Tiger a control freak who loves to take risks (AP)

EDITOR’S NOTE—Doug Ferguson has been the AP sport illustrator since 1998 and has covered 60 of Tiger Woods’ 82 victories around the world.

By DOUG FERGUSON

AP Golf Writer

His rivals utilised to joke that if you revilement Tiger Woods open, every you would find were whatever wires and a some nuts and bolts.

Now they undergo better.

Tom Watson, who won five nation Opens himself, watched Woods chip up St. Andrews nearly a decade past and called him “supernatural.”

The terminal period evidenced otherwise.

As added PGA Tour flavour starts without Woods, digit question stands out:

Did anyone rattling undergo him?

Recollections saucer to a contestant who craved curb exclusive his concern of golf, only to test his limits right of it.

During a activate to New Sjaelland for his caddie’s wedding, Woods went bungee jumping soured a telegram automobile suspended 440 feet over a river valley. On the same trip, he climbed behind the rotate of a vie automobile and traded makeup with the competition on a soil track.

Woods spent a hebdomad at Fort general feat finished Special Forces upbringing with the Marines and became a officer scuba diver, capable of holding his respite for four transactions at a instance patch exploring the ocean. It was digit of his tales from under the sea that prototypal gave his colleagues pause.

Woods was having meal at Firestone Country Club in 2003, regaling Darren Clarke and saint Bjorn with stories most diving and spearfishing. He could stay on the ocean programme modify longer, Woods explained, when he utilised a regulator. But the scenery was so such meliorate without one.

“You don’t want some bubbles because that scares the seek off,” he said. “The only difficulty is that when you don’t attain some bubbles, the sharks come around, too.”

Bjorn stiffened, upraised a bushy hair and said, “Just be certain down there. Our forthcoming earnings depend on you.”

That programme seems pertinent now, since Woods hasn’t surfaced in public since Nov. 27, when he ran his SUV over a blast hydrant and into a tree at about 2:30 a.m., the opening chapter of an guy of his clannish life—a ordinal life, really—that some imagined could exist.

He was never without flaws, displaying a filthy temper at times, a dishonor mouth on occasion, and routinely blowing by sign seekers. Yet those sins were forgiven presently enough, or at the very small forgotten, once Woods began conjuring magic from his clubs. Maybe that’s connector he rarely change a requirement to apologize.

At his terminal tournament, the inhabitant Masters, Woods impact a slummy drive on the 13th at Kingston Heath, then flipped his utility to the connector and watched it bounce sideways into the gallery. The gathering turned into a mosh pit—albeit a polite one—passing the utility toward the face and back into Woods’ grip. He took it without account or embarrassment, apace turned away and barely acknowledged the episode after the round.

“That was my mistake,” was every Woods said.

Then there was the famous denunciation on the 18th at Pebble Beach on Saturday morning at the 2000 U.S. Open. Wrapping up a ordinal ammo delayed by fog, Woods hooked his nog effort into the ocean and followed it with a some curses picked up by a godsend mike on the nog box—during cartoon hour, no less.

A assemblage later, backward to Pebble Beach for the prototypal instance since that historic 15-shot victory, Woods reached the 18th nog during a training ammo and tried to request his pick of words. Finally, a reporter recounted them for him, adding, “At small that’s what my kids told me.”

The hearty grinning was replaced by a algid stare.

“I am who I am,” Woods said.

Tabloid-fueled reports hit linked him to almost as some women as he has major championships. One of those women kept a voicemail from Woods and gave it to a honor magazine. She said the intimacy began when Woods’ spouse was seven months pregnant with their prototypal child. More corrupt testimonials followed. In a matter of weeks, he went from existence on top of the concern to the laughingstock of jokes on the late-night talk-show circuit.

Even funfair got into the act. During the “Aladdin” exhibit at the resort, a djinny explains to Aladdin that he can’t attain grouping start in love with him.

“Only saying that to you once,” the djinny adds. “I had to say it, like, 15 nowadays to Tiger Woods.”

But he was easy to start for. Woods proposed to Elin Nordegren at a game preserve in South Africa, and married her in land in 2004. Then along came two beautiful kids: prototypal a daughter, Sam, and then son Charlie. When the family — dogs included—gathered for a protective kinsfolk semblance not long after, Woods looked aforementioned the Negro who had everything.

Will anyone ever look at him the aforementioned artefact again?

Much depends on what happens to the marriage, but the jokes probable won’t end until he returns to golf, and no one—perhaps not modify Woods—knows when that will be. The Masters seems the most formal choice, because it’s both a major and the game’s most buttoned-down event. Everything from how fans bear to how many media members intend exclusive the gates is tightly controlled.

But if Woods doesn’t exhibit up in April, then when?

The U.S. Open returns to Pebble Beach in June, and Woods has won there. The British Open returns to St. naturalist in July, and Woods has won there, too— twice, by a compounded 13 shots. The Ryder Cup is set for October, but he’s never been fond of team-oriented play.

Golf has ever been an individualist pursuit for Woods, so such so that whenever grouping question his Ryder Cup achievement (10-13-2), he responds with a question of his own: What was Jack Nicklaus’ achievement in the Ryder Cup? Anyone? Ah, but everyone knows linksman won 18 professed majors. That’s every that matters to Woods.

Despite not winning a major in 2009, some observers would hit look against him getting Nicklaus, and soon. Someone who’s won 82 tournaments worldwide and 14 majors before motion 34 doesn’t block how to play, and Woods is incoming a sweet blot in his career, an age when most players are meet reaching into their prime.

Yet he’s never played before fans who amount to be this hostile, and meet as intriguing will be the getting from his man pros.

Anthony Kim, a auspicious teen favoring Woods has worked with, considered the question and said with a shrug: “Same guy to me.”

We’ll see. The PGA Tour gets low artefact Thursday, Jan. 7, with the winners-only SBS Championship at Kapalua, Hawaii. Woods hasn’t played there since 2005, so it’s not until he skips the San Diego Open, which starts Jan. 28, that his “leave” begins taking on significance. Then again, he’s grown accustomed to setting his possess rules.

Years ago, after the prototypal wave of “Tigermania,” Woods worked discover a deal with the PGA Tour requiring him to appear for a pre-tournament interview at the media edifice only where he was the defending champion. One assemblage at Memorial, the tour erected a ambo alongside the putting naif to accommodate the media crush that follows Woods everywhere, inconveniencing every the other pros nearby working on their game. The media edifice was no more than 50 yards away. No digit from the tour challenged Woods.

When CBS Sports settled a camera on the nog box at the aforementioned competition to analyze players’ swings, Woods had his attender locate the bag in face of it. He was working on his stroke and desirable to do it without uninvited advice.

He has been shy of the media for as long as he has been a pro, still keenly aware of what’s in the news. When he returned this assemblage after absent eight months cod to knee surgery, digit of his prototypal questions during a training round was most the land of the newspaper industry.

Woods was discussing the feat of longtime Los Angeles Times’ golf writer blackamoor Bonk, someone he’d famous and liked for years, when he was asked, “Do you read the newspaper?”

Woods started to laugh, then slyly said he reads whatever is mitt at his hotel shack entranceway on the road. Yes, he knows just what is written most him. He tried to curb that, too, delivering careful, clipped answers to questions, whether they’re display by the local broadcasting send or Time magazine.

Even his leisure outings seemed stage-managed at times, whether that was courtside at an Orlando Magic NBA mettlesome or on the sidelines of a Algonquin Dolphins NFL game. The terminal such appearance was during halftime at the Stanford-Cal football game, announcing Woods’ induction into Stanford’s competition hall of fame.

As Woods began speaking, he was interrupted by scattered boos from the Cal section. He appeared really rattled, for a moment. And that was before all those corrupt stories began piling up, digit after another—enough anyway, to make a person wonder how Woods will move when it comes instance to attain his return.

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