The Big Miss: My Years Coaching Tiger Woods by Hank Haney Page A

way it happened remains improbable to me and is a good example of how Tiger was simply different. I can’t imagine another player adjusting to a grip change so quickly.
    Off the course, I was also getting to know Tiger better. I stayed at his house about thirty days in 2004, the amount I’d average per year while we worked together. I tried to be a low-maintenance guest. I obviously knew by now that Tiger was allergic to people who even faintly crowded him, so I demurred on all things except his golf game.
    Probably the least satisfactorily answered sports question of the last twenty years is, “What’s Tiger Woods like?” The reason is that even for those who are actually around him a lot, never mind his millions of observers, he is very hard to know. There is a lot going on behind those eyes, but very little is shown.
    I saw Tiger in many modes. He could be very gracious in public when he chose. But when the mood struck him, he could be coldly aloof with media, autograph seekers, or even officials. In private, I found that he could either be good company—conversational and intelligent in a way that made you wish he’d allow that side of himself to come out all the time—or completely distant.
    As I’d learned from being around Tiger before coaching him, his public persona forced him to operate in a very tight box. Whereas some athletes and celebrities could actually enhance their images by behaving badly, Tiger could never do any wrong in public without it being pointed out that he was betraying the ideal Earl had promoted and that his endorsement contracts were built on. It made him wary of being in public or engaging with people other than the few in his inner circle. Whenever I was with him in a restaurant or a hotel or a casino, he was eerily good at avoiding eye contact. He acted impervious to his surroundings, but it struck me that he wished it could have been different, and that on some level he resented his situation.
    I never sensed that Tiger wanted to be treated like a king. He never had a big entourage. He never bragged about what he’d won or how much money he had. Tiger didn’t big-time. The most entitled I ever saw him act was when he drove around Orlando. It wasn’t that he favored fast cars. He owned a McLaren and a Porsche that were basically race cars, but they stayed in the garage from what I could tell. Mostly he just drove his Escalade, but in a way that reflected an impatient guy who wasn’t going to follow the silly rules of regular schlubs. He’d go over the speed limit, but not by a lot. Mostly it was rolling stops, turns over double lines, parking in a restricted spot—time-saving stuff he thought was worth the risk. When I was in the passenger seat, sometimes I’d say “Nice” after one of his illegal moves. That would draw a smile from Tiger as he enjoyed the rare feeling of breaking rules. But I never saw him get a ticket or even get pulled over.
    I remember once reading something John Cook, who played a lot of practice rounds with Tiger at Isleworth, said about him that I thought rang true: “Tiger knows his place.” What I think John was saying is that Tiger knew he was special, but with so much certainty that he never had to talk about it. He knew everyone else knew it as well, and he was content to let them make all the noise. He felt no need to prove it or revel in it or lord it over people. He never pulled rank with a “Do you know who I am?” routine in public places. When he walked into a restaurant, the red carpet was rolled out, a special room was provided, and the owner came by to pay homage. But all he cared about was that the meal came right away, and he’d try to slip in and out unnoticed. He might have needed indulging from those around him, but he didn’t need attention from them. I guess he’d had too much from too young an age.
    It always struck me that Tiger was at his most outgoing with kids at clinics. The few times I saw him in one of those