Fore Play - "Tiger Woods Unveiled" with Author Armen Keteyian

Episode Date: July 3, 2018

We take a DEEP dive into the life and career of Tiger Woods this week. Co-author of the new, best-selling biography "Tiger Woods," Armen Keteyian, joins the show to discuss Tiger's life and career and the 3+ year research process to uncover it. Few people know more about Tiger than Armen, and we get his thoughts and reaction on the research process and on the past, the present, and future of Tiger (hint: Armen's as amazed as anybody about Tiger's latest comeback). Outside the interview, we discuss the latest Justin Thomas vs Barstool Sports saga and Tiger's performance at the Quicken Loans National!You can find every episode of this show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. Prime Members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. For more, visit barstool.link/foreplaypod

Hey, 4Play listeners, you can find us every Tuesday and Thursday on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. There is a lot to talk about, and luckily we talked for a long time with a very special guest this week, Armand Catein. Armand Coutaian is one of the co-authors of the book Tiger Woods, which you may have guessed is a very in-depth biography on Tiger Woods himself. This is a must read. I was hesitant. I was hesitant because you don't want to, you know, you think it might be gossipy, you don't want to tie yourself up, you don't want to in any way take away from your image of Tiger Woods, your fandom, how much we love this guy. However, the more I learned about Armand Cotayan and Jeff Benedict, who are the two co-authors of the book, these guys are very, very highly respected journalists.

They've been doing very good work for a very long time, and we get into a lot of that with Armand Cotterian. paying himself. We spoke for, I don't know, 45 minutes, something like that. So, anyone that's into Tiger, this is an absolute must-read book. I can't explain to you the number of people, by the way, that tweet at me, like, what's the name of the book? Oh, I was just about to say that. I was about to say, I saw on Twitter, hey, Riggs, what's that book you guys always talk about, and you wrote about Tiger Woods and you wrote, the name is Tiger Woods. It's called Tiger Woods. That's just the name of the book, and it is incredible book. It is so, so good. I think it's like 430,000.

30 pages with like a 50 page bibliography. Oh, yeah. So it's that good. It's obviously very fitting right now. We get into so much detail with this guy, you know, because we talked about how well it works out for them, that Tiger is in the midst of just a shocking comeback right now. We've lost a little bit of scope on that because he's been solid now for four or five months. But think about a year ago, I mean, I was just reliving an article earlier this weekend about

Tigers, the DUI and all of that, which was like just barely over a year ago. And to think where he's at now, where he's threatening in these different tournaments and he looks healthy as ever and he's taking lashes and all of that. And the book builds you up to this point. Talks a little bit about the unbelievable nature of this latest comeback. We get into that with Armand Coutain and much more. When you read this book, you cannot believe that after you're done with it, you get to watch Tiger Woods continue to play golf. Correct.

Like, you're reading a book for however long it may take you, maybe a month, and then you're just talking, you're reading about this living legend that's like something out of a movie. And then when you're done or even when you're reading the book, you get to just watch him play golf. Like this week, I was just like, I just get to watch the guy I just read about. You know, I read the, one of my favorite books I've ever read is 1776 by David McCullough. And it's basically, it's basically all about George Washington, you know, during the Revolutionary War and like the first stages and the first stages and the first. year of the war. And it would be like reading that book and how awesome it is. And then you go out and you get to just watch George Washington be president. Like he's just president now is pretty much

what it's like. And you just, I'm reading this book. I'm enthralled with it. I don't watch TV anymore outside of when he's on. I don't watch like Netflix. I literally have just gone home and read the book. I finished it yesterday. Finally finished it. And then you just watch them. And it's like, that's that. That's what I've been reading about. The book technically doesn't have an ending yet because we're watching. We are watching the ending on full. It's incredible. It's awesome. So we're going to get into the tournament. We're going to get into and the Arm and Cotain interview, all of that. I got to say watching the tournament this week and then playing golf myself, it had to be the hottest week weekend of golf I've ever experienced. And I have to say, thank God when I was out there for our Tommy John underwear. Oh my God If you're wearing anything normal

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You imagine that two to three times cooler And dries four to five times faster Than normal cotton That was the other things I went and sat in the clubhouse afterwards, and when I stood up, like, two seconds later, I was just dry. You're, like, soaked and then dry. I mean, they're magical underwear. It's kind of magic.

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swamp ass, all that stuff. You don't have to worry about it. Not good. You go to Tommyjohn.com slash 4. You get 20% off your first order. That's Tommyjohn.com slash 4. Let's do this. We got the whole squad myself, Slim Daddy, Trent, Frankie Burrelly, the pizza maker who has had,

well, it's been sad. It's just been sad, Frankie. Thanks for coming in today. You know, it's almost like, I would have, people would have been like, if you took the day off, people would have been okay with that. You're as dead as a fan as ever been. Yeah, I wasn't going to come in today, but, you know, the podcast must live on. We must talk golf. We had talked about this last weekend that this is the only thing that's

even giving me, you know, a will to, like, go on is talk about anything other than what's been going on in my life. And this little experience that I get to have with you for an hour is a getaway. So anybody who doesn't know, Frankie is the biggest Islanders fan in the world. He always talks about how the freaking coaches, like make big decisions at his restaurant, Borrellys. They're right across street from the Colsea. Big deal, big deal. His whole childhood is all about the Islanders. That's all he wears I went to 300 straight home games 300 straight fucking home games

for Frankie Jonathan Tavares will remain in New York Islander is the only thing Frankie tweeted for It seemed like weeks He's not He's not just going to the Toronto Maple Leafs He posted a damn picture yesterday Frankie of him in a blanket

As like a five-year-old He said this is a lifelong dream Oh Frankie Just That's bad And I feel for you You mentioned the 300 games thing you grew up an islander's fan all that, but you are legitimately the biggest fan that I've ever

met. Like, I know a lot of sports fans in my life, but you are the biggest fan of a specific team that I have ever met. And then just to have your favorite player, what did you say? Confetti rained down on you on you when they drafted him. Yep. And then to have him just, you know, kind of ghost you for a long time, right up to the deadline, didn't say anything and then kind of trickled out on Sunday that he was going to be going to the Maple Leafs. It was tough. It's tough to watch. I'm sorry. It's by far the worst thing it's ever happened to me in my life regarding sports.

By far. It feels like someone in my family was just murdered. And really it's a testament, I think, to you've led a great life, that that's the worst thing that happened to you. Oh, a little perspective. In sports, so in sports for sure. Totally. So, you know, I'd like to point that out.

But Frankie, you know, we feel for you. We're going to get you again. This is a second week in a row. We're going to try to serve as a little bit of a reprieve for you, get you off of the super negative emotional. I mean, the picture he posted, I can't stop thinking about that picture. That was a, it hurt me when I saw. He's been on the fucking team for nine years.

and this is like what he's been lifelong dream. You almost got to feel like he's been a double agent this whole time. You got to think that. That's what I would, because we've had it for nine years, we haven't won anything.

Right, like he's working for the Russians the whole time. He's a double age. Or the Maple Leafs. Well, yeah, metaphorically, he's being like, this is my lifelong dream.

I've always wanted this. Like, dude, you've been on a different team for nine years. Like, that's a weird thing to say. You know what, Trent? That picture hurt. That picture hurt real bad.

It hurt. I knew it hurt you so badly that it hurt me. I cringed when I saw it. It was like, oh, it was the waiting game. We waited so goddamn long for that decision to come out, and like, that's the first thing we see is like, oh, yeah, by the way, I've wanted this my entire life. Tiger Woods. Tiger Woods tied for fourth at the Quicken Loans National down in the D.C. Area, T.C. TPC, Potomac, Avnal Farms.

We were there. We were there last year. People forget. We went down and interviewed Billy Hurley, the third, who had won there the year prior. and this tournament, you know, it's moving to the Detroit area, but it's been in D.C. for a while. It's kind of Tiger's little pet project. You know, he does it for the troops and to raise money for his foundation and all this stuff. And then he was injured forever.

So basically the tournament, when it loses, it's the number one draw in the history of the game. Harts, it got hurt, moving, gone, didn't do well. However, this weekend, it was a great weekend. Tiger, you know, he played pretty well. He started out sluggish, as always. He was two over. He made a double early in his first round. He was like two over, looking really, really ugly.

Somehow got it back to an even par 70, and then followed that up with rounds of 65, 68, 66, posted 11 under, tied for fourth. Francesco Molyneari just blitz the field. I don't know what. 62 on Sunday. That was wild. Because it was one of those weekends, again, where Tigers kind of in the mix. And if he goes on a birdie run and the leaders slide back a little bit, he could be in it. Molonari wanted no part of that.

62 on Sunday was crazy. No part of it. Ran away from everybody. But obviously, you know, the big, the biggest name in the field by far, as always, Tiger Woods. Ricky was there as well, but outside of that, it wasn't a ton of star power. Can I ask a question? Yes. Am I allowed to start being sick of Tiger kind of on the fringe in terms of, like, contention?

Like, you mentioned something interesting in the intro where you were like, a year ago, we were DUI, might not ever play golf again. But now we have, this is his third top ten of the season. He's been playing really, really well. but he just kind of fades on like the back nine on the Sunday or it's just he's not quite getting over the hill and it's to the point where I feel like we're in purgatory. I mean, prospectively, no, you're not allowed to. But in reality, yes, of course. And I would say the thing that's frustrating is that outside of really like the vows bar, Tiger, like we keep convincing ourselves that he might have a chance to win. He hasn't really had like a real chance to win.

Like even at Bay Hill, he hits that one out of bounce. Like he ended up losing to Rory by like eight shots at Bayo. And this, again, yes, or what did he lose by? Like 10, nine, 10 shots he lost by? So, again, it's like, oh, he's right there. He's in the hunt. And it's like, well, we convince ourselves, it's exciting. He's got the red on.

He's making buries. We think that his birdies will maybe have an direct correlation to other guys collapsing, panicking. They see our guy, the fucking Terminator coming back, making birdies, whatever. And it just hasn't happened. So outside of, again, the Valspar, when he birdied 17, and made that bomb and then had an actual chance on 18 to tie, was it Paul Casey that won that?

Yep. And getting a playoff. Outside of that, he hasn't really honestly had a great chance. I mean, the Memorial, people forget. He was tied for the lead at one point on Saturday. But then he fell off and even, I think, the Memorial, he finished like 23rd or something like that. So it's been weird, to be honest with it. It's been a very weird.

It's great on Saturday when Tiger makes a run. And everybody tweets out, oh, he's two off the lead. He's tough the lead. and the leaders haven't teed off yet. Yeah. That's really the way that we've all convinced ourselves that he's actually in it when the leaders haven't teed off. That's the best time for Tiger fans like us right now.

Yeah, and it would be nice if he was making that type of move before the leaders teed off at like a really difficult golf course where they could come back to him or something. But, you know, most your average PGA tour event, the leaders don't back up on Saturday and Sunday. They're playing the best. The courses are getable and they usually, you know, ramp it up. He just needs to become the leader.

He needs to play better in the first two rounds He has to Friday seems as though it always is a step back Thursday's like there's a glimpse of hope And then Friday it's like all right And hopefully he can pick it up over the weekend He's done it a couple times where he makes the cut on the number And then makes these crazy runs

Like that's just not going to do it You got to be at least in the mix Or if not already the leader to actually keep going Yeah and it's interesting because we've also said Like oh he hasn't really completed a weekend Either and this weekend With that type of finish When he shoots 68 66

on the weekend, like, that's a pretty solid performance if you put yourself near the top of the leaderboard going into the weekend. He didn't, you know, he was close enough that if he shot something like a 62, he could have been in the mix, but 6866 is very solid on the weekend. So it feels like he's getting closer and closer. We've got to talk about the putter, the mallet.

Stunning visual when he came out with the mallet. You know, my thinking, everyone's like, what are your thoughts in the mallet? I have no thoughts. It's just a fact that he's. using a mallet now. I haven't been able to digest it and comprehend it. No. It's weird as fuck. He just doesn't, he's not, he doesn't look like a mallet guy. It doesn't feel like he should be a malady putter. It's just, what is he doing? I mean, he makes the mallet look great, though.

I mean, I'm going to buy one. Oh, yeah. I was scouring a pro shop yesterday, played a member guest up in, up the Cape at New Seaberry. Shout out to that place. Awesome. And I played around at Willow Ben, very difficult golf course. But anyways, I was just hunting in the pro shop for the exact mallet that Tiger has. And I've been putting pretty well, but I have to put the mallet. Have to. That mallet makes putting look so easy that it's amazing that I've never seen anyone use it the way he used it.

It's almost as though he's not putting. He's like, the ball's floating to the hole. Yeah, it does. You're right. Yeah. It's like about all the technology in it. It's got these little grips. And the way he talked about the mallet, I was like, he makes anything sound great.

Because I have trouble with my short game. Everyone knows that. My sandwich is a butter knife. My putter sometimes feels like it's, I don't even know what it is. Sometimes my putter just, it's like I'm holding just like a stick. The way he talked about the putter makes me feel as though I haven't putted. Like you've never actually hit a putt in my entire life, the way he talked about what that putter does to him.

He said the little ball, there's little grips on it that, that, you know, you can feel it. He said it's a swing. He said this putter gives me a swing. Everyone knows I like a swinging motion. This putter allows me to have a swinging motion with putty. I'm like, swing. motion. I sat there in my room while I waited for the John Tavares news and I was just like, what is this guy

talking about? He's talking about another thing that I'm doing. Yes. Do you think he knows everything he's talking about? Is he just saying that just to like, just like when LeBron did his thing about like remembering every play? It's like, all right, dude, like, you're just putting. Like, you're fucking rolling the ball. The ball just rolls because you move a putter into the ball. I think he is trying to convince himself during that interview that this switch is a good idea.

Which I love. Like Tiger, whatever you've got to do to convince yourself that that thing is like, You know that Tiger's a big mind game, like mental guy? So if he can convince himself that the mallet is going to, and he put it pretty well this weekend, if he can convince himself that it's going to work, more power to him. It's like he's trying to pretzel the whole rest of the field because his brain understands putting on a different level. Yes. Like, dude, he basically, he made it sound like the rest of the field isn't intelligent enough to comprehend how much the mallet will help their games.

It's like, Tiger, other people have been using mallets forever, dude. He does talk about it like, the way it comes off is like, you guys aren't using mallets? And it's his first weekend using it. Correct. It's crazy. Oh, they just invented the mallet, and you guys aren't aware of the benefits of the mallet? Let me tell you about it. It's like a tiger.

And it could also be that nobody gets the type of questions that he gets in terms of like when he makes a putter switch. People aren't like beating down everybody's door like they are. Definitely. That's very true. So you got to give, I like that turn. Give him the benefit of doubt. Help him out a little bit. He's got to have something to say because people are going to ask him.

So another weird phenomenon, right, is that we're all like, oh, the mallet, it's unstoppable. He's unreal with it. He was. I think he was like seventh. and strokes gained putting total throughout the whole week. However, our good buddy Brandel Chambly, very controversial analyst, but our good friend, who's been on the show two, three, four times now. Yeah, something like that.

He put out some tweets that said Tiger is dead last inside 10 feet this week, missing thus far 13 putts from within that distance and is currently in sixth place. Molinari, by contrast, has missed just five puts inside 10 feet all week. Eight shots separates the two. We obviously tweeted this out during the final round yesterday. So he's still not great in the short putting range. So it's weird that we're all like mallet, mallet, mallet, he's unstoppable. But in reality, he was missing a lot of short putts.

So who knows? Bottom line is right. It's what's the carpenter line? The carpenter line. It's not the tools. It's the carpenter. Is that what it is? Something like that.

Sounds like something that would be a line. Does anybody know what I'm fucking talking about? I know. The Indian, it's not the Indian, but the arrow or the arrow, but the Indian one. It's not the arrow, it's the Indian. Yeah. Okay, let's go with that one. Bottom line is, it doesn't matter what fucking putter he adds.

If he's putting well, he'll putt well. Got it. If you had just created a line, I think it's going to be used. It's not the wood, it's the carpenter. I think it's not the tools. It's the carpenter. That sounds great. Sounds great.

I'd hang it up in, like, my shed. Yeah, that's, right. My aunt would put that on her wall, like if it would, like, a cool lettering. We're focused on. the wrong thing here. The point is, Tiger, I think he can use whatever justification he needs as long as he starts putting better, which I think

he did this week, then we're in good shape. His results, I pulled up his results. I mean, really, if you look at this, he's had a pretty good year. Yes, the expectations are skewed, always. Ever since he missed the cut of the Genesis open at Riviera, he's gone 12th.

Oh, oh, yeah. Tied for second, tied for fifth, tied for 32nd at the Masters, tied for 55th, Tied for 11th at the players championship. Tied for 23rd, missed the cut of the S-open, and then tied for fourth of the Quig and Lones National. 11 starts. I mean, that's pretty this year.

I think he found us up in top 70, I think, in the World Golf rankings. Yeah, he started to creep up there. So, again, this is Tiger, the expectations of that he dominates everyone. It's a new swing. It's a process. This is a process, guys. So I think we got to trust the process. I don't know if we wanted to bring us up or not,

but Tiger took a little shot at our friends, the USGA after his round. So what he said was one of the neat things about playing of the Open Championship. They don't care what PAR is. They let whatever Mother Nature has, if it's in store for a wet open. It is. If it's dry, it's dry.

They don't try to manufacture the Open. Even with Tiger Woods, I love it. The reason I love it is because the players are not supposed to love the U.S. Open. That's what makes it the U.S. Open. It's supposed to be difficult, brutal. A mind fuck, it's supposed to piss you off, rattle your cage. Even when Jordan Speeth won in 2015 at Chambers Bay,

on the 18th hole, he said this is the stupidest hole in the world. And he still won the fucking. tournament. That's the whole point. The players are not supposed to like it. That's what it is. It's supposed to be controversial. I love that it's over par. Should be over par every fucking year. Everybody's like, oh, who cares? Parr doesn't matter. Of course Parr matters. When I turn on the TV and I see the leaders like four over, I'm like, oh, baby, I got to tune into this. So big shout out to USJ. They're even rattling Tiger. This is one of those situations where Tiger, you got to loop him in with the rest of the players. Play better.

Play better. Of course he doesn't like the course. He missed the cut. Play better. So, big shout out to our friend, US. again this is one where tiger tiger's not really tiger in this situation he's just part of the field he's part of the group totally part of the group still in his head like a week later two weeks how successful is the us jay that there's still right tigers still rattleed about course was so out of control that it like it's like overtook tiger woods it's been it's been in his dreams his nightmare here he is finishing up top five at the quick and loan's national two weeks later and they're like oh what do you think about the british open he's still rattle about shit a guy just just He's got this visual of just the course just like, like lava spewing out of a volcano. That's just all he sees. He's been dreaming about those bunkers that form into sand people and like grab his ball and yank it into the box. He hears that noise.

Oh, it just overtakes him. He plays the Mummy. He played the Quickenlo's Nationals so we could have that post-round interview so we could take a shot. Correct. He thought about it all week. He's like spotlight on me. Tiger looks down one of his long hallways in his house and he hears just like a noise. And he just knows that's the golf course.

That's Shinnekar. He just hears like, he opens it. door he hears oh and then he shuts the door real quick like fuck i can't get it out of my head so i want i want to say that i was thinking like the week after we got back from the s open about how missed of an opportunity it was that we didn't go up on the podium that night on saturday night once all the media had cleared and we should have gone up we should have tried to get as much gear as we could to look exactly like jack johnson and we should have done a recreation of zach Johnson up on the podium, crying, being like, we have lost the golf course.

Yeah. And it just, I couldn't sleep for like two days because of how awesome and viral of a video that would have been. Highlights without rights up there. Oh, with like sad music, like, hallelujah. And him being like, we lost the golf, like the golf course died. Like one of those commercials for the dogs. Yes, exactly.

Except, and then like little flashes of Shinnock in the background. And like players like slow motion of players like devastatingly looking at their balls It's a missed opportunity. I couldn't. I was so upset that we didn't do that because we were there. We were fucking there. All right. It's obviously very hot out.

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Join the club today. Justin Thomas. We've got to talk about Justin Thomas, J-T. We've had a bit of a history with J-T this year. So what happened was I saw a clip. He played in the French Open this year, or this weekend, over at the same golf course that's going to have the Ryder Cup later this. year over in Paris area.

So obviously he was their big draw there, so they were putting them up on the European tour, social media and all that. A bunch of people started tagging me Friday morning as soon as I woke up. A bunch of people tagging me in JT talking about the fans over in Europe and in France in particular. Let's put in that audio. The fans, I love the fans over in Europe. They're so so respectful.

They really appreciate, you know, good golf shots. Not that the fans in the States don't, but it's just it's so much. fun about going to the Open Championship is hitting a you know hitting an eight iron or seven iron to 30 or 40 feet and they know it's a great shot and I felt a very similar vibe here you know we'd never get collapsed and we hit the fairway off a T shot okay so obviously I blogged that my headline was Justin Thomas says French and European golf fans are better than American fans yep um which wasn't those weren't my words that's if you listen to the audio that's a great headline I mean that's just what he said yeah he even caught himself mid he

When you have to say, when you have to say, when you're saying all these good things about the European fans, and then you have to say, not that American fans are. He knew. He clearly knows exactly what he's saying and was trying to backtrack a little bit. So that's how I knew I was right. Then he plays right into our hands. He chirps us back. He says, y'all will do anything for a click. If you're going to put words on my mouth, at least make up something funny.

Worst part about that was that, like, that's just what he said. He knew that's what he said because he literally commented and tried to backtrack. being like, you know, the, not that American fans aren't. And the, when you give it the whole context of the fact that he has a history this year of run-ins with the fans. It's nonstop. Had the guy kicked out at the Honda Classic for Reimverse Balls. Get the bunker. Get the bunger.

Which is all over his social media. Which was such an issue that he then issued an apology the next day, like a three-tweet apology and all of that. So then when you come on the heels of that and you go over there and you start talking about how great the European golf fans are, how respectful they are. It's nice to come over here and have the respectful fans. Oh, versus what, Justin, where you normally play golf, which is in America. And then I even wrote a very fair blog where I said, to be honest with you, Justin Thomas, what he's saying is probably true. The actual fans that are over at the European tour events, for the most part, and a lot of these European Tour events, probably no golf better than or more closely tied than to a lot of the fans that go and make up the huge galleries in the U.S.

because a lot of the fans that have been drawn to golf in the U.S. since the Tiger Woods era are more just general sports fans. So they're not going to know the exact same etiquette and all that as golf. So he's probably right in that sense. However, the whole point is... The mistake he made was the tweet at us being like, you guys made what... Should have never tweeted at us. That was it. That was a bad mistake.

And then the other thing is if he really wanted to, and Dave kept touching on this as well, if he really wants his whole life to be about the etiquette around golf and keeping it in that little golf-centric, hardcore golf sphere, then he should go play over in Europe full-time. He'll make a fraction of the money that he makes in the United States of America. But you know what happens? The best European golfers, the best Australian golfers, the best South African golfers in the world all come to the United States of America because we have gigantic galleries with gigantic, purses that makes them gigantic millionaires.

And the reason that's all happened since Tiger Woods, I think the quote or the stat from the book that Armicottian talks about is that the purses have gone up like seven or eight times since Tiger Woods first came on tour. The endorsement dollars, all of that. The reason that that's as high as it is is because the average sports fan, not just the hardcore golf fan, is now into golf. They watch it. The eyeballs translate to endorsement dollars, TV ratings.

The attendance is through the roof. It's much higher, and there's much more money involved now than there was 20 or 30 years ago when it was just hardcore golf fans. And that's the difference. And I put that in the blog. I thought it was a very fair blog. And now here we are. He even said something about Tiger Woods's gallery. Remember that time that he played with him?

So this is now, this is the third or fourth instance this year he's talking about the fans. Is it in correlation to how he's playing? I'm sure, like he's been frustrated. I don't know. Has he been like, has he been playing any work? this year than he has in his entire career? Why is he all of a sudden just lashing out? Or is he just a douchebag? And that's what I've been saying ever since I first saw him. I don't like him on Twitter. I don't like him when he plays. I don't like the way he celebrates when he

wins. I don't like anything about Justin Thomas. I hate him. Every time I see him, I root against him. I understand he is like an American guy that we should be rooting for. Like we always talk about like we have these guys that we, that aren't just Tiger Woods. Like we have a, we have a bunch of good golfers that we can root for, you know, Ryder Cup and all this shit. but he just makes himself so unlikable, and he's just a whiny little, like, bitch. He's just a whiny little bitch. It's all he is.

Let's just win and be fun and be cool, be awesome. If I was that rich and that good at golf, I'd be awesome. That would be so cool. He's not. No. And he's, and he played, again, he just, if you would have never responded, this just wouldn't be a problem.

And going on Twitter and, like, responding to people. That blog was how many days older, unless we reposted it again. I posted on, like, Friday. Yeah. So it took a couple days he saw it and was like I had to respond to it I get people texting me and stuff like yo you guys are losing You're starting to lose fans on tour out here and stuff like that's like look here

We don't give a fuck about that we just we would like everyone to be friendly with us We'd like to have all this access and all that but that will never we will never jeopardize just our Instant natural genuine reaction to what we see what we hear what we watch It wasn't even a reaction it was you just reporting on what happened I basically just reported the fucking news This is what he said, and I put in the clip and then just reacted to the clip. And people are like, oh, yeah, that's true. That's just what he said.

People being like, you guys are losing, you know, your ability to get a guy like just on Thomas on podcast. Like, I would rather do that than have, you have like a vanilla take and be like, oh, no, he was, he wasn't saying American fans are worse than European fans. He was doing this. I would much rather be honest and true than to be, have put out some bullshit thing and have people like it. Can you imagine someone interviewing Justin Thomas and just, like, agreeing with what he said? Could you imagine if I wrote a blog that said, Justin Thomas praises very respectful European golf fans and I just like wrote how like we should try to emulate more of a

like what the fuck you're talking about like no that's just what he said coming off the heels of all the other run-ins he's had with fans this year that's just that's just like that I just reported the news was like oh this is what happened in a chain of events him thinking that all this is happening in a vacuum and what you guys said is true he's had so many run-ins with the fans of this year that him saying that about European fans and American fans by extension. Him thinking that people aren't going to react that way, people are just dumb that.

If they don't see, if they're not reading what's going on, then they're just dumb. And like I said, it was so unbelievably obvious when he caught himself mid-sentence being like, oh, shit, I know what I'm implying now, and then tried to backtrack and all that. So we're in one with Justin Thomas. I don't think he's a big fan of the show.

Don't think he's a huge fan of Barstool. And he's made subtle comments over the last year here and there about Barstool, about our fans, about the things that people say, and all of that. And he runs in a group that, like, we know likes Barstool. Like, he is a Barstall type guy. It's just for some reason with this stuff, he can't grasp, like, what the world is about.

Like, like, what you just said, he can't grasp. And it's so weird, too, because he's a young, great golfer. Why in this generation can he not understand? I can see an older guy doing this. This is the problem. For the longest time, we've been looking at Justin Thomas, and he has all these things that you're saying. He's a great golfer. He's an American.

He's cool. He's in the age where he should be cool. And so for the longest time, we've been trying to jam that in. Like, Justin Thomas is cool. Justin Thomas is cool. It turns out he's just not. He's not the guy. That guy, he's never going to be the guy who, like, is the type of guy that we want him to be.

And it's the time we just have to stop thinking that he's a cool guy because he's not. Yeah. And the other thing is, you know, people keep trying to, they say, well, you guys just want, you want everyone to be yelling, screaming mashed potatoes and people's back swing and stuff. We think all those people are fucking idiots. However, we have a very normal understanding of, of. humanity and how crowds of people work. Exactly. And when you get giant crowds of sports fans drinking

in one atmosphere, which generates tons of money and everybody loves money, you're going to get idiots that do dumb stuff. We don't love those people. It'd be cool if those people stop doing very obnoxious stuff. However, you go to any sporting event, you go to an NFL game. You're an NBA game. You're going to get those loud

clowns that are screaming at players and doing all that. That's sports. That's just what it is. And people are like, well, we don't think that golf should get that way. Sure, you can try to have security minimize it a little bit to this degree and to that degree, but you can't have it both ways. You can't have your cake and eat it too. You cannot have massive crowds, a huge number of eyeballs, purses going through the roof and all of that, and then be upset when everyone doesn't walk in and just like sit there and daintily

clap at the exact right. No, dude, you're going to get boisterous, rowdy fans, crowds. We're going to do it bigger and better and louder. And you're going to have some issues with that. You're going to have some crowd control stuff. Just fucking deal with it and move on. You don't have to comment on it all the time. You don't have to, like, react to it this way and that way and negatively. Just fucking deal with it and move on. You're making tons of money. You're winning golf tournaments.

You're famous as hell. Do that and continue and do not, do not in any way shit on the fans while you're doing that. And when you do, people are going to pick that out and be like, fuck this guy. We're the reason that he has this awesome life. And that's what people are doing. And that's not, again, we react to the news. I just blogged what happened. And then we all kind of reacted to it.

So very interesting thing, very bizarre. It was a hell of a little battle we had on Sunday with Justin Thomas. You just never know what you're going to go. I wish I could have gotten in on that, but I was so just, I was drowning in John Tavares news. There's really nothing better than when you see something happening. And I saw the Justin Thomas response. And I was like, oh, that's great. Because he's wrong.

It's great going into an argument knowing you're right. Because you can just be like, what you said is wrong. We're right. He's obviously going to have people on his side because. Which is great. I love when we get in there. You just dig deep in on Twitter, and you get half the people like,

you guys are fucking idiot clowns. You're ruining golf. The other people are like, Justin Thomas is so soft. Go bars to a go. It's awesome. People just going nuts. Dave text me,

goes, I don't know if you saw, but we're at war with Justin. So it was great. Nice little Sunday. I was on the golf course. I had to miss a couple holes to blog the whole thing, which is a travesty.

I was in my great, one of my another great Peter Malar shirt. I saw that. God, their stuff's so good. But anyways, Francesco Molanari, dominant win. Good stuff, great. Kind of ruined it for Tiger and all that.

But hey, a little hat tip to him. David Thompson won the senior U.S. Open. I want to give a shout out to Jerry Kelly, who tweeted out. He said two things. USGA got it right, and the Broadmoor was the coolest place I've ever been in all my years of travel. Great week. Second sucks. Don't love that he said the USDA got it right.

Would rather see him very upset about the course, devastated and all that. Broadmoor's a great golf course. Broadmoor looks, that place looks insane. Yeah. Insane. I know some people that have played it because I have a couple of family members out in Colorado. It's always like one of those courses where they say you put away from the mountains. Like any time that you get to play on a golf course where they say you always, like the guys who live there and live around the golf course, you'll go out there.

I heard the story as like a member or someone that lives around the course will just be like, hey, pro tip young fella. Put away from the mountains if you ever don't know. If I have the opportunity to put away from a mountain, you're in good shape. You're fucking awesome. Yeah, you're having a great experience. Yeah. That's the other thing is when they say, hey, like everything kind of breaks towards the ocean. Yeah.

Like, there's an ocean where we're playing? Feed that to me. Just tell me that. On every T-shot, be like, hey, everything, the ball kind of like, it moves towards the ocean here. It just pulls it a bit. Keep saying that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That means we're by the fucking ocean.

Speaking of that tournament, uh, John Smoltz played in it. Yeah. Terrible round. Horrible. Horrible. I think he's shot. What he's, plus. Yeah, it's tough.

But the second day, he, I think the first day, shot like an 82 and the next day he came back with like a 76 or something. Yeah, very respectable. I love all these people, too, that come out of the wordwork, freaking out. Like, there's no way he's that handicapped. Dude, he qualified. He just qualified for the U.S. Open. It's an open.

You know what open means? He's proven he's a great golfer. He's played in pro-ams all the time. He's shot, like, under par before. Right. Beech, like the guy's fucking awesome. Phenomenal player. Jerry Kelly, too, obviously, I mean, I like the USGA, that especially the seniors, they get a little bit, it should be a little bit less severe.

So I like that, you know, he said they got it right. So good for, just a nice little tap for our friends, USGA. That is a little ageism, totally. But that's, you know, that's just what you want to see the senior. That's how the world works, though, Frankie. You know, unfortunately. Imagine them out there just... I would have loved...

I would have loved for the golf course to get away from the seniors. Imagine our... Imagine our buddy Colin Montgomery out there just... I've lost their hands and knees. Just crawling. What's happening? Just dust is just overtaking them and they're just crawling. They all like...

Caddy's hand, each one of them, a cane, and they're just limping around the course. Like, Jesus Christ. The golf course is... It just takes them back to, like, war days. Everyone's like... They're getting flashbacks, and they're just, like, looking over their shoulder. They're like, fuck. Yeah, I know.

They're all like having these just terrible memories of the real U.S. Open. Yeah. Nope, didn't get any of that. The guys loved it. And then we had a little lady golf. We had Sung Yun Park, which is a bummer that she won, not because I'd take any way from her, but this is the Danielle Kang major.

Yeah. We were first introduced to her last year. We had her on two days after she won the KPMG LPGA Championship. We had her on live from Vegas. Remember? Yes, I do remember that. Maybe the most memorable interview ever done. We learned afterwards that she doesn't drink, which was amazing after the interview that we had with her.

She was in a car. She was switching seats. She was all the place, but love Daniel Kang. She literally was driving the car, Frankie. And you can hear a seatbelt sign going off crazy or something. And she's like yelling at her friend who was in shotgun. And then they did like, they like switched. She like got out mid interview.

It was like, I can't drive. I have to get a mid interview switch seats with her friend who started then driving. And then Daniel Kang sat shotgun and talked. to us and we were trying to get information from her about the tournament. She kept going on about how she had to do like a 5 a.m. Golf channel segment. She hadn't slept yet. She had to leave the club to do the golf channel hit is what she said.

Yes, exactly. Like the club, not the golf club. She's like, oh shit. I think she got a text from Michelle Wee was like, you have to do a golf channel hit in like 10 minutes. She was like, oh, shit, and she left the club. Yeah. She was great. She was awesome.

So this was that tournament. This had been a whole year since that, which is crazy. That was our first introduction to Danielle Kang. I love my lady golf. I really didn't get to watch it. I had to drive back from the Cape last night. which is a bummer. Like I said, I love my lady golf.

But anyways, shout out to Sung-Yung Park. Is that how you say it? Yep. I apologize for anyone that I offend by mispronouncing that. My pronunciation sucks in general. I mispronounce everything. But that is well-known as the Danielle Kang major, so hopefully she'll win it next year and we can have her back on.

All right. We're going to Cabot Links. A little crew of ours. We've got office manager, Brett, Heggs, and then my roommate. Lurch, we're going over, we're naturally over Fourth of July weekend. We're going to Canada, Nova Scotia. We're going to be up there for three full days and two travel days, so five days.

Take a piss over Toronto if that's where it flies over. Sorry, Frank, that's tough. Yeah, that's really tough. That hurts. But I have to bring this up because, A, people should follow us. We're going to be all over the four play pod. Instagram. We're going to be all over the four play pod.

Twitter account. My personal account. Everybody. We're going to be all over the place. Making videos. We're going to be on the fucking cliffs of Nova Scotia. It's going to be insane. Heggs.

Higgs, poor guy. So he just flew here from Oregon a couple weeks ago. He's brand new, young little young buck, right? What are you 24 or something? Just turn 25. Just turn 25. Happy birthday, Higgs. Happy birthday.

And he sends me a... I would probably a real asshole if I didn't say. I know. I put you on the spot. Yeah, you should say happy birthday. I did. So we got this whole trip lined up. Hags is going to be like Superman there.

He's going to be playing golf and also filming the golf. handheld cameras. We're going to be miced up. Drones fucking flying in the sky. Dron rigs everywhere. All kinds of cool stuff. Big plan. Heg sends me a picture yesterday. He's at like the ER. His hands like sliced into a million pieces. So Hags, what happened? Long story. Actually, it's not long at all. I was trying to be responsible, help out the new roomies, you know, do the dishes. Put some stuff away. And I'm trying to open up a part of our oven that has like a little hatch at the bottom to store things. I'm trying to open it up, and the inside of it is like razor blades, apparently,

and I just sliced open both my fingers, my middle finger. Pretty bad. Had to pop into the ER real quick, and seven stitches later, I'm here. Wow. Were you just bleeding all over the place? All over there. There had to be so much blood. Oh, yeah.

So much. Are you going to be able to grip a golf club? We'll see. I'm going to muscle through it, so we'll be good. All right. We have to bring a bunch of medication. I lived in that apartment for 15 months. He moved to my old one.

I didn't do the dishes once. I also ordered all my food out, so I never had any dishes to do. Yeah, that's the other thing, Hags, is you got to just, like, seamless, dude. Why are you messing with ovens and shit? Well, I wasn't, I mean, I wasn't cooking anything. I was just trying to help out, be a nice, you know, be a good roommate. Yeah, exactly. Don't ever help out anyone.

That's what I learned. That's what you get. Yeah, you're not in the friendly confines of Oregon. You're not like walking around the house, like sprucing it up. Just go to your fucking room. This isn't the Pacific Northwest. I feel bad for your finger right now. This is New York, dude.

I'm mad at Hanks. doing this because you're going to the cliffs. Yeah. That's your first lesson. You try to help people out. You fucking rip your hands apart. Do you have the seamless app? We'll download on your phone.

This is New York. You got to have edge. Oregon. Oregon did that to him. Hags, I will seamless for you some dinner the next couple nights to make sure this doesn't happen again. But stop trying to help people out. The trees out there, the fresh air, you know.

It's just very like, you're too nice. You got to get some, you got to get as sharp as those razor blades that cut your finger open. That's what you need to do. Just put your head down and worry about Heggs. Stop doing other shit. You're slicing your. your fingers open.

You're not be able to play golf on the cliffs. We're going to the cliffs, Hegs. Jesus Christ. But anyways, follow along. Hags are going to be bleeding all over the phone while we're trying to put up Instagrams. It's going to be a scene. I thought you got hit by a drone.

I thought for sure you're trying to figure out some new drone to fly over the cliffs. The beautiful cliffs over in Nova Scotia. Right. I thought that was the case, which I could have respected. Like, oh, you're fucking figuring out. You're like calibrating drones in your apartment. I love it. You're just doing, you're trying to help people out.

What does it even mean? He was like baking a bun cake. Yeah. It was like tore his finger off. Yeah. So hopefully Hags is okay. But anyway, follow along. We're going to be all over Cabot Cliffs.

Cabot Links. Two courses up there, right on the Nova Scotia, right on the cliffs of Nova Scotia. We're going sailing. We're doing all kinds of stuff. Wow. We're doing a lobster broil on the beach. Wow. That sounds awesome.

Awesome. He does have office manager Brett with them. So it does need to get progressively more as white as possible. Totally. Totally. The sailing one put it over the edge from me. Imagine the footage of Brett sailing. Like his hair.

That makes me mad. Picture of that. Him holding up the sail with the hair. He's like, it's like, but, yeah, with, like,

pastels and, like, white khakis on. They're like, they're going to be cuffed up with, like, he's going to have, like, some flip-flops on.

Oh. Brett sailing is going to be a scene. He's going to be really good at it, too, bro. And the next week's show, if he's not really good at sailing, he's not his wife. He's going to be Owen Wilson

and wedding crash. Yeah. Except knows what he's doing. Great. In theory. Probably not. So, next week's show is going to be, we're going to be doing live podcast, that crew from the cliffs of Nova Scotia.

Incredible. And we're going to have a whole review of the trip, a big travel episode coming next week. Next up, Armin Coutain, a ton of Tiger Talk. This guy, he literally says that his wife basically had to tell him if I hear the name Tiger Woods one more time, I'm going to slap you. They got dreams about Tiger. It's all he did consumed with Tiger for like three and a half years. We get into all of it. A very, very good interview. very fascinating stuff from a very intelligent, well-respected journalist. Here's Army Couttae. Right before we do it. I haven't stopped thinking about this since you said it.

You said your favorite book was 1776, one of them, other than Tiger Woods. I've had this question to many people. I haven't made a Twitter poll about it. If you had to change lives with someone right now, would you be yourself or George Washington? Myself. Myself. Thank you. That's a very easy choice.

I thought for him, you know, being a history buff and reading the book. I love history. Right. And George Washington is legendary. but I just, the quality of life today is so much better than it was. I don't think it's even a question, but I mean. So much better than any time ever. Like, every single day is better than the last.

You could be, he is quite literally the most famous person like of all time, right? In America, he is on our money. He is the founder of our country. All of this amazing, just legendary stuff. And if you just give me air conditioning, I'm picking myself over him. Yeah. Correct. Yeah, I mean, even like, having read the book and stuff, he was like stressed out all the time.

He's got the weight of an entire, like, civilization on his shoulders all the time. He had to cross, like, a Delaware River. Dude, he had to make the country. He's writing letters. He's writing handwritten letters to Congress and to John Adams all the time, begging for, like, any North fucking troops. What are you guys doing out there, figure it out? His whole life is like that. And I was sitting here playing, like, FIFA.

And, right? In my underwear, just watching. I'm like, I made, I shot 80 at Wingfoot. We get to watch Tiger Woods. I'm typing words into my computer and I'm like, oh, dick jokes. And I'm like, yeah, that's pretty good life. Right. It's great.

I can send. I can send a message in less than a minute that it would take George Washington weeks to try to get this message to people. The people who picked George Washington, if we were able to transport them into George Washington's body, 10 minutes, they'd be screaming bloody murder. Like, get the hell out of there.

Correct. I made a mistake. I got to leave. I couldn't agree more. Who cares about how famous I'll be after I'm dead? I don't go to fuck. No, I couldn't agree more. I couldn't agree more.

Like me, I can just send a message up to Nova Scotia Canada, like, hey, I'm coming up next week, and I can just, like, teleport up there, basically. and be playing golf on the cliffs of Nova Scotia. George Washington, he's fighting off like the red coats. They're coming for him. They're sending messages. They're going to try to hang them in squares and shit.

The flip side of that I guess would be if you're George Washington, if you become George Washington, would you know your previous life? Like, would we know all the things that we love? It's hard to eliminate that factor because then it's hard to choose one or the other. Like, I can't say that if I just go back, it's just like my brain is white because I wouldn't know any better. Like obviously I'm just going to stay wherever I am Because I wouldn't know any better You know what I mean

There is no choice You have to know what the future holds Sort of Like if you went back If you just like If you became George Washington And wipe your mind Then you're I guess I see what you were saying

Like then you're just George Washington You don't know George Washington right If you're George Washington Your favorite thing in the world Is going to like Mount Vernon And like putting new siding on your fucking house That's what he like loved to do

I'll tell you what I'm Quickly finding out I don't know anything about George Washington Do I? He had wooden teeth Is that is that false? I think that that might be false So he just got like one tooth replaced by something that was made out of wood.

Was he a lady's man? No, no, he was very faithful. See, this sucks. And he married rich. I picture George Washington being like the king. Like, you know, he had like all these women and he was, you know. No, by all accounts, George Washington was a very faithful man. He lived a boring life and a very hard life, and we wouldn't trade lives with him for a fucking second.

I think so. I think that's pretty good. It's a weird thing to say. It is. Yeah. Sorry, George. Sorry, George. I mean, you're the man.

We wouldn't be doing, though. Our life wouldn't be nearly sweet. Correct. We'd be like a little British colony, which would be devastating. Yeah, we'd all be rooting for Justin Thomas to play a go. Yeah, right. Totally. He'd be fucking horrible.

He'd be so happy. We'd all be, like, clapping, daintily for him and all that'd be tough. New headline, Justin Thomas wishes George Washington never create America. I might write that blog, actually. Justin Thomas also said his first part of that tweet was, you guys will say anything for clicks, And that's just true, too. Oh, totally.

We're literally a blog. We make money when people click. Like, what do you do? That's like I'm saying, you literally just putt to make money. Yeah. Yeah, right. Like, if I was like, you would do anything to make a putt? Yeah.

Well, yeah, dude. That's like, right, I'll change. That's the end goal. Tiger will change to a fucking mallet to make putts. I'll do anything for clicks. I don't care. Like, that's not an insult. That's just my job.

That's what I do. And I got so many more yesterday because he was about it. Yeah. Awesome. How to do big numbers. That's just. You just fell right into my click universe, JT. Well, Frankie, you just lost your favorite player.

And we all know who my favorite player was in the NHL. That's Mario Lemieux, number 66. And you might not know that 66% of men lose their hair by age 35. Oh, goddamn. Sorry, Frankie, I know that had to hurt. The thing is, when you start to lose your hair, when you start to notice that you're losing your hair, it's far too late. Far, far too late.

Everybody wants to look their best. We've talked about this a couple times on this show. But summertime, summer bods, people are out there, right? Everybody, especially in New York. There's a lot of good-looking people in New York. you want to look your best you want to feel your best Trends is best self right now many well yes and no many people

are saying that I need to do four hymns because of my hair situation so I think The Mohawk So I think I'm going to do it I think I'm going to try four hymns Especially the Mohawk I don't I don't have a Mohawk people are saying that I have a mohawk but I don't But it's really the back of my head

That's the problem I'm going to dab some four hymns on there And that'll help a big deal Well we're all going to get in the four hymns game It's just smart My buddy's deep in the four hymns game right now That's right a couple weeks ago He's feeling good He's got a lot of confidence.

Things are starting to sprout. Oh. Yeah, we thought it was going to be way too far gone, but, you know, we're seeing a lot of progress. He says it's very simple to use. I mean, I don't. I don't, I never. I mean, it is. And I'll let you know if it ends up, I'll be very truthful.

I'll let you know if it ends up working. But right now we are seeing some slight improvements and you, like, just started. We're all crazy if we don't try to make these improvements. What4hams.com is a one-stop shop for hair loss, skin care, sexual wellness for men. Sounds like Frankie's buddy is getting all of these perks in, plus more, a lot of sprouting going on. Here's what Hymns does. They connect you to real doctors and medical grade solutions to treat hair loss. It's so easy.

So here's what you guys got to do. You have to go, you got to go order now. Our listeners get a trial month of Hymns for just five bucks today right now while supplies last. See the website for details. You go to 4hems.com. That's 4H-I-M-S dot com. 4-H-I-M-S dot com. 4-E-P-L-A-Y, one word.

Forhems.com slash forplay. You're going to get yourself. five bucks is going to be a trial month of Hymns. Five bucks today, right now while supplies last, forehems.com slash for Play. That's for Hems.com slash forplay. All right. Armine Coutain, Tiger Woods.

Let's go. All right. We are now joined by a very renowned author, television, journalist, Armand Cotayan. We really, really appreciate you sitting down with us. How are you today? I know we had a couple issues with the phone right of the gate, but how are you today, my friend?

I'm good. I'm in California, and I'm looking at the Pacific Ocean, so it could be worse. That sounds great. We're just kind of looking at the inside of a studio. And each other at one time. Right. We're very excited to have you. We're big tiger guys on the podcast.

This is obviously a golf podcast. We're going to get into a lot of Tiger. We have a lot of questions. I know you have a ton of answers. But first, I think with any project like this, a book especially, it's very important for the listeners and everybody to understand sort of who's behind that project. So why don't you, Armand, just take a minute. Tell our listeners about, you know, who you are, your background, and how you found yourself, you know, on the Tiger Woods project. Well, I'm, you know, as you mentioned, I've been a television journalist since 1989.

If we're in the bragging mode, I've won 11 Emmys at various places, I started out at, you know, Sports Illustrated in 1982. I was probably the magazine's top investigative reporter for a good stretch of time. And then I was hired by ABC News by Rune Arledge to work at World News Tonight. And from there, I've been to, you know, CBS Sports and I spent 10 years at Real Sports. And then I was the sideline reporter on the A games and B games at CBS for about eight years. and then I became the chief investigative correspondent for CBS News where I was there for seven years

and to continue the resume, 60 Minutes Sports and a contributing correspondent to 60 Minutes for much of the last, you know, decade or so. And, you know, this was my 11th book, all nonfiction. I collaborated with Jeff Benedict, who has been a partner of mine. we did the system of deep dive into college football back in 2000, I think it was in 13 or 14 when the book came out. So I'm an experienced journalist who came out of the mold of, you know, Woodward and Bernstein

and David Halberstam and Dick Schapp and people of that era. And I continue to apply my trade, I guess. And I think that's important because, you know, in this area I almost, I feel like a lot of people want to loop certain things in with like the Michael Wolf, writing books about the White House and it feels gossipy and almost dirty. And I think that this is a lot different. So I think that's very important to point out. The book is Tiger Woods.

It's by Jeff Benedict and Armin Coutain, who again we're talking with right now. So I think that's important to point out. It is different. I mean, Jeff and I spent three years on this book. And, you know, we didn't, we had no agenda going into it. We looked at it not as golf writers, but as serious non-fiction journalists. And we interviewed more than 250 people. We put together a massive timeline of Tiger's life dating back into his father's early days in Manhattan, Kansas.

You know, the book has 60 pages of source notes in it, where every chapter is broken down in every fact of significance that was reported in the book. We tried to link that to either an article or an interview, something Tiger had said at a press conference, being very careful. You mentioned Michael Wolfe, and yeah, that's a kind of journalism I don't practice. And Jeff doesn't practice that kind either, especially,

well, I shouldn't even say especially. But when you're dealing with somebody of Tiger, magnitude and his power and certainly the people that surround him, you're on a pretty high wire and you do not want to make any mistakes, but you certainly don't want to make allegations that are based on somebody else's supposition or just a third-party kind of anecdote of some kind. So, you know, we were very careful. And I think the book and the praise for the book really reflects that. Yeah, so I wanted to, I just jotted down a couple notes going through the forward,

where you mentioned all that you did. You guys read every single book over 20 of significance about Tiger. You highlighted a couple, which were his own, the 1997 Masters. You also highlighted The Big Miss by Hank Haney. We had him on this show. I've probably read that book 15 times. You talk about how you guys read books on Buddhism, Navy Seals. You built 120-page timeline, 320-plus trams.

transcripts, thousands of articles. And honestly, your bibliography is longer than I think anything that anyone that is listening to this show has ever written combined. So it's very, very extensive. And I think that that's important. Now, I want to next ask because, like I said, we are the personification of Tiger fanboys. We love Tiger. We love everything about him. We love his flaws and all of that.

It all just factors into in our, you know, in our minds how. amazing and captivating he is. And my first instinct when I heard about the book was, you know, look, I already got this image of Tiger. I love the guy to death. I love following him. I don't want to read something that's going to bring him down or whatever. So what is your reaction to that? Because I feel like we're not alone in that. Well, no, I'm sure that is some people's reaction to it is, is that he's on a pedestal in a lot of people's minds. And rightly so. He's a transcendent figure not only in the game of golf, but probably the greatest individual athlete in modern history. You know, you're naming people like Ali or Michael Jordan, now more currently somebody like LeBron,

but I think Tiger transcends all those people except perhaps Ali because he changed the game, you know, physically, socially, culturally, and certainly financially. But here's the thing, is that we were given certain views of Tiger that were propagated or were visible through our television screens or watching him on in person. And also, we were given certain images of Tiger Woods through the myriad corporations, whether it be American Express or Accenture or Nike or EA or you name it, that frankly we're just only half of Tiger's life. And what Jeff and I tried to do here, and it's not the easiest thing in the world to do

because it has, you know, when you read all those books, you read very similar anecdotes time and time and time again. And we tried to answer the question is, who is Tiger Woods? You know, who is the whole person, a 360-degree immersive view into an iconic athlete's life?

and we liken them to Shakespeare because he's somebody you see once and you may never see you again. And I think we're seeing evidence of that now with his comeback. So we didn't have any, we didn't have an agenda. We didn't go in trying to tear down Tiger Woods. What we did try to do was help people understand Tiger Woods and who is he, but also I think just as importantly, you know, what's the price of genius? You know, when you're a child star of the magnitude of a Michael Jackson, when you're on network television at the age of two, you're on a show called That's Incredible, which was an early variety reality show at the age of five. You know, what's the psychological cost of that?

And so we were asking big questions, and I think that if we had just knocked this book out in a year and thrown some sexy anecdotes or sexual. episodes or incidents into it to just try to titillate people, then I could see where we would be subject to certain kinds of criticism. But we didn't do that. And, you know, what we did was spend thousands of hours, tens of thousands of hours, really, between the two of us, trying to understand this guy and try to write a book that's going to stand the test of time. And to wrap this up, this point up,

It's like, I'm captivated by Tiger, too. It doesn't mean I don't like him. In fact, there were times when I was in awe of him, his greatness on the golf course. But there are also other times when you read some of the things that you read in this book where you're like, my God, he's a machine. He doesn't have human emotions. He doesn't send a message of appreciation or thanks to people when the simplest gestures would have gone the longest of ways in other people's minds.

So he's a complicated guy. And we wrote, I think, a very fair and a very revealing book of his life. How much do you feel like you sympathize with Tiger? Because you talked about how, you know, he doesn't, a lot of just normal human cues he just misses out on. And then when you learn about his father and, you know, I'm only about 80 pages into it. right now. We're all kind of at different stages of it.

A bunch of us in the office have been reading it. You know, I couldn't help, but, you know, I love this guy's a star. He's a savage. He's an alpha. All those things. Yet, I kind of feel bad for him. How much should you sympathize with him? There's a sadness to it. I mean, you know, in a lot of ways, that's a very good point. You know, there's a lot of ways where, you know, as much as Earl would say, you know, Tiger could have been a mailman in Memphis. It could have been anything he wanted. I think you see in the reporting that there weren't a lot of options.

Tiger was going to be, was going to give every opportunity, be given every opportunity to be the chosen one, somebody who was going to change the game of golf. And Earl was visionary in that respect, but he also had a son that thankfully and gratefully, unlike a lot of other incredible athletes, loved the game of golf and practiced harder and longer, and more specifically than almost any other athlete in that game,

other than maybe Jack Nicholas. So there are points in the book where you're, there's a certain sadness where Jeff and I would call each other, you know, during the day, many, many times during the day and just go, my God, this is, this is really sad for him. And you have to feel sympathy. But then there are other times as he gets older, and he is dealing with enormous fame and fortune,

extreme fame and fortune, where you're just thinking, okay, even the most even the most simple gestures of kindness and appreciation and gratitude are missing from this guy's life he's completely isolated

his only joy in many ways is to be inside the ropes and it's no it's not an unusual thing that Tiders' favorite activities outside of Gaul

you know, we're deep sea diving and going into the ocean where he could be alone, you know, with just the fishes. And the thing that he said was, well, they don't ask for autographs. They don't want anything from me. And, you know, there's something to be different. You mentioned that, you know, Tiger could have been a male man in Memphis. Do you think, with that in mind, do you think any person who was born in a Tiger Woods' situation would have become, as good of a golfer, or was it sort of a perfect storm that he's this freak athlete who's also

obsessed with golf and has this demanding father? I think he was, I think it is a perfect storm. I think you have not just the father, but if you're 80 pages in and you guys are, you know, Cotita, his mom, Tita, she's no shrinking violet. Right. And she brought the cold-blooded assassin attitude, the cold-hearted killer that Tiger was on the golf course. many ways it was a perfect storm because Earl was the visionary. He was the sage. He was the one that had great passion for the game. He was the one that taught Tiger the game and also helped him

form his love of the game. And on the other hand, you have Tita who's driving him, driving Tiger everywhere to every tournament, back and forth to practice in the course every single day. And in the car, she's telling him, you know, you take their heart. You don't just beat them. You beat them in a way that they never forget that they got thumped by Tiger Woods. And if you look at Tiger's history in certain guys like Ryan Armour and Triptini and Steve Scott, the way the Tiger came back to beat those guys in U.S. amateurs, it had a profound effect on all three of their you know, budding professional careers.

None of those guys, as nice as they are and as good people as they may be, they never really lived up to the aspirations that they had on the PGA tour. So there's a reason. I mean, you look at people like Michael Jackson, you look at individuals like Mozart. I mean, these are rare, rare combinations of, transcendent um athletic skills and mental capabilities coupled with um a family dynamic that frankly you know if you look at it from a psychiatrist or a psychologist point of view um are not the healthiest

situations in the world i thought it was very interesting to talk about his youth how um you know in a lot of our brains we just thought of tiger as you know kind of a demanding father and they balls a lot after, you know, after school. And then next thing, you know, he's 15 or 16, and he's about to win a bunch of U.S. amateurs. And I thought, you know, the whole bit about the military psychologist, I think it was, who they became very close with. And he started coming up on the weekends, and he gave Tiger these personalized tapes that he would listen to, these self-confidence type tapes in the thought process of someone being however old he was at that time, nine or ten years old and having this injected into your brain, it's crazy. Yeah, he had his own performance.

professional assistant pro teaching him at the age of four. I mean, you know, Rudy Duran, who basically had to look down over the countertop to see, you know, who his mom was talking about when she said, would you mind, you know, teaching my son? And Rudy's thinking, well, you know, I can't even see the kid. How, you know, how good could he possibly be? And he takes him out on the golf course. He takes about eight swings. And Rudy goes, okay, I'd be happy to work with him. It doesn't charge the Woods family.

It's the same thing with John and Salmo, who became Tiger's next teacher, who was legendary in Southern California in working with young up-and-coming juniors. And then, you know, you go to people like, you know, Butch Harmon and then Hank Haney. I mean, Tiger had the best teaching, the best of the best of the teachers. but he also was a savant when it came to his creative mind on the golf course, his ability to shape shots, his ability to see shots that no one else could see. That is God-given. And when you couple those kinds of gifts with Earl and Tita's almost, it's almost we Jeff and I began to think of Tiger almost as a machine,

a computer where he's being programmed. And, you know, as you watch the arc of his life, this rise, the extreme run that he had, a great run, and then the epic fall from grace, not just in the privacy of his own home, but as public a humiliation as any athlete has ever suffered. And then you have this comeback, failed, physically debilitated, Um, the, the arrest last Memorial Day was on the side of the road in, in Florida, Tiger think he's in California, um, completely messed up. And then this miraculous physical comeback, which frankly is, is, is, you know, it's storybook. I mean, you just don't even believe that

a guy who couldn't get out of bed for weeks at a time, you know, couldn't even lift his, his, uh, children up to give him a kiss, um, is playing the way he's playing the way he's playing right now. It's really kind of unfathomable that you would be at this part of his life at 42 years old. Sometimes I think, you know, he's lived two or three lifetimes in those 42 years. It's really interesting that I guess I just want to ask you how wild the last four or five months have been because going back timeline, I'm trying to do the math in my head. But when you guys started this project, it might have looked like this guy's never got a chance ever. And now here he is. says you guys are out, you know, you're marketing the book, you're trying to do good PR,

he's coming back, he's close to winning golf tournaments. How crazy is the last, you know, three, four, five months? It's crazy. Because, I mean, a year ago, and that's a really good point. A year ago, Jeff and I are, you know, Memorial Day weekend, you know, we're looking at a kind of a Michael Jackson sort of ending to this book, a very tragic, you know, ending. And when you spend at that point in time, we were about two years into the writing and the reporting and the interviewing, it was pretty bleak, you know, in terms of who's going to want

to read this book, even though we knew there was a lot of great information in it. It wasn't going to be an inspiring, uplifting ending. And I kept sending Jeff these, you know, these rough, the last chapter, you know, the last thousand words of the book. And I'm, you know, it's pretty dark. And just like, yeah, I don't think we want to end the book that way. It just kept going, it just kept getting, you know, a little darker. I had kind of gone back at the beginning of the book where Earl, you know, now, was buried in an unmarked grave and

in Manhattan, Kansas, and I'm starting to make, you know, references to that and how things are going to end for Tiger. And it's and thankfully, I mean, we caught lightning in a bottle. We did not know certainly that he was going to come back the way he came back.

And Simon and Schuster, John Carp, a publisher to his credit, decided to move the the pub made of the book up six weeks and put it in front of the masters instead of after the masters which turned out to be a you know basically a stroke of marketing genius and and then we just frankly guys we got some i mean we got some rock star reviews that i you know you're holding your breath literally when the first one came out was in the new york times and dwight garner who has um who has killed a lot of books you know he's a tremendous critic and he's tough and um i

I didn't know what the review was, and all I heard was we had a review in the Times, and you've got to read it, and I was like, okay. Uh-oh. And then I read it, and it was, you know, it's an unbelievable review. And then, you know, Lee Montfield checked in in the Wall Street Journal, and there were just one after another that came in, and that's, you know, to be honest, it's just incredibly gratifying when you spend the amount of time, and I'm not asking for sympathy, because it's kind of what we do.

But when you spend as much time as Jeff and I did on something like this, and it's his high-profile or project, and if you miss, it's crushing in so many ways. And my poor wife, I think if I mentioned the name Tiger Woods one more time in my household, it would have been some criminal act, you know, performed, because you just live and breathe it, and you can't get away from it. You know, I dream about that guy. And it just got to the point where I was like, I'm never going to escape him.

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What kind of reaction do you get like that from people? Yeah, we're getting a lot of that. You know, there's a, it's across the, across the board, you know. some people, no matter what we would have done, we're going to accuse us of, you know, trying to make money off of Tiger Woods. And as I said, if I wanted to do that, I would have done about a third as much work as we did. And I would have thrown a lot of scandalous stuff into the book. I think some of the best reaction, frankly, has come from women who have read the book. Because it's a lot of ways, it's a relationship book.

It's a relationship between, you know, child and parents. It's a relationship between Tiger and the women in his life. And that, you'll discover, is all over the map. I mean, his breakup with Dina Gravel, his first true love in life, is heartbreaking in the way that that transpired. Because in Tiger's mind, or let me correct that, in the mind of Tiger's parents, that love was becoming an obstacle to tigers budding soon to be professional career. But his relationship with Elin, his relationship with Rachel Yucatel, certainly his relationships, if you can put quotes around those words or that word,

with the various women that he had in his life right before, you know, he ran into a fire hydrant in November of 2009. It's all over the map. So I think generally the reaction from people that give the book a chance and don't come in with a preconceived idea that we were out to get them or, you know, any kind of, you know, we were in this to make names for ourselves. I mean, frankly, at this point of my career, all I can do is screw up the name I have and the reputation I have.

So I wasn't interested in doing that. But I think it's, you know, I mean, you go on Amazon. and, you know, there's something like 88%, 90% of the reviews on Amazon are five-star, four-star reviews. So you can't fool the reader. I mean, if you love sports or you just love a great story, that's what we were trying to tell. And everybody's going to have a different opinion, but I can tell you that there was no lack of effort in trying to do it. It's just an addicting book. I mean, I was telling the guys here, I commute to work here at Barstool, probably an hour and a half each way.

And I used to dread it. I used to say, like, I don't want to do this anymore. I want to move into the city. I can't take this damn train anymore. When I got this book, I ordered it on my phone, I sit there, I put on some reading music, some light music in the background. I just dive into Tiger Woods' life. It is such an addicting read because you just want to see. It's the best part of your day.

It's the best part of my day. I mean, I usually can't wait to leave work, but I just can't wait to get on the train and just sit there. and just like dive into Tiger Woods's life. You guys explain it so incredibly, the relationships. I find myself just like calling people up and texting my friends saying like, how could you not love this guy? He had no other option in life. He was...

You feel bad for him. It's crazy. And for me, one of my questions to you is it's going back a little bit from this conversation. But his relationship with his father, he's often said that it's his best friend. And I mean, we've seen all the videos of them hugging and kissing. and, you know, he's saying, I love you, and, you know, a very emotional, the 97 master's. But how could you grow up with a father like that and really have those sense, that sense of, you know, that that's his best friend when, you know, it was like a military training?

Do you agree that? Well, it wasn't much else. I mean, you're right. I mean, I think about my dad. I'm sure you guys, during times in the book, think about your dads. And it's like, you know, as you get older, you see your parents through different, prisms in different lights. And, you know, let's not forget, Tiger was not, he was not Tiger Woods in terms of personality. He was a very shy, lonely, introverted, nerdy kid who stuttered until he was

seven years old, who lived in a house of 1,474 square feet with his mother and his father. There were no other siblings. He never had a job. He never did any of the real chore. or work around the house that all of us at some point in time in our lives grew up with. He was pampered. He was told from the very early age that he was special. So his connection to his parents was almost supernatural in terms of the bond that they shared together. And you add all of Earl's fallibilities into the equation. you know, an absolute womanizer.

He more than enjoyed a cocktail. He would often speak, and we had this first person interviews of people that witnessed it. He didn't treat Tita with a great deal of respect, which, you know, as you'll see going forward, that's the reason that Earl was buried in an unmarked grave. That was Tita's revenge for how she was disrespected by Earl during their marriage. Tiger witnessed all of that. And at the same time, he is coupled with an incredible amount of expectations that have been placed on his shoulders from the time he is 10 years old. And whereas many other athletes, Todd Morinovich, you know, we could name them one after another who have failed under that kind of parental pressure, Tiger flourished in that regard.

and as he got older, he began to see his father in a different light. You know, there's one scene in the book in 1995, after Tiger wins, his second U.S. amateur in Rhode Island in Newport in front of the, you know, probably as upper crust of crowd as you're ever going to find. And Earl has had, you know, several cocktails and it holds up the trophy inside this merchandise tent surrounded by all sort of the commodores of Rhode Island golf and the USGA and says Bobby Jones can kiss my son's black ass. And imagine being the son, you know, listening to your father, his tongue loosened by alcohol, making these kinds of statements in a very public place.

And we mentioned in the book, Tim Rosaford, who was there for Sports Illustrated, purposely left that out because he didn't want to turn Tiger's life upside down. And then to end the chapter, they're headed back to the house they were staying in Rhode Island. Tiger goes to the restroom at a 7-Eleven and comes into the store to find his father hitting on the girl behind the counter, you know, who's probably all he concerned about is, you know, what kind of slurper do you want? But there's Earl who can help himself. So it was complicated, and it was, and that's one of the reasons when Tiger, about 2000, Tiger really began to separate from his dad. and as you'll see the house on teakwood becomes you know a real interesting place to be when earl's there by himself because by that time he and titan has separated and earl is pretty free to indulge in

all his his passions in life i i'd be very curious what do you what do you think tigers you know he always says and and you talk a lot about how that's the woods way is that you know they keep secrets within the household and they don't share and all that. And when he's asked today in interviews, you know, he says that he loves his father and he speaks about him very admirably and all that. What is just your thought on how he honestly deep down feels about Earl Woods? I think that's one of the great questions that if you had three or four you want to ask and you could get Tiger to really answer honestly, which I don't know whether he ever would.

I think he's getting closer and closer to be becoming more honest than his answers than he's ever been. Yeah, that's one I would ask him. You know, what do you really think now, knowing what you know, everything you've been through, you know, the cost, the personal cost of all the greatness and all the money and all the fame and all the fortune, would you do it again? You know, would you go through the same thing you did with your parents in order to achieve the iconic success that you have achieved?

Man, I'd love to hear what that answer would be, and I don't even know. I can't even speculate what it would be. What do you think is the most surprising thing you learned about Tiger? The most surprising thing. Well, there's a couple things. One, I kind of knew he was a, you know, you kind of know he's different when it comes to the game of golf on the feel of the club in his hand and his ability to see things on the course. I didn't realize he was such a savant when it came to

like we have a big really kind of a long essay chapter on Tiger when he switches balls to Nike and there's a couple great scenes where he's just he has this supernatural ability with spin rates and how a ball moves in the air and the weight of a club in his hand

he could tell the difference when they were testing prototypical prototype drivers. They sent him six drivers, and he said, I like the heavy one. And his contact at Nike, Kel DeVlin, said, no, Tiger, they're all, they all weigh the same. He goes, no, this one weighs more. And they sent it back to Fort Worth to the testing facility, and lo and behold, damn, if it didn't, if it was two grams heavier than the other five. And that's the weight of two, one-dollar bills.

I mean, that's the field he had in his hands with a club. So that was really, for me, that was interesting. You know, I think the, I did a lot of the reporting, virtually all the reporting, into the idea of sex addiction and what that actually is and what it means and what treatment was like. And there's a whole chapter on that that I'm really proud of because I think it's very, it's very fair and it's, and it's incredibly insightful, not because of what anything I did, but just the people I was able to talk to. And, you know, they trace that addiction. First of all, it's not about sex. It's about pain relief.

And that pain relief traces back into the family, into the family dynamic. Right, because a lot of people would just say, you know, oh, he likes to get laid. Like, great. Like, you know, that's pretty common. Yeah. And that's kind of what I think a lot of people's attitude was towards. He was just a sex addict, and he had, listen, when you're Tiger Woods, and that was another thing that Jeff and I really try to do is we didn't try to be judgmental and say, well, how in the world can you do that? You're married.

Well, I don't know. What's it like to be the most famous athlete on the planet? Right. They have more than you can ever a man. Changes things. Changes everything. Yeah, women are throwing themselves at you. And the other sort of area I really liked was because it was different, was his life in Vegas,

where he would go with Barclay and Jordan and how that trio along with Amad Rashad got together originally. But Vegas was a getaway. It was a secret life for Tiger where he could stay at the mansion, which are these villas right behind the MGM brand, 29 of them that range from 4,000 square feet to 12,000 square feet. and Tiger had his pick of the place, you know, and that's where he would go. And if he wanted to, he could go from private plane to private limo to private entrance, to private elevator, to private suite. He never would have to engage with anybody that he didn't want to engage with.

And then, but he did. He would go out to the clubs, places like light, which at the time was the hottest nightclub in town at the Belagio. And what was it like to be Tiger Woods? I mean, he would have, you know, his VIP host, tap some girl on the shoulder and say, Tiger Woods would like to meet you. And that's all it took. You know, there wasn't any conversation.

Tiger doesn't have much game, you know, or didn't in those days with women, but he didn't need to have any game. He was Tiger Woods, you know. That was the game right there. So, you know, like I said, you've studied Tiger as deeply as anybody. One of the things that's always fascinated me was, you know, in this stretch from, I guess, 2008 or 2006 through 2008 or 2009 was kind of the peak of a lot of his transgressions, a lot of his personal life was as chaotic as you could possibly imagine.

Yet he was also about as good at golf as anybody's ever been. Do you feel like there's almost a correlation to he needs some sort of chaos in his life? Or how did all that work? Yeah, that's a great question. Yeah. I think there's a, you know, compartmentalization is a thing that guys do really well. women are not so good at it. I mean, they can run your life,

but we have an ability to do things in silos. And Tiger had, as you said, 2006, it was as good a year as he has had on the PGA tour. And in 2009, let's not forget, he wins five tournaments, including one in September, which is just two months before he hits the fire hydrant down. in In In Owworth. So we do make that connection. And it's something that Jeff and I talked about. And in a weird way, it's almost as if everything that was happening in the chaos that's a

very good word, the chaos that was happening outside the ropes was fueling Tiger's greatness inside the ropes. But that can only last for so long. And I think one of the really interesting parts of the book is we all know that he hit the fire hydrant on November 27, 2009 at 2 o'clock in the morning. We know he married Elon in October of 2004. We know that Earl died in May of 2006. We know he won the U.S. Open, his final major in 2008, in the summer of 2008. We know in 2009 he lost the PGA championship, the Y E Yang, the first time that he had ever failed to close a major.

He was 14 and 0 at that point in time after leading in the third round. But that was the beauty of the timeline where we were able to slot in all these other things that we had discovered either in our own reporting or in reporting by others that were happening in Tiger Woods' life at that same period of time. And when you look at the fact that in November of 2009, he was seeing four different women at the same time, including Rachel Yucatel, who was, and I don't think this is an unfair statement to make, had become the love of his life. Plus, he's still seeing three other women at the same time. That's a little hard to believe that he could perform at the level that he was performing. At the same time, he was trying to juggle not just his corporate responsibilities and his golfing responsibilities, but the responsibilities of trying to keep four women happy.

I mean, that's, to me, is amazing. I've been married to the same woman for 38 years. I have enough trouble keeping one woman happy, you know, 24 hours a day, and let alone four, you know. So I do believe there is that it becomes oxygen in a certain way. And Tiger's not the first one that's ever by God, not the first one that's ever experienced that. Men in corporate America, men of extreme power, it's the same story.

It's just in a different environment, but they were not they were not tiger woods they were not the most famous athlete or maybe the famous most famous person in the world at that point in time do you view tiger you know now as um you know everybody says he looks happier and he's smiling i think some of that uh you know i i can't tell if they're just you know trying to keep tigers team happy um i do believe that you know he he looks like a a happier person and going through this book we've all we've even contemplated on the show and in the office here at Barstool, like, do we think we are happier people than Tiger Woods just in general,

general happiness? So do you think Tiger's happiness level right now is higher than it was a couple years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago? I think it's the highest of his life. I think he's happier now than he's ever been. And that's another really good question. He was, I saw him at Tori in late January as we were working on the last chapter of the book, and I wanted to see him personally because I had seen him in many different situations.

in the previous, you know, two and a half, three years. And I'd never seen him as outgoing and as appreciative, as human as he was at Tories with fans and with, you know, people asking for autographs and things like that. And I think it stems from two things to play amateur psychologist for a second here. one, the arrest, the DUI arrest, DWI arrest in Florida,

you know, as I said, where he thought he was in California and he had this rock star cocktail of of drugs, pain, killing drugs, and mood-altering drugs in his system. And, you know, he could have killed himself. He could have killed other people. He was really,

that was, I think, rock bottom for Tiger. And he got help. He got clean. And he got healthy. So for the first time, I think everything was kind of going in the right direction. And he wasn't on the radar screen anymore. I mean, nobody expected him to come back. He could do it at his own pace.

And the fact that the spinal fusion surgery has really worked, coupled with this rise from the ashes, I think he's more appreciative now of the opportunity that he's been given to play the game that he absolutely loves. And I do see it. I see it in his interactions with people, and I see it, I think, in his just a smile on its face, which he never saw before. I mean, he was such a machine.

So I'm hoping, as I think a lot of other people are hoping, and certainly the television ratings reflected. I mean, he just still has this singular ability. I mean, I grew up, I'm a lot older than you guys, and I saw Arnold Palmer in his heyday, and he was, and Jack Nicholas in his heyday, and that was appointment television to watch them on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon. Tiger's the same way.

I mean, and you can say all you want about Jordan and Dustin and just and everybody else, John Rom and, you know, all these young guns. They just don't have what he has. And that's, thank God that there's people like him, but there's a, as we, you know, and you guys are learning, there's a price to be paid for that. Do you think Tiger Woods is just becoming a human being now? And is there any correlation between like the amount of years that have passed from him being under Earl Woods's you know, umbrella and this whole life that he's lived as a robot and a machine.

Do you think that as the years have gone on where he's been kind of separated from that lifestyle, that he's just now becoming, you know, a human being that can just be happy. And we see him on the golf course now. We see videos of him smiling and interacting with players when he used to have that, like, assassin mentality. Is there any correlation between, you know, the years that have gone by from when he was under that umbrella to now? I don't know if it's that.

I don't know if it's the distance. I mean, 06 to. you know, to 18 is 12 years. It's a long time. I think that he's just now, he's 42 years old. I mean, he's in the middle of his life, you know, in the second quarter of his life. And I just hope he's matured. And he's, he has a different perspective.

And I go back to the kind of the sex addiction treatment. It's virtually impossible to go through that treatment. because they just don't allow it, the way it's structured and in group therapy and the kind of questions you have to answer, not only on a form but to yourself or an individual, you know, counseling. You just learn about yourself and you learn, do you really want to be that same person that you were for the previous 30 years of your life and end up, or 35 years of your life, and end up alone?

and bitter. God, I would hope not. I would hope he saw something, saw the light, you know, came out of the darkness that he was in and just said, you know what, I'm going to try this a different way. I'm actually going to try to be a human being and interact with people. And, you know, there's a funny story, and then I probably have to go. There's a good story.

It's him at Hazeltine with the Ryder Cup, and he's a vice captain of the team. and Davis Love is the captain and it's picture day and they're sitting down and there's 12 guys and all the vice captains and the captain and they're just ready to take the funnel and but now it's just the team and it's just Davis and the 12 members of the team

and and tigers in the photo because in his mind he's on the rider cup because he's always been on the rider cup and the photographer has to gently somehow suggest to Tiger that he's got to get out of the picture. And so there's this little moment where he says, you know, Tiger,

can you just move your right a little more? You can you just move your right a little more and looped you right a little more to get him out of the photo? But he's still in the frame and finally somebody, and the person that related it to me was there, but he didn't tell me exactly who said it,

said, Tiger, you're not on the team, you need to get out of the team photo. And, you know, first of all, it takes a set of stones to say, say that, something like that, Tiger would. And B, Tiger looked at it and he just started to laugh. And it was one of the great moments this person, this eyewitness said, because he was human. Because that's what you would do. You'd like, oh, my God, I can't even go out. I forgot. I was not on the team. And it was just something that he never would have done, but he did it, along with everything

else he did during the Ryder Cup, which was engaged with people like Patrick Reed and Brandt Snedeker. and to the point where Brantznetter got tired of getting all the texts that he was getting from Tiger. He was like, oh, my God, it's him on the phone again, because all he wanted to do was help those guys win. And he was passing on his knowledge and his greatness to them. And that's something that had just never happened before. I mean, that's like coming off of Mount Olympus, you know, down into the valley. And somebody goes, oh, my God, the king's down here? what's the king doing here?

He should be up there. And it was just, it was just so rich, and it was so revealing. And there's a lot of that going around right now with Tiger. And I swear that's to me, the fact that he's come back, and this is how I'll end it, if you don't mind. I think it's his greatest triumph. Beyond any of the majors, the 79 tour wins, anything else he's ever done,

the fact that he came out of this cavernous hole that he was in and he's playing the way he's playing right now. But more importantly, he's a better human than he's ever been. I think to me it's his greatest, it's his greatest client. And, you know, I'm hoping I'm going to go to Chinatokov. You know, God, just for one Sunday, would it be fun to watch him, you know, do it out with Phil and Dustin and, you know, J.T. and all these guys and Jordan, there would be like a scene that I don't think we've seen in the world of sports in quite a while.

Well, it's a perfect way to finish. Arm and Coutain, we said we would keep you about 15 minutes, and it's been almost an hour. So I think that's very reflective of the book. You sit down, I'll read a couple pages. The next thing you know, you've been there for two hours. You know, you read 100 pages. And it's an incredible story. Tiger Woods is the book.

You guys did an awesome job. We'll be out at Shinnock, so maybe we'll run into you. But Arm and Cotian, we really – I'd love that. We really appreciate it, and we appreciate you taking all the time. That sounds great. It's great. Thanks, my friend. Have a good one.

Armine Catan, a big thanks to him for jumping on. We clearly kept him way longer than he had been told. Very generous for this time. Begging to stay on. We told him 15 minutes. 15. An hour almost. It's kind of what we'd do to everybody, but we're going to keep that.

Sorry about that. That's still going to be our pitch. Hey, you want to come on for just 15 minutes or so in talking. It's like an hour. Fifteen minutes is like two seconds. We couldn't have got through all of Armicantantian's like credentials in 15 minutes. He has been around forever. Forever.

He's done very, very good stuff. This is no exception. this book is so in depth. I don't even know how they got all the knowledge that they got, all the information, the stories. But, again, they come from such a respectable place with such a respectable resume that reading this thing and knowing that all these things happen about our guy Tiger is crazy.

We learn how to do what they did, like sourcing and, you know, like writing when we're in school and stuff? And you're like, when am I ever going to freaking learn how to do this? Right. When am I ever going to need to do this in my life? And then Armicotain just, like, published, what was it, like, a hundred, page sources, 100 pages of sources.

It was crazy. It was a lot. I, like, look through it, and I'm like, this is every English teacher in 11th grade's dream. That's what... Single-and-Catain... Single-stays, too, by the way. Crazy. That type of stuff is what knocked me out of, like, the journalism English major game. I just dropped out of school because I was like, I can't do all of this. Like, I can't...

These sources, I just want to write stupid things. And then there's guys like Armicottian who were like, this is how you get the good stuff. And it was good stuff. So a big shout to him for jumping on with the boys. Riggs got, like, what, four or five good questions? responses. Every time Riggs asks a question, he goes, you know, that's a great question. Yes, that was. We were counting here.

Oh, yeah, we were. I was doing big fistbooks. Yeah, we were like, let's go. It was great. It was so good. Big shout out to me for how good my questions were. Just a Corey and Armington. I don't know. It's very respected journalist and author and all that. Anyways, some of us are off to Cabot. We're going to be reporting on all of that next week's episode, a full-on buddy's trip

five days golf, golf, golf, and other cool things we're going to be posting videos, we're going to be posting pictures, all kinds of footage and we're going to talk about it exactly what it's like

the entire experience. So if you're into golf travel, as you probably are because you're listening to a freaking golf podcast right to the very end here, pay attention to that, listen up next week.

And also, if you haven't listened yet, go listen to our interview with Colin Montgomery from last week. People are raving about that. his voice people he could talk for hours that's what coli told me coli's like i listened to the interview three times because i loved his voice yes coli who is a mock golf guy likes to come over and just especially during british open time he likes to just come over and go pop bunker or fescue he likes talking just golf terms

he loves just talking golf terms yes and the fact that he sat there and was like i had to listen an interview like three times because of colin montgomery um tells you a lot also the week before our recap of the U.S. Open and our interview with Dylan Meyer. People love that one. Who he shouted to Dylan Meyer, who finished Tide 17th this past week after Quigand Lones. I'm the biggest Dylan Meyer fan in the world at this point. I don't know what happened. But after our interview with him, I'm obsessed with him.

I think he made $96,000 this week. It's just he's a star. He is a star and I follow him. I can't wait to see what happens with it. He's awesome. So the last two shows prior to this one. If you haven't listened, go give those a listen because people are raving about those shows this week.

Obviously, we got Armicottian. Awesome interview. And next week, we're going to be totally switching gears and getting into travel. So we're covering it all for you. Big show this week. Big show next week. It's a big summer. We've got British Open's coming up soon. PGA championships in my hometown. St. Louis Ryder Cup is in Paris, France.

J.T. might be playing for Europe at that point. So it'll be crazy to see what happens rest this year. That's all I got. Hit it hard. Hit it hard.