Tiger

Please forgive me,

but sometimes I get very emotional

when I talk about my son.

Daddy! Daddy!

He will transcend this game and bring to the world

a humanitarianism which has never been known before.

You become the biggest name in golf,

and your dad is the one who invented you?

Tiger was gonna be this bridge between

all the different races and tribes of humanity.

Using Tiger to expand the golf universe

is a no brainer.

How are you handling all the adulation?

I honestly don't feel comfortable with it.

Tiger did not want any shadows on his brand.

He's not gonna like this shit at all.

He called me, and he said, "My dad's out again."

And it changed the relationship with him and his dad.

With Earl passing, he had to rely on himself.

Tiger had that ability to bury something very deep,

but there's a reckoning and we all will face it someday.

Okay. So, what do you want me to talk about?

male announcer: The following is a presentation

of HBO Sports.

- 25 days after Tiger Woods buried his father, Earl,

he went to a military base

where SEALs practice mountain warfare.

- Ready. all: Ready!

Target.

- A petty officer working with Tiger asked him,

"Why is the greatest golfer running around

playing G.I. Joe?"

And Tiger Woods looked at him and said, "My dad."

Go, go, go, go!

- Without his father, Tiger was left

with an Earl Woods-sized hole in his life

and would spend the next few years

searching for something.

I don't think Tiger Woods even knows what he wanted to find.

crowd: Tiger! Tiger! Tiger! Tiger! Tiger!

Tiger! Tiger! Tiger! Tiger! Tiger! Tiger!

- And from Windermere, Florida,

the 1999, 2000, and 2006 PGA champion,

Tiger Woods!

And he hammered it.

He hammered it down the middle with a cut.

What a tee shot.

- Just belt the living daylights out of it.

- A number of months after Earl's passing,

Tiger appeared to be

in a very, very good frame of mind.

He was at the pinnacle of the sport,

and he had this aura of invincibility.

Tiger is just a shot away...

- On his way to his own...

- His own universe. - Exactly.

His 13th major.

- It's like sometimes these golfing gods are just--

You know, they seem to be on his shoulders.

But in reality, at that point in time,

being Tiger Woods had taken its toll on Tiger Woods.

- Tiger Woods, ladies and gentlemen.

crowd: Tiger! Tiger! Tiger!

- He said to me one time, "Stevie, you know,

"you become this global sporting icon,

"and you're representing all these different brands.

"Sometimes you feel you just can't be yourself

"'cause you've got so many people depending on you,

"so many people watching you,

so many people are invested in you."

- He is widely considered to be the greatest golfer

to ever play the game.

Please welcome Tiger Woods.

- You ever get sick of it? You don't get sick of it.

It's nice, wherever you go, people go crazy.

- Well, it's nice--it's nice that they are like that...

- Yeah. - Because I'm certainly one

that's not really comfortable with it.

- Very rarely is there a photograph of you,

you know, in your private life.

I thought, "This guy must have a Batcave."

You have an alter ego. You play--

- That's good. - It is good. It is good.

- I think he just wanted at some point in time,

break all those ties, get away from that,

go and do something completely different,

and it was like hitting a reset button.

- The allure of Las Vegas is that feeling

you can escape.

People leave their morals at the airport

and pick them up when they leave.

And as soon as you hit that tarmac,

everything is at your disposal.

Tiger, this way, please.

We catered to Tiger.

We spoiled him.

We would say, "You're like a prince

and basically free to do whatever you want."

- Tiger Woods, what's up, man? - Come on, man.

What's going on, man?

- Tiger's two running buddies in Vegas,

Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley,

they both enjoyed the good life.

The nightclubs, the bottle service.

I mean, women are literally

throwing themselves at them.

- Michael! - Michael! Michael, Michael!

- In that entourage, Tiger was a bit of a geek.

- Tiger, looking right over here.

- Tiger, this way, please. - Got a good smile.

- It wasn't like he was, like, mack daddy,

like, Casanova.

You know, those guys really didn't have to be.

Their hosts did all the work.

We would pick out the pretty girls and say,

"Hi, would you like to go up

and party with Michael Jordan?"

- Tiger asked, "What do I say to these women?"

And Michael, to his ever-loving credit, goes,

"You tell 'em you're Tiger Woods."

Come on, Tiger Woods.

Hey, I need a president, huh? - We'll go over here.

- I heard rumors of sexual encounters,

and I remember thinking,

"Wow, he's a man full of secrets."

But we all--we all kept our mouths shut.

I know I did.

We made him feel so safe,

like nobody's going to tell.

This was Tiger Woods

unchained from the history of his childhood,

unchained from pronouncements about being the chosen one.

It was Tiger Woods unchained from being

a $100-million-a-year brand.

And so time and time and time again,

he would return to Vegas,

and even after he got married to Elin,

Tiger didn't really slow down.

His ability to live a double life,

it started in Vegas.

- We caught up with Tiger outside Las Vegas

on what was the coldest day there in more than five years.

Woods was on the set of his latest commercial

for Nike Golf, and among other things,

I asked him how married life

with his new bride, Elin, was going.

- It's been good. - Yeah?

- It's the same as always, you know?

- Nothing's changed? - Nothing's changed.

That's it, I mean, it's still the same,

same relationship.

- How does she deal with all the attention?

- It's one thing she had to get used to.

- Mm-hmm. - She didn't ask for it.

Back in 2002 when we started

getting pretty serious about it,

that's one of the things we had to talk about

is that I'm sorry it has to be this way,

but it's just-- it kind of comes along

with, you know, what I do.

- Tiger would always talk about

having the white picket fence,

the lovely wife, children,

and some sort of normal life.

It appeared to me that he was happy being married.

Elin is very sweet,

smart, nice girl,

and I was really happy he had found that in his life,

and I thought that was, you know, hopefully for him,

gonna be, you know, where he wanted to be.

Tiger and Elin lived five doors down

from my husband and I.

And we became very good friends.

I remember Tiger told me that he was gonna be a father.

And he was just elated to have children.

He really wanted to be a hands-on dad.

That was really important to him.

I think it really lit up his life.

Elin and I are very excited.

This is far more important than any game of golf.

This is an opportunity for us to--

to raise our first child,

and we're looking forward to it.

- Three years into their marriage,

Elin had Sam, their little girl.

Elin always loved children

and always knew she wanted to be a mom,

always felt like she was going to be a mom.

She told me that she envisioned

they would build a happy home filled with children.

They could be, as she put it, normal.

- I'm happier than I've ever been in my life.

You know, I've got a wonderful balance between

on the golf course and off the golf course.

Couldn't ask for a better year.

- What's harder, sinking a ten-foot par putt

on 18 with a one-stroke lead

or changing a poop diaper

and not getting anything on you?

- Number two. Literally number two.