"Fascinating...[Bamberger] knows the world of professional golf, and
the pressures it exacts, like few others." --The Wall Street Journal
It's one of the greatest comebacks of all time. And for Tiger
Woods--his game, his body, and his life in shambles--getting back to the
winner's circle was only half the story. Here's the rest of it.
Tiger Woods's long descent into a personal and professional hell reached
bottom in the early hours of Memorial Day in 2017. Woods's DUI arrest
that night came on the heels of a desperate spinal surgery, just weeks
after he told close friends he might never play tournament golf again.
His mug shot and alarming arrest video were painful to look at and, for
Woods, a deep humiliation. The former paragon of discipline now found
himself hopelessly lost and out of control, exposed for all the world to
see. That episode could have marked the beginning of Tiger's end. It
proved to be the opposite.
Instead of sinking beneath the public disgrace of drug abuse and the
private despair of a battered and ailing body, Woods embarked on the
long road to redeeming himself. In The Second Life of Tiger Woods,
Michael Bamberger, who has covered Woods since the golfer was an
amateur, draws upon his deep network of sources inside locker rooms,
caddie yards, clubhouses, fitness trailers, and back offices to tell the
true and inspiring story of the legend's return. Packed with new
information and graced by insight, Bamberger's story reveals how this
iconic athlete clawed his way back to the top.
Here you'll meet the people who have shaped and saved Tiger's life. It's
a disparate group: a Florida police officer, an old friend from Tiger's
boyhood, his girlfriend, his manager, his caddie. You'll go inside the
ropes and see Tiger's interactions with fellow pros, with broadcasters
and rules officials and Tour executives, with legends young (Rory
McIlroy) and old (Jack Nicklaus) and in between (Fred Couples). On the
Sunday before Masters Sunday, you'll join Tiger as he takes a long,
slow, contemplative walk across Augusta National, and you'll be with him
again seven days later in the splendid isolation of the tee at thirteen,
in the rain, his right foot slipping while he swings his driver at 120
miles per hour.
This is an intimate portrait of a man who has spent his life in front of
the camera but has done his best to make sure he was never really known.
Here is Tiger, barefoot, in handcuffs, showing a police officer a witty
and self-deprecating side of himself that the public never sees. Here is
Tiger on the verge of tears with his children at the British Open. Here
is Tiger trying to express his gratitude to his mother at a ceremony at
the Rose Garden. In these pages, Tiger is funny, cold, generous,
self-absorbed, inspiring--and real.
The Second Life of Tiger Woods is not only the saga of an exceptional
man but also a celebration of second chances. Bamberger's bracingly
honest book is about what Tiger Woods did, and about what any of us can
do, when we face our demons head-on.
