Chapter 83

Jupiter Island, Florida

January 19, 2021

Tiger and Notah Begay III are exchanging text messages about a favorite topic: hitting golf balls.

On December 23, three days after playing with Charlie in the PNC Championship and a week before his forty-fifth birthday, Tiger underwent a microdiscectomy—his fifth—to treat a painful “pressurized disc fragment” in his back.

As Begay tells ESPN on January 19, Tiger was “back on his feet” the next day, and though not “ripping drivers” on the range, he was testing his swing, and texting Begay the results.

“I think they were trying to clean a couple little bits up,” Begay says. “Obviously he won’t be playing for the next couple of months, but he should be back for the Masters, if not before that. So yeah, I think he’ll be just fine.”

It must have been some big celebrity who crashed.

That’s what a resident of Rancho Palos Verdes, California, thinks as he watches police activity on Tuesday, February 23, at Hawthorne Boulevard and Blackhorse Road, a downhill intersection locally regarded as a “speed trap.”

The area has been swarming with activity since shortly after 7:12 a.m., when a resident called 911 upon spotting an unconscious man inside a Genesis SUV that had crossed two lanes of oncoming traffic before colliding with a median and rolling several times. At 7:18 a.m., Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy Carlos Gonzalez is first on the scene.

It’s dark inside the damaged car, but Gonzalez can see that the driver’s eyes are now open.

“Hey, can you tell me your first name?” he asks.

“Tiger.”

Oh, yeah, Gonzalez realizes. You’re Tiger Woods.

Gonzalez observes Tiger “stuffing the deployed airbag back into the steering wheel” and, concerningly, notices that he “has an open fracture mid shaft on his right leg below the knee.”

Tiger can move his legs from under the steering mechanism, displaced by the crash, but he can’t get out of the car under his own power. Deputy Gonzalez calls for assistance. “Do we have an ETA for fire [department rescue units]?” comes the radio dispatch at 7:25 a.m. “We have a rollover with someone trapped.”

Using a pry bar and an ax, firefighters extract Tiger through the shattered windshield and rush him to the nearest trauma center, Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, in Torrance, California. While doctors are stitching a gash in Tiger’s chin, Deputy Kyle Sullivan interviews him and notes that “Woods did not remember being involved in a traffic collision and thought he was currently in the state of Florida.”

Tiger’s actually been in California for the last week. Though his recent back surgery kept him out of play at the 2021 Genesis Invitational, held at the Riviera Country Club, in Pacific Palisades, he’d continued in a role he’d taken on in 2017: host. He has a sentimental connection to Riviera Country Club, where in 1992 he played his first PGA tournament as a sixteen-year-old amateur.

On Sunday, February 21, during the final round of the Genesis Invitational, Tiger revealed to CBS’s Jim Nantz his immediate goal: to overcome his lingering back injuries and compete for his sixteenth major at this year’s Masters.

“God, I hope so. I’ve got to get there first,” Tiger said when asked if he’d be well enough to play by then. “A lot of it is based on my surgeons and doctors and therapist and making sure I do it correctly. This is the only back I’ve got; I don’t have much more wiggle room left.”

Following the Genesis, Tiger had stayed in Los Angeles to shoot an instructional video for GolfTV and Golf Digest. Yesterday he’d worked with actors Jada Pinkett Smith and David Spade plus NBA star Dwyane Wade. Director Peter Berg says Tiger “was charming, giving and full of love. He was professional and f—ing awesome.” This morning, he’d been making the twenty-minute drive in his tournament courtesy car from Terranea Resort, where he’s staying, to the Rolling Hills Country Club for a second day of filming when the accident occurred.

Now he’s in emergency surgery.

A little before 1:00 p.m., his agent, Mark Steinberg, releases a statement to the media: “Tiger Woods was in a single-car accident this morning in California where he suffered multiple leg injuries.”

These injuries are detailed on Tiger’s website by Dr. Anish Mahajan, Harbor-UCLA Medical Center’s chief medical officer and interim CEO. Tiger’s right leg and foot, the doctor explains, have been surgically stabilized by a rod as well as with screws and pins.

At 6:00 p.m., CNN broadcasts a news conference with the Los Angeles County sheriff, Alex Villanueva, who explains that Tiger was wearing his seat belt and that the SUV’s “interior was more or less intact, which kind of gave him the cushion to survive what otherwise would have been a fatal crash.”

It’s the third time in a dozen years that police have been called to the scene of a single-car accident to find a semiconscious Tiger Woods behind the wheel of a wrecked car. Skeptical reporters press for information on Tiger’s condition in the moments preceding the accident.

Question: “When you say no evidence of impairment, what exactly—what impairments are you looking at?”

Villanueva: “Well, we’re looking at signs of influence—under the influence of either narcotics, medication, alcohol, odor of alcohol, all these different things that would give you an idea and their behavior, but there was none present.”

At the Concession Golf Club, in Bradenton, Florida, PGA Tour players are prepping for this week’s WGC–Workday Championship.

According to Xander Schauffele, Team USA’s 2020 Olympic gold medalist in golf, “Everyone I’ve talked to has been in a strange mood due to the news.”

Bryson DeChambeau compares Tiger to the legendary Ben Hogan, who miraculously survived a 1949 car crash. DeChambeau says of Tiger, “I have no doubt in my mind he’ll be back.”

Others, like Justin Thomas, remove golf from the equation entirely. “I’m sick to my stomach. It hurts to see, now one of my closest friends get in an accident, and I just hope he’s alright,” Thomas says. “I’m just worried for his kids. I’m sure they’re struggling.”

Phil Mickelson, father of three, observes, “I thought Rory McIlroy said it well when he said that we are just lucky and appreciative that his kids didn’t lose their father. We are hoping and praying for a speedy recovery. We’re thankful that he’s still with us.”

On February 24, the Los Angeles County sheriff, Alex Villanueva, briefs the press. “We don’t contemplate any charges whatsoever in this crash,” he announces. “This remains an accident. An accident is not a crime. They do happen unfortunately.” Although a supplemental collision report identifies the contents of the SUV—including a backpack containing an empty unlabeled prescription pill bottle—the sheriff addresses only the question of whether alcohol was involved. “He was not drunk,” Villanueva says. “We can throw that one out.”

Throughout the final round of the WGC–Workday Championship on Sunday, February 28, more than a dozen PGA golfers pay visual tribute to Tiger. Phil Mickelson, Tony Finau, and many others turn up in Tiger’s traditional Sunday red, wear caps hand-lettered TW, and strike TIGER-stamped golf balls.

It’s a moving display of solidarity and support.

Tiger watches the broadcast from his room at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where he was transferred two days ago to receive ongoing orthopedic treatment in the hospital’s top-rated sports medicine department.

“It is hard to explain how touching today was when I turned on the TV and saw all the red shirts,” Tiger posts on Monday, March 1. “To every golfer and every fan, you are truly helping me get through this tough time.”

Tiger’s injuries are extensive—both the tibia and fibula bones are broken in several places—and there’s concern that he might lose his right leg entirely. But on March 16, after three weeks of hospital care, he posts a milestone change of venue: he’s back in Florida. Happy to report that I am back home and continuing my recovery… working on getting stronger every day.

Though he’s no stranger to postsurgical rehabilitation, this time is different—startlingly so. “It’s altered,” Tiger says of his physical symmetry. “My right leg does not look like my left, put it that way.”

County sheriff Alex Villanueva holds another press conference in LA. With Tiger’s permission, he’s released the full results of the police investigation into the February 23 crash.

“The primary causal factor for this traffic collision was driving at a speed unsafe for the road conditions and the inability to negotiate the curve of the roadway,” the sheriff states.

Today’s date—Wednesday, April 7—is significant. Tomorrow begins the first round of the 2021 Masters. Tiger, who’s played in the tournament for four consecutive decades, will be missing his third Masters since 2014.

Justin Thomas, who visited Tiger at home last week, shares his friend’s state of mind. “It’s kind of starting to set in,” Thomas tells a reporter at Augusta. “He’s bummed he’s not here playing practice rounds with us, and we hate it too.”

Rory McIlroy gives another insight into Tiger’s state of mind. During a recent visit with Tiger, McIlroy caught sight of the living-room trophy cabinet and did a double take. Only Tiger’s fifteen major trophies were on display. What happened to his other sixty-seven PGA Tour trophies?

“I don’t know,” Tiger said.

“What?” McIlroy asked, incredulous.

“Yeah, my mom has some, and a few are in the office and a few are wherever.”

On the drive home, McIlroy thought, All he cared about were four weeks a year. The other stuff must have been like practice.

During Masters Week, ESPN airs an emotional tribute to Tiger narrated by broadcast journalist Gene Wojciechowski. Closing out the video is the poignant reminder of the absence of an icon. “Augusta National has a long memory. It remembers those who have added to its legacy and no one has done that more often than Tiger Woods.”

On November 21, 2021, Tiger posts a video captioned “Making Progress” that shows him hitting a golf ball. It’s a new installment of the “Making Progress” video he posted on October 15, 2017, when he was recovering from spinal fusion surgery.

Tiger’s wearing a black compression sleeve on his right leg; the crutches he’s been relying on are nowhere in sight. He describes this recovery, which began with three months in bed, as “an entirely different animal. I understand more of the rehab process because of my past injuries, but this was more painful than anything I have ever experienced.”

The response to the new video is overwhelming.

Tiger keeps pushing. But he does set limits, in November telling Golf Digest: “Something that is realistic is playing the tour one day, never full time, ever again, but pick and choose, just like Mr. Hogan did.”

Days before Christmas and the week before his forty-sixth birthday, Team Tiger makes its latest return.

It’s been a harrowing year since Tiger and Charlie placed seventh in the 2020 PNC Championship at Orlando’s Ritz-Carlton Golf Club. Twelve-year-old Charlie Axel Woods walks the course while his father rides a cart. Luckily, the generational tournament is operated in collaboration with the PGA Tour Champions (golf’s “senior” tour for players over fifty), which allows the use of carts.

Dressed in red for the final round, Team Tiger birdies eleven straight holes to place second, two strokes behind winning Team Daly (John and John II).

“Charlie was hitting the ball unbelievable,” a proud Tiger boasts to NBC. As for himself, he’s just grateful for the progress he’s made. “I still have my own leg, which was questionable for a while. And it’s functioning. I’m just really tired. I’m not used to this. I think this might be my fourth or fifth round of golf [this] year. I’m a little worn out.”

Still, “the competitive juices, they’re never going to go away,” Tiger says. “This is my environment, this is what I’ve done my entire life. I’m just so thankful to have this opportunity to do it again.”

Tiger reminds reporters, “Remember what I said at Pebble Beach in ’97?” Back then, his attitude was “Second sucks.”

Not today. Today, it feels like a miracle.