Issue 8: How Stutter Impacted Tiger Woods As Young Child
When Tiger Woods told me that he suffered from a “pretty bad speech impediment” as a kid, I thought it was kind of humanizing.
Taking into account that seconds before he and I spoke, one of his PR handlers whispered in my ear, “just no questions about golf.”
With that rattling around in my mind as Woods talked to me about everything but golf, I had another thought.
“He’s already been humanized; normalized; stripped of his ungodly stature,” I told myself, as I maintained eye contact and continued to nod along politely.
Having him tell me that his stutter was so bad as a young kid that he would sit in the back of the classroom and not speak was definitely news to me. But I remember thinking, “fans don’t want to read about this.”
It was January of 2016 and Woods was on a hiatus from professional golf. He was rehabbing from his third back surgery in as many years. His return to golf was very uncertain.
I was writing for CBSNewYork at the time, and my editor, like golf fans everywhere, wanted to know when he’d return to dominance. Equally, any juicy admission of doubt would have sufficed.
The golfer whose frame once produced an ungodly violently beautiful swing had been mostly silent about his rehab or angst to return. And he certainly wasn’t about to give me an exclusive standing on the top step of the 42nd street branch of the New York Public Library.
Also, awaiting him inside were a few hundred faceless suits that had surrendered many thousands of dollars for a plate at a dinner benefitting his foundation.
I didn’t unearth anything interesting from my brief interaction with Woods that evening. I was proud of the article I wrote, but it was forgettable.
Then on Sunday night, HBO Max aired part 1 of a new two-part documentary entitled, TIGER. The first part unpacked a lot on the unique relationship that Woods had with his father, Earl.
Around the 8-minute mark, Tiger’s Kindergarten teacher appeared and told an interesting story about his stuttering issues. She recounted a time when Tiger asked her to ask his father if he can play other sports besides golf. To which she remembered Earl telling her, “he had to concentrate on his golf.”
…in Kindergarten!
It would be wildly inaccurate to suggest that Tiger’s problems with stuttering prevented him from expressing himself to his father, but the doc just reminded me of that time Woods shared that piece of his childhood with me.
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Until next time...
-Benjamin Block