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Kiwi caddie Steve Williams believes the master of the Masters may have at last woken up to himself, writes Michael Donaldson.
When Steve Williams watched the final round of The Masters this week — he saw a Tiger Woods he didn't recognise.
An astute observer of golf who knows as much about Tiger Woods as anyone — having spent more than 10 years inside the ropes as caddie for the world's greatest golfer — Kiwi Williams noted a massive change in Woods' attitude.
Williams wasn't the only one to comment on the more open, expressive, interactive, relaxed version of a Tiger who appears to have changed his stripes.
Tour pro Rickie Fowler summed up the vibe around the newest version of Woods when he said post-Masters: "He's a different Tiger. He's freed up so much. His guard is down, he's a lot more open, friendly. Before, in his prime, it was very much tunnel vision. He went out and did his job and took care of business. He's a lot more engaging now. Freer."
Charley Hoffman, another pro, added: "He's a better person now. He's more humble, more personable. He has learned from his mistake and come out stronger and better."
Williams, in a piece for the Players Voice website, offered a compelling insight into why this might be so — noting Woods appeared to be channelling the spirit of Arnold Palmer.
Palmer died two years ago — at about the time Woods was trying, and failing, to make an earlier comeback from the third of what would eventually be four back surgeries.
"There's now a very obvious change in his attitude and I think that's got a lot to do with the passing of Arnold Palmer," Williams wrote.
He said Woods was a huge fan of Palmer, the man who turned golf into a television juggernaut with his charismatic, fan-friendly personality.
Woods used to hang out with Palmer when he was an amateur and played a lot of golf with him. Palmer, in his memoir, went as far as saying he sometimes felt like a father figure to Woods.
"Arnold had so much charisma and time for the fans — and deep down I think Tiger wanted to carry on Arnold's legacy," Williams wrote. "So, I'm thinking that when Arnold passed away there was a realisation in Tiger that golf had lost a guy who was the most popular player ever.
"If you couple that with the fact Tiger was getting a second chance after many injuries I think he may have decided that he wanted to be remembered the way Arnold was remembered. I do think the passing of Arnie had a change in that respect."
Tiger Woods reacts as he wins the Masters. Photo / AP
If this is the case — and it sounds reasonable — it marks a stark change in the Woods' narrative where he has always — and only — been compared with and measured against Jack Nicklaus and his benchmark 18 majors.
If he has changed for good, the biggest question is: why the hell did it take this long?
For instance, why didn't the death of Woods' father, Earl, in 2006, have a positive effect — rather than sending Woods into a self-destructive spiral; why didn't the 2009 humiliation of being exposed as a lying, tawdry adulterer and the end of his marriage result in a more humble Tiger?
After Earl's death, Woods did change — but not in a good way. If anything, he more fully inhabited his father's character — defined by anger, adultery and addiction.
A 2018 biography, Tiger Woods by Jeff Benedict and Armen Keteyian, painted a depressing picture of Earl Woods as an angry alcoholic who psychologically abused his wife Kultida and systematically broke down his son to turn him into a golf machine devoid of emotion and with a killer instinct modelled on Earl's own experience as a Green Beret.
As another writer, Tom Callahan, observed: "Assembling Tiger in his garage, Earl left out some human parts."
When Earl died, Tiger launched into a de facto military existence, training ridiculously hard to get fit enough to become a Navy Seal. He also followed his father towards a tasteless fascination with sex.
As an aside, it's worth mentioning that Palmer was no saint when it came to fidelity — his womanising was well known to his fellow players and the golfing media. Whether he'd have survived in the social media age is a moot point but there's also a view that Arnie's popularity — the way he really did care about people — would have allowed him to get away with anything. When Woods' serial infidelity was exposed he was crucified — because as much as people loved his golf, they didn't like him.
Post-scandal, when Woods returned to the 2010 Masters after a self-imposed three-month exile, Williams demanded his boss be less bad-tempered and show more respect to both Williams and the game.
Woods put himself in contention to win that tournament and appeared to be trying hard to show a friendlier face.
But as Williams recalled in his autobiography, Out Of The Rough, all the positives vanished when his manager Mark Steinberg told Woods if he wanted to win the tournament he had to "stop being a nice guy" and go back to being his old self.
"I couldn't believe my ears," Williams wrote. "This was the moment in time when Tiger had a chance to turn his image around ... he had made a public commitment to be a less snarling and aggressive Tiger, he'd promised me he would reform his bad habits, but his main adviser was telling him to go back to being an asshole."
Tiger Woods holds up the Masters trophy. Photo / Photosport
And so it was — Tiger had not just eaten humble pie, he'd had it thrown in his face — yet he couldn't digest it.
It turns out Woods needed to lose one more thing — he had to be literally brought to his knees — and that was his physicality.
Woods as a kid was scrawny, wore glasses, had a stutter and got teased a lot. As an adult, he was a handsome, rich professional golfer with the best physique in the game.
His body became a temple he worshipped. He adored physical exercise — running, diving, playing basketball, lifting weights, martial arts. His sculpted frame allowed him to hit golf balls prodigious distances — it was the ultimate physical manifestation of his narcissism.
And then it crumbled. Ankles, knees, back. One after the other, pieces of his anatomy broke.
While there was more humiliation to come — the night he was arrested for driving under the influence and that dreary, gloomy police mugshot that accompanied the stories that revealed Woods was addicted to painkillers — the real ignominy was the series of failed surgeries coupled with an inability to hit a golf ball the way he used to.
Finally, he was broken — in constant pain, and reduced to hacking the ball like an amateur.
Woods has pulled off more than his share of miraculous shots but perhaps the biggest miracle in his career was that the 2017 last-chance surgery to fuse his back was so successful he was able to swing a golf club again. His hope pre-surgery was just to be pain-free enough to play with his kids — anything else was a bonus.
To make a full recovery from such surgery in his 40s has much to do with Woods' mental toughness and physical prowess — and it's a comeback that rivals what the great Ben Hogan achieved in winning the US Open after a near-fatal car crash.
But once he did recover — a new Woods emerged, a re-striped Tiger that Williams, Hoffman, Fowler and others recognise as different to the all-conquering but distant "asshole" who dominated the game for 20 years.
He has a chance now to be remembered for everything good that golf has previously given the world in the mid-to-latter part of last century — the Hogan-esque return from physical injury, the Nicklaus record-breaking prowess and the Palmer personality.
