Earl convinced Tiger he shouldn’t talk to me. I could be wrong, but why wouldn’t we have had that conversation right after I gave Tiger the minibook in March? It was three months later that I talked to him about sitting down with me in the fall, and his initial response was to do it, without any strings or any of the IMG ifs and buts that were usually attached to a one on one with Tiger.

  I remembered something Pete McDaniel said to me. Earl had been holding court with some media members under the tree at Augusta, and Pete had walked over to where I was watching the scene, sitting on a bench just outside the locker room.
/>   “You going to go over and say hi to your pal?” he said, jokingly.

  “You know, actually I was thinking I would do that,” I said—because I thought I should. I always believe in putting myself in front of those I’ve criticized. If they want to vent, let them vent. If they want to talk specifics, the way Tiger and I had done that night in San Diego, I think that’s all good. If they want to turn their back, that’s fine too—I give them their shot. I can’t stand people in my business—many of them radio talk-show hosts and bloggers—who lob bombs at people they never have to face.

  Pete looked at me for a second and, realizing I was serious, said, “Don’t do it.”

  “Why not? I don’t care if he yells at me. I’m a big boy.”

  “He might try to hit you. I mean it. He told me once if you ever tried to talk to him he’d punch you in the nose.”

  I laughed. “My guess is I’m quick enough to duck him.” Earl already had health problems at that point and wasn’t terribly mobile.

  “Yeah, and then he’ll hurt himself trying to hit you and you’ll be the one in trouble. It’ll look like you baited him. Don’t do it.”

  Pete and I joked around a lot, especially about his friendship with Earl. I could see now he was completely serious.

  “You think it’s a mistake to just introduce myself?”

  “A big one.”

  I took his advice, so I never found out if Earl was just talking about hitting me—which I suspect he was—or not. Either way, Pete’s point was well taken. Earl would probably tell people I was baiting him. So I steered clear.

  And so, on the putting green at Sahalee, I was completely convinced that Tiger had no problem talking to me. Earl had the problem. But it didn’t matter. And as I had said, I understood Tiger standing by his father.

  I put out my hand. “I just want to tell you that even though I’m sorry we won’t be talking, I really appreciate you telling me this yourself and not sending someone to do it for you.”