The Biography of Tiger Woods

1. 0:00 – 3:13

   Tiger Woods: The Enigma and Why This Book

   1. DSDavid Senra0:00

      Tiger Woods was the kind of transcendent star that comes around about as often as Halley's Comet. By almost any measure, he's the most talented golfer who has ever lived, and arguably the greatest individual athlete in modern history. For a 15-year span, from August 1994, when he won his first of three consecutive US Amateur Championships as an 18-year-old high school senior, to the early morning hours of November 27th 2009, when he crashed his SUV into a tree and effectively ended the most dominant run in the history of golf, Woods was a human whirlwind of heart-stopping drama and entertainment. He was someone no one had ever seen or will ever see again. At the height of Tiger's career, golf beat the NFL and the NBA in ratings. He was mobbed by fans wherever he went. Kings and presidents courted him. Corporations wooed him. Women wanted to sleep with him. For the better part of two decades, he was simply the most famous athlete on Earth. Despite his killer instinct on the course, he was an introvert off of it, more comfortable practicing and training in solitude. As far back as childhood, he spent far more time by himself. Tiger is the most mysterious athlete of his time, an enigma obsessed with privacy, who mastered the art of being invisible in plain sight, of saying something while revealing virtually nothing. The two qualities Woods values most are privacy and loyalty. So that begs the question, why tackle this project? They're talking about the book. Why tackle this project in the first place? Our answer is simple. Very few individuals are known throughout the world by one word. That is an excerpt from the book that I'm gonna talk to you about today, which is titled Tiger Woods and was written by Jeff Benedict and Armen Keteyian. There is a companion to this, um, to this fantastic biography. It is an excellent biography, or excuse me, an excellent documentary that I walked, that I watched a few years ago, or maybe like a year ago, on HBO. It's simply called Tiger. And so when they said, "Hey, you know, why are we write, reading this, uh, why are we writing this book?" Very few individuals are known throughout the world by one word. A few months ago, I was in Los Angeles, and I was going to a bookshop, a bookstore, and I noticed this book. And [laughs] it speaks to what they're talking about, the fact that he's known by, just by the word Tiger, but he's also known by just his face. I saw the book. There is no title on the cover of the book. All it is is Tiger's face, and I immediately knew what it was about. And then the reason I picked it up is because it says on the cover that it was the basis of the HBO documentary, Tiger. I was like, "Oh, wow, I should actually re- I liked the documentary. I should read the book." And so in addition to reading this book, I also re-watched the documentary. And so I wanna start in the prologue with a main reoccurring theme that you and I have talked about over and over again that pops up in, in nearly every single biography that you and I talk about, that you can always understand the son by the story of his father. The story of the father is embedded in the son. That is a quote from Francis Ford Coppola's biography, uh, regarding the relationship that Francis had with his father. I covered all that back on episode 242. We see it right away. It prob- arguably the main theme and what I'll probably spend most of the time talking to you about today is the, the unusual childhood and unusual family that Tiger Woods came from.

2. 3:13 – 8:07

   Earl and Tiger as Mozart and His Father

   1. DSDavid Senra3:13

      I said, and his father's name was Earl. Earl achieved worldwide, and you'll see exactly what I mean. Earl achieved worldwide acclaim for his almost mythical role in raising the most famous golfer of all time. He was notorious for making outlandish statements like the time he predicted that his then 20-year-old son would have more influence on the world than Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, or Buddha. "He is the chosen one," Earl said. "He will have the power to impact nations." And for his part, Tiger says, Tiger repeatedly said that no one in the world knew him better than his father, the man he frequently referred to as his best friend and his hero. And so I wanna start in the early life of Tiger when he's very, very small and really focus on this relationship, uh, that he had with his dad. If you could look at all the notes that I left throughout this entire book, um, the most common note I just kept writing to myself over and over again is, "This reminds me of Mozart." It happened so much that I, I actually went back and reread all of my highlights for the biography of Mozart that I read. This is, uh, episode 240. I wanna read those highlights to you in, in advance because I really think it will help frame the relationship. It is spooky. Uh, [laughs] I wrote down, uh, "Tiger Woods is the Mozart of golf. The parallels are incredible." Um, not only the talent, you know, uh, Tiger Woods being the most famous, maybe the best golfer of all time, Mozart's widely considered the same, uh, in his field, but the relationship with their father. Earl makes the quote, uh, the, the, the claim in the book that he hit his first golf ball when he was, like, 11 months old. Mozart starts composing when he's, like, two. And so I'm just gonna read a few of the highlights, uh, from the Mozart book, and really, this is just a way to describe Earl and Tiger. Mozart's output was enormous, much greater than that of nine-tenths of other composers. So, uh, my friend David Perel, when he found out I was doing a podcast on, on Tiger Woods, he sent me, like, notebook after notebook of all the data that he's collected. David's a huge golf fan, and it sounds like a huge Tiger Woods fan. He's got all these quotes and these highlights and these graphs. Essentially, like, when I read this, his output was enormous, much greater than nine-tenths of other composers. It is in line with all the, the stats and the data that, that David sent me. There is two things I wanna read from here, actually, from David's notes that are, I thought was fascinating after, I read David's notes after I read the book, and it said, "Tiger's opponents were never people. It was always history." And then another early example that I think is a good parallel with Mozart is the fact that you have somebody that starts unbelievably early, is unbelievably disciplined, but also extremely gifted and born with, like, natural intelligence. And this is an example of this. This is a quote from Tiger when he was older. "By the time I was 11 years old, I had already won 113 tournaments. I peaked at 11, to be honest with you. I went 36 and 0 that year and never lost a tournament, all in California." Uh, I also had straight As, no A minuses. They were all perfect As. So go back to the Mozart, uh, highlights. He was a mature artist in most forms at the age of 12. What? [chuckles] That's exactly what Tiger just told us. There was never a month, and often scarcely a week, when he did not produce a substantial score. Another description of Mozart. He was very-- he very rarely made any kind of mistake, and when he did, he noticed it. We're gonna talk about the obsessive and disciplined nature of Tiger Woods. The truth is, he started earlier than anyone else and was still composing on his deathbed. Those 30 years were crammed with creation. That he started so early was largely due to his father. The parallels are spooky here. Mozart's dad seemed to have decided that his own musical f- uh, future was limited, and his efforts centered on his children. Earl picks up golf later in life, becomes completely obsessed. He is completely obsessed by the time that Tiger is born, so there's a parallel there again. When Mozart was four, his father decided to concentrate on bringing him out and virtually, uh, gave up on composing and performing himself. Earl was retired from the Navy. He had no other job than dedicating his s- his, his self to his young son's, uh, golf, amateur golf career and then professional career. Uh, he soon came to the conclusion that he had fathered a genius. That's what Earl just said. Uh, being a very highly religious man, he w- that he was responsible for a gift of God to music, so he talks about the fact, Earl talks about the fact that this is, like, you know, this, this was meant to be. This is from God. I don't know if I'd consider Earl a, uh, a religious man. There's a lot in this, this, uh, biography that's actually shocking. Back to Mozart. It is important to grasp the strong religious element, rating from his father, that existed in Mozart's life from his infancy. Mozart's father felt that the musical education of his son w- was a profound spiritual business as well as a professional one. So did Earl. He literally thought that, uh, that, uh, that Tiger was, like, the anointed one, like he just said, that he's going to, that through golf, he's going to, like, cure racism and all this. He's just g- got a very interesting, [chuckles] like, uh, almost like messiah-like vision for his son, I guess is the way to put that. And then one more highlight before we jump b- back into the Tiger book. Uh, he, Mozart's father, is often seen as a tyrant towards his children. There's no way you're gonna read the book and not think Earl's the same way. But the fact is, he surrendered his own future as a musician for their sake, and their progress justified his sacrifice. And on that point, after you read this book, you get to the end, that is an unknown in my opinion.

3. 8:07 – 12:12

   A Childhood of Obsessive Practice, Starting at Age One

   1. DSDavid Senra8:07

      Let's go to five-year-old Tiger Woods. This is very unusual. Tiger felt different from all the other kids. Instead of toys, his prized possession was a custom-made set of golf clubs. Besides his parents, his closest friend was his golf instructor. He is five years old. Uh, by the time he was five, he'd already appeared on national television and performed in front of millions of people. This goes to his unusual, I mean, the [chuckles] ... I'm gonna read my note to you before I read the paragraph to you. Discipline and obsessed at five. I feel ridiculous for even writing this note. Each morning, his mother would drop him off at school, and each afternoon, she picked him up. Then she would drive him to the nearby golf course, where he practiced. Tiger had an unusually structured routine that left little to no time for interacting with other children outside of school. Academically, he was also way ahead of other the kid, uh, of other kids in his class as well. He was also unusually disciplined for a five-year-old, and he seldom spoke. So just like Mozart's father was obsessed with music before Mozart was born, we see the same thing with Earl. Uh, it says he, Earl was instantly hooked. Uh, this is right before Tiger was born. If golf were a drug, he would have qualified as an addict. He liked it so much that it consumed him, leading him to spend far more time with his clubs than with his wife. I realized what I've been missing my whole life, Earl said. I decided if I had another son, I'd introduce him to golf early on. And so there is this huge element that you can't really understand, uh, Tiger without understanding his father. His father was a Green Beret. Uh, he en- believed in engaging in psychological warfare on his son. Even the name Tiger came from, uh, Earl's experience in Vietnam. He immediately nicknamed his son Tiger in tribute to his co- to a comrade from Vietnam. And then we go back to more notes where I feel even silly for writing. Intense training before Tiger was one. By the time Tiger turned one, he had spent one hundred and, between 100 and 200 hours watching his father hit golf balls. So what they would do is they'd go out to the garage, they'd put him in a high chair, and Earl would just sit there and swing and hit into the net over and over again. Tiger got so transfixed by this, he would watch. He'd, his mother would try to be feeding him, and he would not eat. He'd wait till the swing, like the swing was done, then he'd turn and open his mouth so his mom could feed him. He'd take one bite, then look again, stare at the, stare at the swing, back and forth. That's how he ate. Uh, when Tiger was about 11 months old, after watching his father practice, Tiger slid down from his high chair and picked up a club that Earl had cut down to size for him to make a new toy. Uh, he waddled over to the carpet patch, stood over a golf ball, and swung. All these things that I'm reading are happening over, over many, many pages. It's insane how consistent this is. Instead of carrying around a security blanket or a stuffed animal, Tiger dragged around a putter from one end of the house to the other. It seldom left his hand. Earl deserved credit for recognizing so early on that his son possessed rare natural talents and abilities, just like Mozart's dad. When he was 18 months old, uh, his mother started bringing him to the driving range to hit balls. After, after Tiger, like the baby version of Tiger, the toddler version of Tiger, would hit balls, she would put him back in his stroller, and he would fall asleep. By the time Tiger was two years old, Earl made sure that he'd spent two hours a day hitting golf balls. This was insane. Tiger was developing the habit of practice, practice, practice. This is, so I guess one of the reasons I wanted to read this biography, so I don't, I've never played golf. I don't even know the rules of golf. I've never watched golf, but I know who Tiger Woods is. I obviously can see f- he's clearly an extreme winner, clearly has a lot of the same, uh, parallels in app- the way he approaches his work to a lot of history's greatest entrepreneurs. But what really made me wanna read this book is because one of my favorite books I've ever read for the podcast and one that's changed my life was episode 212, and that's the biography, I read a 600-page biography of Michael Jordan. And I was a huge basketball fan and Michael Jordan fan my entire life, still my favorite game to play. And what was fascinating is how, the, the reason that book changed my life is 'cause, you know, I always saw the highl- like the games, the highlights, the championships. I never saw the practice, and that, the main theme of that book is the same theme of this book. Practice, practice, practice. Tiger Woods idolized Michael Jordan. Tiger Woods is definitely the Michael Jordan of golf. The way they approach their practice and their insane work ethic around improving parts of their game is identical.

4. 12:12 – 15:26

   Earl Seeks Attention and Winning Creates Wealth

   1. DSDavid Senra12:12

      Earl is-- This is the strange part where he's, like, constantly trying to get attention for his son, even from a very, you know, early age, and we see how wild and, like, almost, like, messianic his, um, how he feels about his son. Earl Woods made a decision that would alter the course of his young son's life. He placed a call to a television station and asked for the sports anchor. "My son is two years old," Earl said, "and I'm telling you right now that he's gonna be the next big thing in golf. He's going to revolutionize everything, including race relations." This sentence might be the funniest sentence in the entire book. It was a blunt way to open a call with a complete stranger. So this sports anchor goes out. He's like, "Oh, you know, there's a lot of overzealous parents. This might be BS, but let me go out here and, and, and see if that's the case." And he's like, "Oh, wow. He, he might be right. Not on the, the rela- race relations, but this, he might be the next biggest thing in golf." I see this little Tiger hitting golf balls straight. I mean straight. Not kinda straight, straight. He was only a couple feet tall, yet he was hitting it 50 yards, and he was hitting the ball flush every time. And so anybody that sees Tiger Woods golf, it's like you have a gifted, you know, once in a century talent. His teachers would say the same thing. Tiger showed unmistakable signs of being a bonafide gifted child in school. He shared the textbook attributes of the gifted child, quiet, sensitive, and isolated. And so his parents don't really have any money, uh, but they find ways throughout the entire book to get professional help, even from a early age. By the time I think he's 13, uh, Tiger's getting recruited by, like, Stanford. It was well known that he's going to be a pro. And so there's a bunch of people that say, "Hey, you know, I'll give you my services for free." That coach, like a swing coach, trainer, everything else, "Just pay me back when he turns pro and becomes a superstar, because it's obvious that that's going to happen." Those are their words. And so they wind up getting this, um, this golf coach, and same thing, where he's just like, "This kid is so..." I think Tiger's four at this time. He's like, "This kid is so gifted, I'm willing to help him, uh, for free." And then we're gonna get into another main theme of this book that Tiger uses over and over again, and it's the power of visualization. So it says, uh, this is now his, his golf coach. I think he's four years old. Uh, instead of drilling the youngster over and over, Duran simply allowed Tiger's natural abilities and his love of the game to grow organically. Tiger would play 18 holes of golf with Duran. Kindergarten was still months away, but Tiger was already starting to learn valuable lessons. Superior athletes don't have to pay for things. Not only do they not have to pay for things, they get every, they get paid. The, the, the business aspect of-- This is the same thing Michael Jordan realized, where he's like, "Listen, the only reason that I'm a billionaire now is 'cause of my dedication to winning. If I didn't win six championships, no one's gonna buy my shoes." And then he had no way to predict that his shoes, you know, people were buying his shoes not to play basketball in them, but they wind up becoming like a, a p- a very strong piece of culture. You know, to this day, he's gets a 5% royalty on gross sales of all the Jordan brand. He's making about 150 to 180 million a year, you know, 20 years after he retired. So, uh, Tiger Woods at, at his peak, I think this is like 2007, 2008, he was making over 100 million a year just from endorsements, not including any other businesses that he owns, not including his winnings from golf or anything else. And so today they, they, they, they say Tiger's still a billionaire. And again, it comes from this idea that superior athletes, like, people wanna be associated with winning, and winning is the genesis of both Jordan and Tiger Woods', uh, fortune. Tiger--

5. 15:26 – 19:44

   Visualization, Affirmations and Studying the Greats

   1. DSDavid Senra15:26

      Now, this goes to the visualization part that I thought was, thought was very interesting. A few weeks ago, I did, uh, Ray Kroc's, uh, autobiography, and same thing. He would drive around. Now, Tiger's doing this when he's a boy. I think he's in, uh, elementary school when he started doing this. Ray Kroc would drive around listening to these, like, positive affirmation tapes. I don't think Tony Robbins was a thing at that time, 'cause this is probably before Tony might even be born or Tony was a kid. But it's that kind of, you know, positive mental affirmations. So it says Tiger was in grade school when his father furnished him with a cassette player and motivational self-help tapes. Tiger was filling his mind with words that were intended to make him great. He wrote some of the messages on a sheet of paper that he taped to his bedroom wall. So he'd tape it to his wall and then read it over and over again. What are these messages? I'm gonna read the, every line to you. "I believe in me. I will own my own destiny. I smile at obstacles. I am first in my resolve. I fulfill my resolutions powerfully. My strength is great. I stick to it easily and naturally. My will moves mountains. I focus and give it my all. My decisions are strong. I do it with all my heart." And then the author says, "Tiger listened to those tapes so often that he wore them out." So now we're gonna see another parallel with Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant as well. Michael Jordan would watch tapes of, like, uh, Dr. J, all these other, uh, NBA players that came before him. Then Kobe, in turn, started to watch tapes of Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson. Same thing, 10-year-old Tiger. You don't get to the top of your profession without studying the great people who came before you. This is very clear. Now we're 301 biographies in, and this is in nearly every single one of them. 10-year-old Tiger Woods started, stared intently at the television. It was the final round of the Masters. He was watching 46-year-old Jack Nicklaus. Uh, his reactions, this is what Tiger's talk, Tiger's reflecting back on this when he's older about him being 10 years old and doing this. His reactions over those last holes of the 1986 Masters made an impression on me because they were spontaneous, and they showed me how much of yourself you have to put into your shot. Jack was 46, and I was only 10, and I couldn't put it into words then, but I wanted to be where he was and doing what he was doing. After the 1986 Masters, Golf Digest published a list of Nicklaus's career achievements, accomplishments. It included his age at the time of each significant achievement. Tiger tacked the list to his bedroom wall. From that moment on, each morning when he woke up and each night when he went to bed, Nicklaus was there. This is not unique to golf. It's not unique to Tiger. It's no different than Jeff Bezos running around with highlighted copies of Sam Walton's autobiography, giving it out to a ton of people. T-taking, uh, I think it was the bias of action and, and, and Sam's, uh, pench-penchant for, uh, frugality and imbibing those characteristics and traits into the very foundation of Amazon, uh, of, of early days of Amazon. One of my favorite rappers is a guy named J. Cole. I've heard interviews with him, and he's also mentioned this in songs. When he was young, he would literally print out other rappers like Nas that he looked up to, and print out their lyrics and hang them up on the wall. That is exactly, it-- That J. Cole's version is exactly what Tiger's doing with Jack Nicklaus' achievements. And Tiger mentions this in the book, and it's also in that file that David Perel sent me, that his goals w-were they, they were confused that what he was chasing was pure numbers. And he's like, "No, I wanted to do it y-when younger than they were." So he talks about, um, this is a quote from Tiger that David sent me. Uh, "Is there a misconception about what drives you?" And then this is what Tiger says. "Here's the major mis- misconception that people have gotten all wrong. It, it's what was posted on my wall about Jack's records. It was not the majors, okay? That one was on there, but it was the first time he broke 40, the first time he broke 80, the first golf tournament he ever won, first time he ever won the state amateur, first time he won the US Amateur, and the first time he won the US Open. That was it. That was the list. It was all age-related. To me, that was most important. This guy's the best out there and the best of all time. If I can beat each age that he did it, then I have a chance at being the best." If you, if you buy the book, uh, and read it, which I highly recommend, there's no reason not to, and watch the documentary, I'm focused on like things that you and I can take for our work and our career, right? That's the point. Learning from history is a form of leverage.

6. 19:44 – 25:14

   A Dysfunctional Home and Parents Who Taught No Mercy

   1. DSDavid Senra19:44

      There is an unbelievable amount of like sex in this book. Makes sense in the sense that he was the most famous person, maybe the most famous p-person on the planet when he had that huge sex scandal back in 2009, 2010. I'm not gonna go into this guy's sex life. Uh, at the same time, I think if I don't mention it and then you buy the book, you're like, "Whoa, this, you left out a big part." What I'm focused on is how he could hate parts of what his dad did. His dad was obviously a philanderer. It's in the documentary. It's in the book. He lo- Tiger loves his mom. His mom, you know, took him, was, was there just as much as his dad was, and he hated what his da- His dad would cheat on his mom in front of like a 10-year-old. This is some weird behavior. And yet he wasn't able to avoid. He hated that part. He hated what his dad did to his mom, and then yet in many ways, like he, he followed the path, like the, the story of the father's embedded in the son. At the same time though, his family, like I don't want this environment. I don't care if my next, my kid is the next Tiger Woods or next Michael Jordan or the next Taylor Swift, 'cause my daughter really loves to sing. I would never push them like this. He was raised in this almost psychotic environment. So you take this unbelievably disciplined kid, this unbelievably like genius level IQ kid, and you put him with parents that are, listen to this. This is, this is Tiger's mom. While driving him to tournaments, she shared her philosophy. He is like 10. While driving him to a tournament, she shared her, his philosophy with him. "In sport, you have to go for the throat," she said, "because if it, if you're, if you're at all friendly, they'll come back and beat your ass. So you kill them. You take their heart." On the course, he had only one rule, and that was to play without mercy. Sorry, he's 11 when she's telling him this. At age 11, Tig-Tiger entered 33 junior golf tournaments and won every one of them. "There's no feeling I've found that matches the feeling that I've beaten everybody," Tiger said. "Second place is first loser." So I'm gonna pause there r-real quick. You, I, I told you, you and I have talked about this before. A lot of times you can read a biography, an autobiography of somebody and you have an idea of who they are. Like I just read James Dyson's, uh, autobiography for the fourth time. I have an understanding of who he is. I have no clue. I've watched the Tiger documentary twice, read this entire book. This book's what? 400 pages. I, I know how he approaches work. I know he's got almost like Terminator level levels of focus. He's completely relentless. But the, even the authors who, you know, interviewed like 250 people that knew him, spent years, I think they said they read every single book on Tiger as well. He's just an enigma. Where you read Jordan's biography and his autobiography, you have a sense of who he is. This is very different. Now, that's the thing that popped to mind. This is a note I left on my page, on this page, okay? Later on in this book, Tiger's mom said that Tiger's dad was soft because his, because his dad cries and he forgives, and then they make the connection. The book opens up with the death of his father and them burying his father. I think it was in Kansas where he was born. And they make the point that a decade later, there's no grave. There's, he's in a, Tiger's dad is in an unmarked grave, and he's not in an unmarked grave because of Tiger. He's in an unmarked grave because of his mother. His, they were, they were never, they were technically never divorced, but they were separated, lived separately. You know, he cheated on his wife over and over again. And this, you never make the connection, right? She's telling her 11-year-old, "Go kill him. No mercy. Go for the throat. Don't act friendly at all." Uh, later on she's like, "There's no point in having friends in life." Like she's a, Earl and her are almost like the same person. And so these are not pe- my point is, is like I would never wish, I don't think any parent is gonna wish for this environment for their kid. So the reason I don't, I'm not gonna get heavy into judging him is 'cause this happens, I think, as you get older. There was a lot of things my parents did that I did not understand, and I did not. I was like, "Why would you do this?" And yet you get older, you start having your own kids, and then you, like you just get a perspective with time. And then I go back and I'm like, listen, I, you know, I'm obviously not gonna do that to my kids. I understand. I'm not excusing that behavior, but I understand it. It was like, well, imagine being raised by their parents. You know, I had both sets of grandparents. Uh, my great, my, my paternal, uh, grandfather I never met. But the, the ones I did meet, the three I did meet were all terrible. And I just like, the older I get, I was like, well Listen, I'm not excusing that behavior, but imagine if that was, like, the environment you were raised in, and, like, that was your parents. And then go back even further. Like, I wonder what their parents were like. They were probably not great people, right? But just imagine being told, like, you're gonna be Gandhi, you're gonna be Jesus, uh, being forced to, to practice two hours a day when you're two years old. Like, your mom. You're 10 years old. I can remember being 10. I have, like, my [laughs] I have a 10-year-old. Te- she just turned 11. Like, they're still kids. They're kids, man. This is crazy. And then later on, after Earl's dead, you know, saying, "Hey, he was soft, he cried, and he forgave people. I don't cry, and I don't forgive anybody." And then you put the father of your son and your ex-husband in an unmarked grave. That is some crazy, ruthless behavior. This is not ... I read a lot of biographies. You don't come across like this, es- especially in the mother. That's wild. So then we go into more on this, this, this level of training.

7. 25:14 – 29:50

   Woods' Finishing School and the Bulletproof Mind

   1. DSDavid Senra25:14

      They wanted to train not only Tiger's body, but his mind. His dad, pssh, man. Some of the stuff I'm not gonna read you, 'cause it's crazy. It's insane. Tiger's dad is nuts. And so he actually has a psychologist that worked at the Naval Academy in, in, uh, Maryland, and he starts having him work with, with Tiger. And his dad, Tiger's dad was like, "Hey, I'm gonna make sure that so, you're so mentally tough that by the time you go to college, you will never, ever run into another human being on the planet that has more mental toughness than you." Brunza is, a guy named Brunza started to teach Tiger how to visualize shots. He gave Tiger cassette tapes containing subliminal messages that were custom-made for him. The two did breathing and visualization exercises together. I wanted to bring that up because, along with practice, visualization is something that's mentioned over and over again in this book. Uh, the amount of pressure that he's on, he's constantly, like, re- isolating himself, whether it's, uh, the night before a big tournament, cl- muting the world, and really getting control of his mind. So people, the way that people describe Tiger's level of focus and intense level of focus is very similar to how Steve Jobs, where Steve would in- people around him in Apple would say he was focused so intently on one thing that you c- you could talk, you could snap your fingers. Like, you're not ... Until he takes his focus away, he's not hearing any of that. There's a lot, um, a lot of that in, in this book with, with Tiger Woods when he was young, but also when he was at the peak of his, his golf career. And so this is the section where his father's saying, "Hey, I'm g- I'm gonna build a bulletproof mind." Tiger's 12 years old when all this is happening. Earl put him through what he called Woods' Finishing School. He would use psychological warfare and prisoner of war techniques that he had once taught to soldiers. Earl broke down his son in an attempt to toughen him up. "I wanted to make sure that he would never run into anybody who was tougher mentally than he was, and we achieved that." Tiger says, "My dad deliberately would use a lot of profanity when I was hitting golf balls all the time and throughout my swing." Uh, so this is what his father is telling his 12-year-old son. He probably did it when he was younger than 12, too. "Fuck off, Tiger," he would say sometimes. "It was motherfucker this, you little piece of shit this." And then the line I'm not gonna say at all, calling him obviously a racist term, uh, things of that nature. "He would push me to the breaking point, and then he'd back off. He'd push me to the breaking point, and then he would back off." I'm not repeating myself. Tiger's repeating himself here. "It was wild. We had a code word that I could use whenever I thought I couldn't take it anymore, but I never used that code word. I was never going to give in to what he was doing. I was a quitter if I used that word, and I don't quit. That word was enough." Tiger simply overwhelmed, and t- so this is the result. This is when he said he was, like, near his peak. Tiger simply overwhelmed the competition on the Southern California junior circuit. At, uh, at an elite tournament, uh, that attracted the finest players in the region, Tiger absolutely dominated. He was, in their estimation, a decade ahead of the other kids. And then here's just one of another insane story that you, it's hard to believe that's in the book. Imagine being so good at golf that the school district changes the boundaries for you. Tiger entered Western High School. Western High's golf coach, Don Crosby, felt like his fledgling golf team had won the lottery when Tiger arrived. Months before school started, the district was considering a modest boundary change that would have put Tiger's home out, just outside of the Western High district. In an urgent meeting with Western High's principal, Crosby, uh, took out a map and drew a circle around this specific parcel of land. "Whatever you do this summer," Crosby told the principal, "do not lose this tract." "Why?" the principal said. "Because a kid named Tiger Woods lives there." And then we go back to the Michael Jordan is Tiger Woods, Tiger Woods is Michael Jordan, something that pops up over and over again in this book. My favorite maxim for this is the public praises people for what they practice in private, and we see that over and over again. Tigan- Tiger often averaged more than 10 hours per day on the practice range. Tiger was far more inclined to practice than to play a round of golf. There's a line just like that in Michael Jordan's au- uh, Michael Jordan's biography. "Why don't you play the course more?" He was asked. "I like practicing better," Tiger said. "The first thing I taught Tiger, aside from the love of the game of golf, was a love of practice," his dad said. When he was real small, people would ask him, "How did you get so good, Tiger?" And he would answer, "Practice, practice, practice." One of my all-time favorite quotes that I found doing research for the podcast came all the way back on episode 50. It's from Marc Andreessen, and he says, "The world is a very malleable place. If you know what you want and you go for it with maximum energy and drive and passion, the world will often reconfigure itself around you much more quickly and easily than you would think."

8. 29:50 – 34:01

   Nicklaus, Violence of Action and Family Pressure

   1. DSDavid Senra29:50

      We go back from a 10-year-old Tiger Woods watching Jack Nicol- uh, Nicklaus, hopefully that's how you pronounce his name, putting his list of achievements on his wall, staring at it every night and morning, to meeting him at this tournament. And at one point, it says, Nicklaus called on Tiger to demonstrate his swing. Tiger is 15 years old. Remaining poised, Woods demonstrated his flawless swing. After a few swings, Nicklaus stopped him. "Tiger," he said, grinning, "when I grow up, I wanna have a swing as pretty as yours." It was a rare display of public validation from the game's greatest golfer to the child prodigy who had been anointed his successor. A few pages later, one sentence I highlighted, but I think I've already told you this, but he says it explicitly. Tiger says, "I want to be the Michael Jordan of golf. I'd like to be the best ever." Later on, Tiger Woods is going to be obsessed with, uh, US, the US Navy SEALs. He st- winds up training with them, has this idea, uh, to quit golf and to become a Navy SEAL later on. Uh, likely causes, like, a lot of problems with his golf game 'cause this aggravates some of his injuries, uh, like this intense training that he's going through. But he, he has this idea where it's like this, uh, US-- I think it cames from, comes from the Navy SEALs, about violence of action, and violence of action is the unrestricted use of speed, strength, and surprise, and aggression to achieve total dominance against your enemy. I have no idea why, but when I got to this section, uh, their, their description of Tiger's swing, um, early in his career reminded me of violence of action. It was the speed and power of Tiger's swing that left the most lasting impression. The adjective that came to mind was violent. Tiger swung so violently that he had raw spots on his forearm from the friction created by their rubbing together on, on his release. "What's your go-to shot when you aren't swinging well?" uh, Harmon asked. Uh, that's w- I think his first or second swing coach. "Swing as fast as I can, unleash everything I have through the ball. Then I go find the ball, and I hit it again." So [chuckles] we gotta read that again. "Swing as fast as I can, unleash everything I have through the ball. Then I go find the ball and hit it again." Violence of action in the form of a golf swing. And so then it goes into some of the things that Tiger was witnessing when he was a kid. And this is a main point that's made in the documentary where his dad would have, like, this Winnebago or this RV, and they'd park it right next to the golf course. And so Tiger is a young kid, and he'd see his dad start having drinks, invite all these ladies over, and then, like, the Winnebago would start shaking. And so this is gonna become a big problem later on. And it says he was, he was conflicted over his relationship with his father. He loved him and considered him his best friend, yet he hated some of the things that he did. And you see this manifest once Tiger has complete control over his life. He's a, uh, you know, grown man, world-famous athlete. Overnight, uh, you know, h- his net worth goes from zero to $60 million the day he turns pro, and his, he spends less and less time with his father. And I think in the documentary, it's his mom. They know he's dying 'cause he's got cancer, diabetes. He's had, like, f- a bunch of heart attacks. He's, like, smoking and drinking and doing all kinds of crazy stuff. There's a lot of crazy stuff this guy does, even when he's an old man, in the book. But I'm pretty sure it was his mom that said, "Hey, you need to, like, go and, you know, patch things up 'cause he's about to die, and you're gonna regret it if you don't." Um, they also put a-- They also had no problem putting an unbelievable amount of pressure, like financial pressure, on him. He knew. So he's like, listen, um, his father wasn't a CEO. He had no money. Uh, his mother was an immigrant from a distant land. His family had little money and few connections. Their only real chance for upward mobility rested squarely on Tiger's golf game. Tiger knew that this was his way out. His family could not pay for all the lessons, um, that, that he needed, the travel, everything else. And so they put financial pressure on him, and then they kept j- he, like, kept engaging in this, this psychological warfare over and over again. And this is, like, his dad. The crazy thing about his dad is, like, he, he, he almost, like, bragged about it. Like, he would be-- He would talk about it unprompted, and he's like, "Yeah, when he gets a little cocky, I say, 'You weren't shit before, you aren't shit now, and you'll never be shit.'" I could never picture, uh, me talking to my son that way. That just, that just seems insane to me. Um,

9. 34:01 – 39:56

   Stanford, Bill Walsh and the Case for Rest

   1. DSDavid Senra34:01

      Tiger eventually gets recruited to Stanford, uh, and then he winds up building a relationship with Bill Walsh, who wrote that fantastic book, "The Score Takes Care of Itself." I think it's episode 106 of Founders. I actually need to reread that book, um, 'cause I just have a, I have a, uh, I think I'll have a better understanding of it, uh, on the, the, the second time through. But what's fascinating is, you know, Tiger's young. Bill's towards the end of his career. I think he'd already retired from San Francisco 49ers. I think he'd already won five Super Bowls. And yet he, he saw, like, a lot of parallels and stuff he could learn from Bill. Tiger had long admired Walsh and his reputation as a genius coach, and so he went to pay him a visit. Walsh and Woods were both very private individuals with cerebral approaches to their respective sports. They were both introverts to the extreme, and they were more at ease by themselves than in the company of others. They instantly connected. They were both perfectionists with similar organizational qualities. And so game recognizes game. Bill Walsh sees, oh, this guy's special. He gave Tiger his own personal key to the weight room. No other student-athlete on the Stanford campus had such a key. Within a month, Woods was practically living in the weight room. And it sounded like getting away to college was one of the best things could ever, ever happen to him because there's all these people that are winding, gonna wind up playing a role in Tiger's early career that are kind of recruited and, um, introduced to Tiger by his dad. One was this guy named Merchant. But Merchant, uh, became friends with Earl, but he saw the w- like, the way Earl was with Tiger's mom. And so I'm just gonna read, and there's a bunch of stories in the book. I don't think I have to read all of them to you. I think you'll get the point here 'cause I'm really just trying to understand. It's like, what kind of-- What did you expect when you have somebody that is raised in an environment like this? So he says, when he was in Earl's home, Merchant wis- witnessed things that he could no longer ignore. He had it with Earl's foul-mouthed abuse of Tiger's mother and the way he would tell Tiger's mother to shut the fuck up. One night during Tiger's freshman year, Merchant finally confronted Earl. "Listen, if I don't speak up, my mother, my mother will rise up out of her grave and slap the shit out of me if I allow you to continue to verbally abuse your wife as you do in my presence. So please stop it." Merchant figured that if Earl behaved this way in front of him, he no doubt did the same or worse in front of his son. He knew how much Tiger revered and loved his father, and seeing his father mistreat his mother was bound to do long-term damage. And so then Merchant describes what I was trying to say earlier. It's like, yes, the, the, the impact of his father is undeniable, but we can't discount his mother either. "Fans of golf and Tiger Woods see only the positive of the father-son relationship and the accomplishments of the son," M- Merchant explained. "But Tiger's greatest fan, without question, was his mother. She went to all the tournaments. She walked around the fucking golf courses everywhere he played. She wore the hat. Talk about worship. She loved that boy beyond belief, but Earl treated her like dirt, and it pissed me off. It really did." And so that may have played a role in Tiger turning pro earlier. Uh, it says, "The family dysfunction at home weighed heavily on Tiger at college. His parents desperately needed space. They needed separation, but their ability to live apart was restricted by their finances." And so when you look at, like, the totality of, you know, Tiger's career, you s- you say, "Okay, well, there are things, like, we can learn from there maybe to avoid." And so his practice habits were unbelievable. His workouts were extreme. And a lot of people, uh, you know, say, like, he just essentially, like ... A lot of the decisions he made later on also stem from the fact that he had so many surgeries, and then those surgeries, he was in so much pain, and he's on all kinds of prescription medication. And I saw this firsthand. My mom was dying of cancer. There's nothing they could do, and they just give a ton of pain medication, and it just changes who that person is. But I just can't help but wonder if Tiger had, like, a Bill Bowerman. Who know if he would even listen to somebody like that? But Bill Bowerman, I read his biography back on episode 153. Bill Bowerman is the co-founder of Nike. He's a legendary, uh, track coach. Phil Knight, you know, has been on record over and over again saying that there is no Nike without Bill Bowerman. And the interesting thing about Bill Bowerman was way this is deca- uh, people know the importance of rest and recovery now, but he was decades ahead of the curve. And so in that biography, uh, back on episode 153, I'm gonna read from it real quick, he talks about the fact that he just sees class after class after class of tracks, track stars, right? And they all make the same mistake in that they don't rest, and they get injured, and then their career goes to shit. And I just wonder if he had a strong influence. You know, Phil Knight is a very formidable individual, and yet he was able-- like, he listened to and admired Bowerman. Bowerman never let Phil Knight overtrain. And so this is the speech that Bowerman would give to the incoming freshmen, incoming track athletes every year. "Take a primitive organism, any weak, pitiful organism, say a freshman. You make it lift or jump or run, and then you let it rest. What happens? A little miracle. It gets a little better. It gets a little stronger, a little faster, a little more enduring. That's all training is, stress, recover, improve. You think any damn fool could do it, but you don't. You work too hard and rest too little, and you get hurt." That was said decades before Tiger turns pro, and it sounds like that's, like, one of the biggest lessons that jumps from this book. You work too hard and rest too little, and you get hurt. And so this is the first time in the book where it's many, many surgeries he's gonna have. It marked the first of what would become many surgeries over the course of his career, stemming from excessive wear and tear on his body. He never, Tiger never let on that he was in pain. "The mind," he said, "is a powerful thing." Then we go back to this insane mentality that he's learning from, uh, his mother. Because a main theme of the book is the fact that, uh, he had, uh ... It says, "Tiger's lack of sentimentality and personal connection to others can be traced directly to his mother." This is what she says, "I'm a loner, and so is Tiger. I don't have many close friends and never have. I'm independent and strong-willed. That way you survive."

10. 39:56 – 45:55

    Turning Pro, the Masters, and Playing for the Hardware

    1. DSDavid Senra39:56

       And so eventually, Tiger makes the decision, uh, much with Nike's encouragement. Phil Knight's a character that pops up. There's a bunch of cameos of him in the book as well. And so he makes, uh, this decision he's gonna turn pro, um, and he gets to meet, starts getting to meet Michael Jordan, uh, who he idolized. Says, uh, "Jordan was another story. Tiger had idolized him throughout his teenage years. Phil Knight even saw Tiger as Jordan's equal. When asked whether Tiger was comparable to Jordan, Knight said flatly, 'You bet your ass he is.' Jordan, the world's most famous, uh, athlete, publicly stated that his only hero on earth is Tiger Woods. It was a hell of a compliment for a 20-year-old. Tiger was too young to drink, but with two strokes of a pen, he had secured $60 million before playing his first round of golf as a pro." Around this time, this is where his dad's start- starting to talk publicly about his 20-year-old son. He's gonna be Gandhi. He's gonna be, uh, Mandela. He's gonna be better than all of them. "I know I was personally selected by God Himself to nurture this young man." That is exactly, exactly what Mozart's father said. And so they have an entire chapter dedicated to the 1997 Masters. I just wanna go back to this point that the world is a very malleable place. Uh, "Tiger had sat in his living room at age 10, watching Jack Nicklaus win the 1986 Masters on television, and dreamed of doing just that. Here he was 11 years later, and Jack Nicklaus was now elbowing his way through the masses of spectators trying to get a glimpse of Tiger." And so we go back into what was his, his practice habits. Like, what was his regimen, uh, after he turned p- pro? And it goes back to maybe this is ... Who knows? You have to ask him if he went back and did it, would he, would he be take more, like, a Bowerman approach, or is this like, hey, he just has this, like, ruthless intensity and drive and competitive spirit that maybe he couldn't even control? And so it says, uh, "Tiger had compulsive habits. By the spring of 1997, he was consumed with practicing and working out. A typical practice day for him entailed hitting 600 balls, working on his short game, working on his putting, and then playing a round of golf, and working out in the gym for two or three hours. 'That was the life I wanted,' he said. And he never rested after a win. The joy he derived from winning tournaments was always fleeting. Uh, even after shattering records at Augusta wasn't enough. 'I didn't care if I won. I didn't care that I won by 12 shots,' he, he said. 'I was addicted to staying on the range for hours.'" And so right away, as he turns pro, he's breaking records. He's winning all the time. And then this is, uh, this goes, this is really helpful to have David Perel text me and, and send me all this stuff because, you know, I'm not, I don't understand golf the way he does. And he's like, "Listen, the man is wild. He literally becomes the best player in the world twice and is like, 'Nope, I'm gonna s- I'm gonna scratch everything and rebuild my swing from scratch.' He was relentless." And so the first time he rebuilt His swing, it's gonna take some time from he's, you know, winning, winning, winning, then he's like, "Okay, this isn't-- I may win now, but I'm gonna rebuild my, my swing because I wanna win long-term." And some people debate if this was good or bad or whatever the case is, but the main point is he ha- that means he has to go from dominating and winning to losing, and he does not like that. And so this is what happens. He goes nine months between victories, which is an excessive long time for him, and this is just funny to me. Uh, it had been nine long months since his last PGA victory. Tiger received the trophy and held it up. So this guy named Rick, who is the director for the tournament, he's holding up-- Tiger's holding up the trophy, and you go from the, the end of the tournament to now they're gonna go over to, like, the pavilion where you take photos and you do the media center, and Tiger's like, "Okay, I'll head over there." And then Rick's like, "I'll take the trophy," reaching for it. And Tiger's like, "No. I just beat 155 guys. I will take the trophy." It was unheard of for the winner to carry the trophy from one stop to the next following-- to the next stop following the tournament. But Tiger wasn't about to let it out of his hands. His adamancy was an important clue to what makes Woods tick. Money didn't motivate him, nor did fame. He played for the hardware. He played for the win. He always cared more about collecting trophies than making friends. Above all, Woods was a scorekeeper, and trophies symbolized wins, and wins denoted dominance. And so let's go back to this idea that game recognizes game and the world is a malleable place. Imagine what this must have felt like, and I wish he would elaborate on it, but you're not getting anything out of the enigma that is Tiger Woods. And this is Jack Nicklaus saying, like, there's nobody else like him. There-- like, he is the only one. Remember, he's watching Jack when he's 10 years old. He has Jack's achievements on his wall. Listen to this. He joined Jack Nicklaus at the post-tournament co- press conference. "The great thing is my game is starting to come around," Tiger said. "I'm starting to understand how to play the game of golf a little better than I had before." And then Nicklaus says, "Whoa. I had never seen this kind of playing before. How old are you? You're 23 now?" "Yes," Tiger said. "Most players at 23 don't have your kind of imagination. As far as he hits it, there's no reason for him to even bother practicing his short game, but he has, and that is why he is winning. I don't know if anybody can play the way he does. He has the ability to do things that nobody else can." And then there's a bunch of golfers in this book just talked about if you competed with him at this point, it was very intimidating. Woods was a rare athlete who liked to practice as much as he liked to play, whose obsession with perfection and ability to perform without fear gave him an intimidating psychological advantage. And so it then goes into his mindset, his inner monologue. He's-- The, the night before the last day of play, he would just-- he'd, he'd get in a room, he'd start doing this visualization. He says, "No one else stands a chance tomorrow." That night alone in his room, room, Woods would close his eyes. He visualized the first tee. From there, he played every shot in his mind one by one, all the way through the 18th hole. Then he went to sleep. The next day, he shot 65 in the opening round. With three rounds still to play, everyone else had already recognized that they were playing for second place. So I thought that was the night before the last day. That was wrong. [chuckles] They still have three rounds to go.

11. 45:55 – 48:12

    Mental Edge, Visualization and Estee Lauder

    1. DSDavid Senra45:55

       This idea of visualization sounds to a lot of people about, hey, it's willy foofoo. It's, like, some nonsense. All I can tell you is that it is in a ton of the biographies, uh, that I read. When I type in visualization in Readwise, I pull up, uh, all the notes and highlights I have about this. This is Estee Lauder. Uh, I think first time I covered this was episode 136. I think the second time was episode 217. And this is what she said, and she's writing this in, like, the 1970s or 1980s, so decades before where we are in the book. "Visualize. In your mind's eyes, you see-- If in your mind's eye you see a successful venture, a deal made, a profit accomplished, it has a superb chance of actually happening. Projecting your mind into a successful situation," which is exactly what Tiger is doing where we are in this book, "is the most powerful means to achieve goals. If you spend time with pictures of failures in your mind, you will orchestrate failure. Countless times before the event, I have pictured a heroic sale to a large department store every step of the way, and the picture in my mind became a reality every step of the way." That's exactly what Tiger is doing, isn't it? "I have visualized success, then created the reality from the image. Great athletes, businesspeople, inventors, and achievers from all walks of life seem to know the secret." That is the end of Estee Lauder's highlight. I had wrote it there-- wr- written on, in my own note. At this point, Bob Noyce, Edwin Land, Steve Jobs, Arnold Schwarzenegger all did this, and now we can add Tiger Woods to that list as well. And so a large part of the book, too, is Tiger dealing with, you know, being relatively unknown to being literally one of the most famous people on the planet. This is something that I don't think anybody would actually understand unless they go through, and we see him trying to cope with this. Like, he would-- He's got two giant yachts at the end of the book. Uh, one is named Privacy, the other is named Solitude. About a decade and a half before that, he gets obsessed with scuba diving, and he says that he was obsessed with it and spent so much time under the water. He even gets certified to be, like, a cave diver too, which is kind of crazy. But one, the reason, one of the reasons he did it is because that's one of the few places on the entire planet where no one could recognize him and no one wanted anything from him, and that he just felt very, uh, at peace being alone among the fish, and he felt that there was no other place on the planet that he could achieve that level of peace than on the bottom of the ocean floor.

12. 48:12 – 51:18

    Fame, Isolation and the Jordan Connection

    1. DSDavid Senra48:12

       But there is one person that Tiger could go to and talk, like, how do you deal with these kind of things? Just so happened to idolize Jordan but also become friends with Jordan. Jordan obviously was Tiger Woods before, uh, Tiger Woods was Tiger Woods. And there, this is in the documentary, it's also in the book, and it says, "Perhaps it was inevitable that Tiger would turn to Jordan. There was no other athlete alive who had experienced the same level of fame. The two of them essentially belonged to their own exclusive club. Jordan exercised considerable influence over Tiger's attitude toward fame, women, and power." And so that's when the book goes into a lot of detail. I mean, they're spending a lot of time in Vegas. You can imagine what's happening. Uh, you know, I don't have to fill that in for you. There was one thing that was kind of, uh, funny though. Tiger went up to Jordan. He's just like, "Well, what do you, like, what do you say to these, these, all these women?" And Jordan goes, "You tell them that you're Tiger Woods." And so that's like the conundrum or the paradox maybe that, that Tiger is in, because if y- no one feels sorry for somebody that's super famous and super rich. That's just not, that doesn't happen. But imagine being around every single person around you doesn't actually give a shit about you as a person. They just want something from you, whether it's money, fame, access, something you can do. Like they, how do you make true friends if you're as famous as Tiger Woods? And the answer is, I don't think you do, unfortunately. Not that he was gifted at making friends anyways. Now, this is wild, though. This goes back to, like, his dedication, and this is really the, the main reason, like, I think the book is, is worthy for entrepreneurs to read, is 'cause Tiger paid attention to every single detail, every single aspect, any little piece, part of his game or any aspect of it that he could improve, knowing that these little improvements, uh, over time, like, just create something that's so hard to compete with. And so we see, like, just he had this innate sense of even the equipment that he used. Uh, he considered Tiger's mastery of every facet of the game, right down to the equipment he used, downright intimidating. For instance, Nike had recently shipped a box of prototype titanium drivers to Woods so that he could test them. There were six in total. After putting the drivers through their paces, Tiger told him that he preferred the ones that were heavier than the others. But then they, this guy informed Tiger that all six drivers were the exact same weight. Tiger argued otherwise, insisting that one made more than the others. So they send the drivers back to Nike, uh, and they, this is what they found. They found that five drivers were exactly the same weight, but the sixth was two grams heavier. When they pulled the club apart, they discovered that an extra dab of goo had been added to the inside of the head by one of the engineers. The weight of the goo was equivalent to the weight of two one-dollar bills, yet Tiger noticed a difference in the way the driver felt in his hands. And I think that story is related to the next sentence, where it says, "He possessed unsurpassed talents that he honed through a lifetime of practice." It is just so hard to compete with somebody that's obsessed and that is just doing more work than anybody else. They said that they, on, uh, on his college team, like he practiced more than all of them combined. So that is the part of the book that it's all about his career up until what people consider his downfall. But I do think there's a point, there's a few highlights that's worth pointing out.

13. 51:18 – 55:36

    The Downfall: Tabloid Spies, Robert Caro and Human Nature

    1. DSDavid Senra51:18

       I've been going deep on Robert Caro, and I've been wa- I watched his documentary. I've been reading, uh, his biographies. I'm on the third biography of his right now. I'm going to eventually do an episode on his autobiography called Working, which is all about his approach to his craft, 'cause I like how deliberately inefficient it is. He writes out his books by hand, types them in a typewriter, takes like 10 years. Like, the level of detail this guy has is, is fascinating. But th- something that was interesting that I heard Robert Caro say, I, I read about in an interview and I also heard him say in the, the biography, or excuse me, in the documentary, was that, like, people think he's, he's writing a biography on Robert Moses and he's writing this, like, five-part biography of Lyndon Johnson. He's like, "No, no, I'm, I'm using the form of biography to tell a story of how power works in the real world." And he had done this, like, uh, he got p- basically, like, this fellowship, I think it was at Harvard, I can't remember, where he's taking all these classes, and he kept talking about the fact that what he was learning at, it's, I'm pretty sure at Harvard, uh, it, power doesn't work like that, that power as described in the classroom is not how power works in the real world, and he decided to dedicate his entire life to, to educating us on how power actually works. And this is the reason I would pay attention to Tiger's story. Um, and again, I, I'm never gonna get on this podcast and, like, criticize. I would say, "Hey, that's a decision I wouldn't wanna make," or I can avoid it. Uh, my point is not to criticize. My point is to understand, and I, the part of studying history, the part of reading so many biographies is because I think the understanding that I have of human nature and the world around me now compared to when I started this project is not even the same. And I'm starting to understand how the world actually works and how humans actually are, uh, which I think is, like, just in a weird way comforting and will benefit, like, I have a huge benefit as I navigate the rest of my life and my work and m- my career, or, a- and my personal life, right? And so this is after the fallout where it becomes made public that he's got, you know, who knows how many mistresses. His wife didn't know anything was going on. Winds up losing, you know, at this point he was making over $100 million from endorsements. So just all the stuff that's happening. And what was crazy to me is, it's in the documentary, but the National Enquirer has essentially a network of spies, and a bunch of other media organizations have this. And so when I'm reading about this, I'm like, how many people know that this is actually how the world works? So if I could tie what's happening on this page to what Robert Caro taught us, he's like, the way real power works, political power, power to shape cities in Robert Moses' case, power to shape entire societies in Lyndon Johnson's case, it's not how they teach you. That's not actually what's happening. And I feel that, that, that a large part of the world is like that. And so first of all, the, the, the fact was that Tiger was unbelievably gifted and unbelievably intelligent, and he did not see his demise coming. That's surprising to us, right? That, and when I look at that, I'm not like, "Oh," like, "What's wrong with the guy? How he couldn't see?" It's like, okay, he had a blind spot. What are my blind spots? And then I get into essentially, like, he had an entire, like, he was followed everywhere he went, and people had, were paying, paid a ton of money to contribute to his downfall. So they could profit off of it. I'm not excusing the behavior he made, I'm just saying that these people also did some really crazy things that I don't think most people would realize. This is an example. The National Enquirer made its business to know what A-list celebrities were doing after the sun went down. To that end, it employed a network of women pretty enough to blend right in at the hottest clubs. Uh, they backed up that surveillance with various valets, bartenders, bouncers, and cocktail waitresses at every hotel, restaurant, and club. Everyone keeping tabs for the National Enquirer was paid between $200 and $500 a night in cash to inform on the behavior of various actors, comedians, musicians, and politicians known to boost newsstand sales. Think about, and you wonder why he na- he names his two mega yachts Privacy and Solitude, like a decade after this is happening. Everywhere he goes, he's in a, a restaurant, a club. He might think he's ta- uh, the, the, the waitress is, you know, helping him, you know, get, order food or get a drink, and she's literally being pa- she is a spy. That is crazy.

14. 55:36 – 1:03:32

    Pain, Pills, Navy SEAL Training and Playing for Yourself

    1. DSDavid Senra55:36

       And it gets even crazier because there is so much of this stuff that comes out from a, from, and some of these mitch- mistresses, like they're getting paid a ton. I think it was said something like he paid, uh, the main one, Rachel Uch- Uchitel, I, I forgot her name, or f- how to pronounce her last name. I think he had to pay her like $10 million. But in, in some cases, like People Magazine and all these other magazines, they're, they're paying like 100 grand, 200 grand, you know, sh- sh- sh- I try to think about this as like having a daughter, right? Through l- l- like, how am I gonna put this? Let me read this sentence to you. "In exchange for cash, she informed the supermarket tabloid of an upcoming tryst between her daughter and Woods." What the hell is the implication of that sentence? There is a woman, there is a mother willing to sell out her own daughter for money. Her daughter was telling her that she's having an affair with Tiger Woods, that they meet in these parking lots, do all these crazy stuff. The details are in the book if you wanna read it. And she's like, "Okay. Let, I bet you I can make a couple hundred grand off this," and say, and it, now you, you Google her daughter. Anybody can Google her daughter, and I did this for a bunch of the people in the book to see what's the first thing comes up. You know what is the first thing that comes up. It is the affair they had with Tiger Woods, and in graphic detail, pictures, text messages, disturbing things. And you sold out your daughter for money. What does that say about our species? And there's a line here with Tiger's friend. "These are people who live their lives failing, so they wanna read negative things about people who have gone up and then come down." And then it wasn't until I read the book, 'cause I missed the connection while I was watching the documentary. I was like, "Wait a minute." Like th- th- this poor decision-making that Tiger would even say it was poor decision-making, his, his end too, like something that could've contributed to it o- other than like the natural human nature is the fact that he's just had so many, so much pain. He's on a bunch of pain medication, which there's just no way, like when it w- th- in the documentary it shows like him getting pu- like his car was just pulled over. He's like sleeping in the car in the middle of the road, and I think they, they said he's like on Vicodin, Xanax, Ambien. He's like mixing all these things. He could've died. Um, he was on the same, the same medication that Michael Jackson OD'd on, like d- Dilaudid, pin, or something like that. I don't know how to pronounce it. And so I was s- I was sitting here thinking about this. It's like, okay, and some of my notes are just very simple, like avoid pills. But it's like his greatest strength might wind up being his undoing and his greatest weakness in the sense that he just worked so much harder and he had a high tolerance for pain, not realizing that that caused more injuries than necessary. Then his doctors say, "Hey, take it easy after the surgery." He doesn't take it easy. He goes back. He's like this relentless drive in him, and then it causes another surgery to happen, and the more surgeries you happen, the more drugs you have to happen, the more drugs you have to happen, the, the worse your decision-making gets. And so goes into now he's starting to be distracted. Maybe he's distracted because he's also, maybe he's interested, maybe he just can't deal with the pressure, but maybe he's also on a lot of, uh, presci- prescription medication. This is when he starts aggravating his injuries, not from golf, not from practice, but from like jumping out of planes. And so they make the point that in 2007 you're gonna think he's still amazing, but his swing coaches and some of the, the data they were collecting noticed that, oh, uh, there's like a lag time between doing work that leads to success and it's success, but also failing before the failure. By 2007 was the first time, uh, Haney started to think that Woods was closer to the end of his greatness than he was to beginning. There were signs were too subtle to spot in tournaments. They were more apparent in practice sessions and in the shot disbursement charts kept in testing sessions. Tiger's work habits began to slip. There were more distractions. The breakdown of Tiger's body, uh, he, as he was oft- often in physical pain and therefore taking pain medication, were both attributed by his, his caddy and his swing coach, uh, to his extreme workout regimen and his fascination with Navy SEAL training. They were pleading with him, asking him, "Please stop doing all this Navy SEAL stuff. It's not good for your golf game." Tiger ignored them. He stepped up his SEAL activities. He started training in Army boots and going for military st- military style runs while wearing a weighted vest. Tiger had both Williams and Haney, or t- had told them both that he was thinking of leaving golf to pursue a career in the military. Tiger would do as many as 10 parachute jumps per day, and he admitted to a friend that he had injured his shoulder on one jump when he collided with a partner. And so at 31 years old, he's like, "All right. Maybe I'll just switch careers." Uh, he says he was gonna take concrete steps to qualify to join the Navy SEALs, but Haney pointed out that Tiger was 31 and the age limit for Navy SEALs was 28. Woods insisted that they were making an exception for him, and so he's pleading with him. He's like, "What are you doing? You're the best golfer in the world. Why would you do this? Doesn't Jack Nicklaus' record mean anything to you?" Woods stopped, looked him in the eye and said, "No. If my career ended right now, I'm happy with everything that I've accomplished." And so when I read this, that might be true Maybe it's true. Maybe it's he's under so much pressure and all this, you know, he's having a hard time. It's gotta be disorienting what he went through. And so one of my great- one, one of my favorite quotes that I discovered recently, like, uh, probably like 20 episodes ago, was from Charlie Munger. Charlie says, "The problem isn't getting rich, it's staying sane." That human mind is not used to dealing with extreme levels of success. So few people are able to deal with extreme levels of success and actually stay sane. And so they have an entire chapter on him dealing with pain. This is where I wrote to myself, "Avoid pills." And Tiger has, like, this internal monologue. He's like, "Listen, there's a difference between being hurt and being injured. If I'm hurt, I can deal with the pain. Pain is no big deal. I can block that out. But when I'm injured, my body doesn't respond." And this is the problem. He's like, he got taught, he played through pain his entire life. His first reported instance of using painkillers was in 2002. You can see highlights from his 2008 Masters appearance where he is, like, wincing. They try to get him to quit, and he says, "F- F off. I'm winning this tournament." And he was using Vicodin, and I forgot something else, at least Vicodin, to manage the extreme pain that he had in his knees in, during the Masters. So he's had, you know, at least at that point, a half a decade, maybe more, of confirmed painkiller use. And from all the medical professionals around Tiger, they're saying, "This doesn't make any sense. This is not possible." They said it was hard to reconcile the condition of Tiger's knee with his performance. He had won nine of his previous 12 tournaments, and he had done it with a severely compromised left knee. A few pages later, this is the, the inner monologue of Tiger again. "That's just what we do as athletes and competitors. You have to deal with it. Uh, it's trying to get up every day and knowing that you have to go in the gym and bust your butt and that it's going to hurt and you're going to put yourself in a different place, a different state of mind. For me, I just enjoyed that part of it." And then both the book and the documentary do a great job of showing this, this, this very common arc. Uh, he's coming up, he's coming up, he's coming up. Once he gets to the pinnacle, he's torn down. We see him suffer. We see him repent. He loses his, you know, his wife, his family, his endorsements. Then he starts working to, working his way back up. The, the apex is when he wins his last major in 2019. His reputation today, in p- present day, is nothing like it was, you know, 15 years ago, uh, when all this happened. And I think one of the lessons and realizations he had after going through all this was actually a very positive one and one that you and I can use in our work. And we'll end on what I think is one of the most important lessons in the entire book. "I learned one thing for sure," Tiger said. "When I play golf again, I'm gonna play for myself. I'm not gonna play for my dad or for my mom or for my agent or for my caddy or for Nike or for my foundation or for you or for the fans. I'm gonna play for myself." And that is where I'll leave it. For the full story, highly recommend buying the book and watching the documentary on HBO. If you buy the book using the link that's in the show notes in your podcast player, you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time. That is 301 books down, 1,000 to go, and I'll talk to you again soon.

Episode duration: 1:03:33