The Twilight of Tiger Woods
He won't be in Augusta 20 years after the "Tiger Slam'
Sports Biblio Reader, 4.4.21
Also in This Issue: Searching for the Great American Golf Course; Gonzaga’s Burden of History; Roy Williams; Jackie Stiles; Calling Roger Maris’ 61st Homerun; Baseball’s First Integrated World Series Champion; The Horse Race of the Century; Dave Kindred; Steve Kerr; ‘When We Were Kings’ Reconsidered; A Gerry Cranham Retrospective Photoboo
Next weekend marks the 20th anniversary of the “Tiger Slam,” when Tiger Woods won The Masters in 2001, following wins in 2000 at the U.S. Open, The British Open and the PGA Championship.
He was 20 years old at the time, and seemingly unstoppable as he primed for the ultimate goal he envisioned as a young boy, under the doding tutelage of his very hands-on father: Eclipsing Jack Nicklaus’ record of 18 major victories.
Woods was named the PGA player of the year eight times during the 2000s, when he collected 13 majors, winning all four at least twice each in that span.
But his 2008 win at the U.S. Open would be his last major victory for more than a decade, as injuries and self-destructive behavior nearly torpedoed one of the most brilliant careers in any sport.
The stormy end to Woods’ troubled marriage ultimately led to a rehab stint for sex addiction, as lurid tabloid headlines overwhelmed less racy broadsheet fare that had showered fawning praise for his on-the-course exploits.
Out of the spotlight for years, and in some cases brooding in deep isolation, Woods crafted an unlikely comeback, even for someone with his golfing gifts. Tiger Woods was human after all, but
He worked his way back to playable health, and in Augusta in 2019 improbably won The Masters for the fifth time. The raw, unfettered emotion was hard to ignore, and even easier to cheer for.
As someone who’s found Woods to be aloof to an unhealthy degree, this was refreshing to observe. I’m not always inclined to embrace redemption stories in sports, but this was humbling and genuine. Woods had suffered greatly, and had found a way back.
His run was the focus of Sports Illustrated golf writer Michael Bamberger’s 2020 book, “The Second Life of Tiger Woods,” which didn’t spare the sordid details of his decline while capturing his memorable return.
He was eyeing this year’s event for more than nostalgia, but was again overcoming injuries. Over the winter, another bizarre twist in the Tiger Woods saga unfolded.
In late February, he was alone in his car near Los Angeles when it flipped and crashed in a single-vehicle accident. He needed a “jaws of life” rescue and spent 21 days in the hospital, suffering severe leg injuries as speculation abounded about what happened.
Earlier this week, law enforcement investigating the accident said they had completed their probe but would not be disclosing the details for privacy reasons.
Now at 45, and facing another long recovery, it’s fair to wonder again whether he’ll catch Nicklaus. Woods needs three more simply to draw even, but there’s a bevy of young bombers starting to dominate the PGA Tour.
When The Masters gets underway Thursday, it will be Nicklaus taking the honorary starting honors on the first tee, along with Lee Elder, the first black man to play in that event. He’ll be representing Woods, the first and only black champion at Augusta National.
For the time being, the questions Woods will have to answer figure to revolve around a more recent episode of off-the-course drama that could have effectively ended his aspirations for good.
A Few Good Reads
The historical dominance of Gonzaga’s undefeated season heading into the Final Four is stunning, and the Zags have been playing as though they feel no pressure at all. They felt it on Saturday before freshman Jalen Suggs banked in a 40-foot shot at the buzzer in overtime to down UCLA 93-90 in one of the better Final Four games in recent memory. On Monday, 31-0 Gonzaga will face Baylor in attempting to become the first men’s Division I college basketball team in 45 years to win an NCAA championship without a loss. Only three other teams since Indiana University in 1976 have reached the Final Four, and just one of those, Kentucky in 2015, got to the title game unblemished. “If somebody can do it, more power to them,” said Tom Abernethy, a starting forward on that Hoosiers title team;
It’s been 30 years since UNLV’s powerhouse men’s basketball team reached the Final Four undefeated, before Duke’s Bobby Hurley hit one of the most famous shots in the sport’s recent history, “when unbeatable died that day,” in the words of a media observer who saw it unfold in person. At The Sporting News, one of those writers who was there, Mike DeCourcy, gets Hurley, now the coach at Arizona State, to go down memory lane;
In 2001, Jackie Stiles set the NCAA women’s tournament on fire with a riveting performance leading Southwest Missouri to an improbable Final Four appearance. After a brief, injury-riddled pro career, she’s gotten into coaching, most recently as an assistant at Oklahoma;
Dave Kindred’s new memoir about his late grandson prompted a profile from “60 Minutes,” which visited the author’s hometown in Illinois to discover one of his most gratifying assignments: Writing about a local girls high school basketball team;
North Carolina men’s basketball coach Roy Williams retired this week after 33 years and more than 900 wins, along with three national championships, two of them with the Tar Heels. The fiery, emotional former Dean Smith assistant bid farewell in a way fitting of his personality, telling one of his assistants “We did OK.” The reply was “we did a lot better than OK;”
The Library of Congress has added to its National Recording Registry with 25 new radio classics dedicated for historical preservation, with one from the sports world: Phil Rizzuto’s “Holy Cow!” exclamation when Roger Maris hit his 61st homerun of the season in 1961, eclipsing Babe Ruth’s record. The Scooter’s call joins the likes of Thomas Edison, Odetta, Louis Armstrong, FDR and Winston Churchill, Kermit the Frog and Janet Jackson as this year’s inductees;
From the Bright Wall/Dark Room film site I recently discovered: A deep reappraisal of “When We Were Kings,” the Leon Gast documentary about the Muhammad Ali-George Foreman bout in Africa in 1974;
The Povich Center for Sports Media at the University of Maryland has named the late John Smallwood, a sports columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News, as the winner of its Lacy-Smith Award, which goes for contributions to racial and gender equality in sports. Smallwood, a Maryland graduate, died in December.
Sports Book News
Just published by Flatiron Books, “Our Team: The Epic Story of Four Men and the World Series That Changed Baseball,” by Luke Epplin, a look at four key figures of the last Cleveland Indians World Series winners in 1948 and the first integrated team to win the Fall Classic: Owner Bill Veeck, Bob Feller, Larry Doby and Satchel Paige. The author was recently interviewed here by NPR;
Coming in April, from the The University Press of Kentucky, “Racing for America: The Horse Race of the Century and the Redemption of a Sport,” by James C. Nicholson. It’s the story of a 1923 race at Belmont Park in New York at a time when horse racing was trying to make a comeback at the dawn of the Jazz Age, with a focus on the historical roles of politics, money, and corruption in the sport. Mini-sneak preview here from Foreword Reviews;
Coming in May, from Avid Reader Press, “A Course Called America: Fifty States, Five Thousand Fairways, and the Search for the Great American Golf Course,” by Tom Coyne. He set out to play 51 courses that have been venues for the U.S. Open, among many others. Review here from Publishers Weekly;
Coming in June from William Morrow & Co., “Steve Kerr: A Life,” by longtime NBA writer Scott Howard-Cooper;
A retrospective of the work British sports photographer Gerry Cranham, who’s shot World Cups, the Olympics, boxing, horse racing and other international events from the late 1950s through the mid-1980s, is being put together by two other photographers. They’ve set up a crowdfunding campaign for “This Sporting Life,” which includes an introduction by Henry Winter, The Times of London’s chief soccer writer. More on Cranham from Mundial Mag and The Guardian, both from 2019, when he turned 90.
The Sports Biblio Reader e-mail newsletter is delivered on Sunday. You can subscribe here and search recent archives. The full archives for Sports Biblio Digest can be found here. This is issue No. 238, published April 4, 2021.
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Sports Biblio is an affiliate of Bookshop, an online book retailer, and receives a small commission for books sold via this newsletter. Bookshop donates some its proceeds to independent bookstores across the U.S., so when you shop here you’re supporting a small business in your community.