Chapter 68

Orlando, Florida

August 2008

Jimmy Buffett calls his longtime pal Carl Hiaasen. He has a dinner invite—and a dilemma. Buffett may be a multiplatinum recording artist, but golf isn’t his strongest subject.

Especially when the person he’s meeting for dinner is none other than Tiger Woods.

That’s where Hiaasen comes in. The bestselling novelist and Miami Herald columnist’s latest book, The Downhill Lie: A Hacker’s Return to a Ruinous Sport, is a hilarious collection of self-deprecating golf stories that the New York Times Book Review calls “all too familiar to anyone who has ever flailed at the ball in futile attempts to conquer a sport that mercilessly strips us of our dignity.” If there’s any slack in the conversation, Hiaasen will have it covered.

He and Buffett have been friends for decades, sharing a love of Florida, fishing, and environmental activism. “In Florida, Carl Hiaasen is the literary equivalent of Jimmy Buffett,” the English-department chair at a local college told the Orlando Sentinel in 2002. Buffett produced—and wrote the soundtrack for—the film of Hiaasen’s middle-grade book Hoot in 2006 and even plays a couple of scenes as the character Mr. Ryan. Hiaasen got to cameo in the movie, too.

The musician and the writer meet up in Vero Beach, Florida. From there, they travel together to a steak house in Orlando, where they are shown to the restaurant’s private dining room and a table set for three. Tiger Woods is already seated.

Hiaasen notices right away what a quick and dry sense of humor Tiger has, the way his face lights up when he talks about his just-turned-one-year-old daughter, Sam.

He tells warm and funny stories about the toddler and how much he’s been enjoying the extra time at home with her. It’s a thrill watching her grow, learning to walk—and run. If only Tiger could chase after her.

But the thirty-two-year-old father is still limping along postsurgery. He doesn’t much want to talk about golf tonight. He’s more interested in taking advantage of this unusual down time and asks Buffett about his tour schedule.

Jimmy Buffett has named his 2008 tour the Year of Still Here. He’ll be playing the MGM Grand Garden Arena, in Las Vegas, in mid-October. Tiger, who knows Vegas well, offers Buffett entrée to the exclusive world of Vegas high-roller gambling, the kind that takes place behind velvet ropes.

Buffett thanks him without reminding Tiger that he’ll be in Vegas to perform, not to bet. But he’s happy to give Tiger tickets to the show.

The three men do share a couple of passions. A love of nature, the ocean. And fishing. The conversation takes an interesting turn when Tiger mentions that he spearfishes for yellowfin tuna in the Bahamas. Buffett and Hiaasen have never heard of anyone spearfishing yellowfin for kicks. These fish measure up to six feet in length and weigh up to four hundred pounds, though yellowfin are smaller than Atlantic bluefin tuna, which max out at thirteen feet and two thousand pounds.

Tiger details his kill strategy. He jumps off the boat, shoots the tuna with a speargun, and lets the fish pull him behind as he keeps his head above water.

Eventually, the fish tires out and dies, but there’s a huge risk of its passenger drowning, especially if the speared tuna chooses to go deep and drags the diver down with it.

Buffett and Hiaasen exchange a glance, a shorthand between close friends as Tiger stands up from the table. He’s noticeably limping. How would you like to be the captain who has to keep Tiger Woods alive?

Tuna fishing happens in deep water with no oxygen tanks. But it turns out that Tiger is also a talented free diver as well as an avid spearfisherman. Back in 2002, he even skipped a tournament in Chicago, blaming “an unspecified illness” later revealed to be a spearfishing trip on a boat called the Jolly Roger II.

Tiger can hold his breath under water for up to four minutes. It’s better when he free dives and doesn’t use a regulator, he says, so that the fish aren’t scared off. “The only problem is that when you don’t make any bubbles, the sharks come around, too.”

Not that Tiger is necessarily afraid of sharks. Fellow PGA player Charles Howell III vacationed with Tiger off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa, and recalls that Tiger was eager to go cage diving with the great white sharks native to the area.

“We chummed the water for seven or eight hours, but there’s not a shark to be seen,” says Howell. “Tiger is bored out of his mind. He’s wearing a wet suit to dive into the cage in case any sharks come, and suddenly he just jumps into open water.”

As Tiger swims over to investigate a nearby island where seals congregate, “the guys on the boat are going nuts, shouting for Tiger to come back, but he just keeps swimming, through all the chum,” recalls Howell. Oblivious to the concern, “Tiger is having a great time. After what seems like an eternity, he swims back and casually gets on the boat.

“He’s just different from normal people,” Howell decides. “Completely fearless.”

Tiger enjoys the thrill. “I love every day of living life to its fullest,” he says.

Like Navy SEAL training, spearfishing provides the kind of adrenaline rush Tiger yearns for. Something outside of golf.

He looked for it in New Zealand, when in 2006 he twice leaped 440 feet from the world’s third-highest bungee-jumping platform, the Nevis Highwire. He chased it when he took up celebrity stock car racing—and won. He’s thrown himself out of airplanes and attempted underwater spelunking, much to the teeth-gnashing of his sponsors and—especially—his friends and family.

A few weeks later, Tiger attends Jimmy Buffett’s concert in Las Vegas. Buffett closes the show with a fan-favorite encore from his album Coconut Telegraph: “Growing Older but Not Up.”

Not long after the steak dinner in Orlando, Jimmy Buffett starts playing a lot more golf.