most high profile athlete was fit, healthy,
strong and as intimidating as ever.
Just six weeks later, however, Woods’
perfect life and, as it has transpired, his
perfect career would turn on its head
literally overnight. At 2.25am on Friday,
November 27, the day after Thanksgiving,
a groggy Woods hopped into his Cadillac
Escalade, pulled out of the driveway of
his Jupiter Island mansion and flattened
several hedges before careening into a
curb, a tree and a fire hydrant in front of a
neighbour’s house. Woods wound up in
the street, unconscious and bloody while
his wife, Elin Nordegren, stood over him
holding a 6-iron in her hand. The SUV’s
rear windows were shattered. It was later
revealed that Nordegren had chased
her husband out of the house after
discovering evidence of relationships
with other women on his mobile phone.
After Woods’ marital infidelities were
exposed – Woods later admitted to sleeping
with up to 15 different women during his
marriage – he announced he was taking an
indefinite break. In December, he released
a statement saying he was entering a rehab
clinic for sex addiction and in February
2010, he delivered a televised apology for
his behaviour.
THE DESTRUCTIVE APOLOGY
Many PGA Tour pros will tell you it
wasn’t the cheating scandal that derailed
Woods’ career. The humiliation of
making a public apology destroyed the
aura of invincibility he had built layer-by-
layer over the course of a decade. In a
13-minute statement televised live by the
major networks, Woods apologised for
his infidelity and acknowledged having
undergone treatment to address his
behaviour. “I was unfaithful. I had affairs.
I cheated.” Woods said. “What I did was
unacceptable. I have a lot to atone for.”
“It was the worst thing Tiger ever
did. I still can’t believe it,” a well-known
Tour pro admitted to Golf World in an
off-the-record conversation a couple of
years ago. “Standing up there in front of
everybody like a p***y saying he was
sorry to everybody.”
Since ‘The Apology’, Woods’
career has been fractured by
a series of false starts. After
taking five months out in the
aftermath of his cheating scandal,
Woods returned to competition
at the 2010 Masters, where he
finished T4 – a good enough
performance given his lack of
play to suggest things would
shortly return to normal. But a
month later he withdrew from The
Players, citing injury. That season,
Woods failed to win a PGA Tour
event for the first time. In 2011, hefollowed by six PGA Tour titles in 2013.
The only thing missing from a full
recovery was a major championship
victory. During the Masters that year,
Woods was in the thick of it in the third
round when an 85-yard flick into the
par-5 15th clipped the pin and rolled
into the water. Facing the prospect of
disqualification for taking an illegal drop,
Woods was eventually given a two-stroke
penalty and went on to finish 4th. When
he won The Players at Sawgrass five
weeks later, it was the quickest he had
ever claimed four wins in a season. He
would finish the year with six victories.
In 2014, Woods injured himself during
the final round of the Honda Classic and
was unable to finish the tournament. A
few weeks later, he announced he was
skipping the Masters for the first time
since 1994.
At the beginning of the 2015 season,
Woods withdrew from the Farmers
Insurance Open with another back
injury. Although he returned to compete
in the Masters, where he finished 16th,
Woods injured his left wrist after striking
a tree root. A couple of months later, hesuffered a leg injury at the Masters and,
for the second consecutive season, failed
to win on the PGA Tour.
Things appeared to be heading in the
right direction at the start of the 2012
season. After being knocked out of the
WGC-Accenture World Match Play in the
second round by Nick Watney, Woods
finished T2 at the Honda Classic. After
a brief leave of absence with another
leg injury, Woods won the Arnold
Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill. In June,
he claimed his 73rd PGA Tour title at
Jack Nicklaus’ Memorial Tournament.
In doing so, he tied Nicklaus in second
place behind Sam Snead for most PGA
Tour victories. A month later, he would
surpass Nicklaus with a victory at the
AT&T National.
Woods’ three victories in 2012 weremissed the cut at the US Open
and the Open – the first time he
had failed to play the weekend in
successive majors.
In late March 2016, languishing
at 467th in the World Rankings,
Woods announced he would
again miss the Masters as he
continued his recovery from the
back surgery he underwent in
September 2015. That year, he
failed to play in any of the major
championships.
After 15 months on the
sidelines, Woods returned to
action in December last year at
the Hero World Challenge – a
limited field event in the Bahamas.
On a course characterised by
generous fairways, Woods made‘Woods’ swing
was stiff at Torrey
Pines and rigid
when he got to
Dubai’
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