Will Tiger, the hero, become a figure of an F. Scott Fitzgerald tragedy?

“Show me a hero and I’ll write you a tragedy,” F. Scott Fitzgerald told us. For some reason, that line keeps running through the mind when I think of Tiger Woods and his latest misfortune. 

Tiger’s car accident a few days ago was not quite a tragedy, but it was yet another indication that Woods has problems that might be hard to imagine for a person with a talent so rare and popularity so remarkable.

From the time he was 2 years old and appearing on television, there was never a chance Tiger would fit the category of normalcy.

He was a genius, and whether that word is applicable to someone who breaks par or breaks scientific barriers, the individual tends not to be like the rest of us.

Geniuses are supposed to be different, and so the basic rules do not always apply.

This doesn’t excuse Woods for the road mishaps—lives are at stake—but it might explain the reasons. Woods was an only child—although his father previously had other children—and with unrelenting attention because of his links to success, Tiger had no place to escape the fame.

Although at Stanford, he attempted to stay as much as possible under the radar, thus earning the nickname “Urkel,” for the nebbish character in the sitcom Family Matters. 

My association with Woods began in his sophomore year at Stanford, and I was as guilty as anyone else in pestering him for stories. When he turned pro, after winning a third straight US Amateur, something neither Jack Nicklaus nor Bobby Jones could accomplish, the pressure got worse. I remember Woods during his rookie year at the then-Los Angeles Open at Riviera Country Club. The Hollywood crowd was there. Female reporters seemed less interested in Woods’ backswing than in whether he was a “swinger,” pressing him about his social life and possible girlfriends. He was understandably uncomfortable.

Tiger became the face of golf, all too quickly. I was in Paris a few years ago, and when a tour director at the Louvre asked what I did, I told her I was a sportswriter. She immediately wondered, “Do you know Tiger Woods?” 

“In a way,” I said.

Woods’ lifestyle and game reflected his personality and the direction of his super-confident and demanding father, Earl. His dad was a Green Beret, and Tiger took lessons in combat and bungee jumping. While in New Zealand in 2006 with his then caddy, Steve Williams, he leaped 440 feet twice over Nevis River.

Tiger was his own man. 

He even won the 2008 US Open at Torrey Pines on a leg so bad he needed surgery a short time later.

So when I read the comments of others after the latest auto accident, and they justify that Woods needs to be more responsible, I tend to wonder if that is possible. Yes, as others have suggested, Tiger needs to get a driver—for the car, not a golf club. Still, it is easy for us to criticize Tiger. 

Mark Lye, who is a fine amateur and then a pro—and who I covered when he was a junior in Northern California—has his own thoughts on Woods and his car mishaps. And they are not kind. Lye, speaking on Fox and Friends, described Tiger’s situation as “shameful and selfish.”

Lye, 73, insisted the PGA Tour remove Tiger as one of the hosts of the Genesis Invitational, held each February. 

Tiger is frustrated. His injuries, even before the last one, have kept him from the course while keeping him in the headlines.

You can only hope that everything changes for the better.