Tiger Woods - Getting There

He was right, too, with his recall of the player’s fluctuating weight: “I remember how he put weight on after Valderrama before taking it all off – and I remember, too, how he saw too many coaches before shedding them... And that was when he started to put all the different pieces together. His game was always pretty darned good but there’s no question that he’s the number one in the world right now... No- one’s been more consistent than he has over the last couple of years.”

Woods would agree that he and Lee had nothing more obviously in common than good golfing fathers. Since Tiger was as an only son and Westwood was an only son, both enjoyed undivided paternal attention. John Westwood and Earl Woods proffered any amount of support and, even if Earl was maybe too hooked on the limelight for his young protégé’s ultimate good, both men knew when to stand back.

Tiger proceeded to tell of how, whenever his father put him into the hands of a coach, he would take it for granted that the coach knew more than he did. “And if,” said Tiger, “I ever rang my dad to say that I didn’t like something I was being taught, he would tell me that it was my responsibility to sort it out. He was not going to do it for me.”

At that point, I suggested to Tiger that a lot of parents had misinterpreted the Earl Woods’ way. Though they had followed him in starting their offspring early, they had failed to lock into to how much it meant to Tiger that his dad had always made the game fun.
Tiger nodded. “Of all the things he did for me that stands out,” he said. “It’s what made the difference – more difference than anything I’ve ever been told by anyone.”