An explosive new book is pulling back the curtain on the trials and tribulations of PGA superstar Tiger Woods — and it isn’t pretty.
Roaring Back: The Rise and Fall of Tiger Woods (Diversion Books), by Curt Sampson, delves into the golfer’s flawed personality and how it got that way.
“A pathological narcissist,” Sports Illustrated writer John Garrity told Sampson.
“All of his human relationships were transactional. If you couldn’t help him achieve his goals, he had no use for you. He’d walk past and look right through you.”
Garrity said at the start of his career, Woods was just delighted to be there and relished stuff like going for pizza and puppies.
Woods veneer began crumbling in 2009 with startling revelations about his marital infidelities and other sexual antics with cocktail waitresses and porn stars alike.
It took the golfer a decade to get back on track. He triumphantly won the Masters in April.
Sampson reveals that the golfer got his stinginess from his father, Earl Woods. At the litany of youth tournaments they attended, father and son would typically stay at club members’ homes.
They were too cheap for a hotel.
“They assumed we’d buy them breakfast, lunch, dinner, and alcohol for Earl every day … which we did,” one host named Dr. Al Oppenheim told Sampson.
“But they were most unappreciative. They never once said thank-you.”
Sampson writes that Woods’ excuse for his cheapness and lousy tipping is that he never carries cash.
He wrote: “Narcissists don’t mind spending other people’s money because we’re in their debt already, and they find it hard to say ‘thank you’ for the same reason.”
Woods’ coaches didn’t do much better than the army of clubhouse waitresses and bartenders who were stiffed by the golfer.
Former coach Hank Haney only made $50,000 per year and he had to pay his own expenses and hotel rooms.
The golfer’s bizarre behaviour and quirks can be laid squarely at the feet of his father, Sampson said.
In 1996, Earl Woods — in a spectacular leap — said his boy “would do more than anyone in human history to change the course of humanity.” Earl added that he was “personally selected by God himself to nurture this young man.”
It was all smooth sailing until US Thanksgiving on Nov. 25, 2009, when the National Enquirer published a story about Woods’ steamy affair with club girl Rachel Uchitel.
After that, the revelations about his personal life became more and more lurid and his golf game sewered.
Gone was the wife, kids, endorsements deals and his hair. Injuries torpedoed any kind of a comeback.
“He fell from such a high place that he was halfway to earth before we mere mortals even recognized him as one of us,” writes Sampson.
And then came the Masters comeback in April and a new Woods emerged on a personal level.
“You can actually have a conversation with him,” golf legend Jack Nicklaus said in June.
Copyright Postmedia Network Inc., 2019
