The Prestige TV Podcast - Is 'Tiger' Tiger Woods's 'Last Dance' Documentary?

Episode Date: January 11, 2021

Chris Ryan and Kevin Clark break down the first part of the two-part documentary, 'Tiger,' that chronicles Tiger Woods's rise as a golf star. Hosts: Chris Ryan and Kevin Clark Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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My name is Chris Ryan. I'm an editor at the ringer.com. And today I am joined by Kevin Clark. Kevin, what's up? I am excited to talk about this particular docu-series. The docu-series that we were talking about is Tiger. The new two-parter on HBO, very much coming in the wake of the last dance mania that gripped us a little more than a year ago.

We're a little less than a year ago, I mean, came last spring. and I couldn't help think about the Last Dance a lot when I was watching this first episode of the Tiger documentary. The Tiger documentary is executive produced by Alex Gibney

and it was directed by some pretty well-decorated documentary filmmakers Matthew Heintemann and Matthew Hammach. And I think that the reason I bring up Last Dance, Kevin, is because you and I obviously obsessed with Tiger.

Tiger is probably one of like the three or four central athletes of our lives. if I miss me for you. Yeah. And I want the last dance for Tiger. Like, now that we've gotten the 10-hour documentary, I want that for Tiger.

I want to know everything there is to know about him. But unlike the last dance, Tiger, the documentary, is missing a sort of central voice. And that's Tigers. Last Dance was obviously propelled and somewhat directed by Michael Jordan's presence. What did you feel about Tiger's story being told largely by people that weren't Tiger.

I was okay with it. It's interesting that you thought about the last dance. I did not. The thing I thought more about, and the first episode was about his rise instead of his fall. I actually thought about the Diego Maradona documentary. Oh, that's interesting.

Because first of all, it is the whole thing is about someone's imperfections, tying into their greatness and the fact that they're human. And I think that for me, I want the whole story. I think the myth-making, is important, but I also think the human element is a huge part of the myth making. Tiger Woods is not a god. He didn't come down from on high to shoot 65 at Pebble Beach.

He's a human who was flawed just like everybody else who was still able to do this. And so I think the warts and all approach was fine with me. But I was thinking about the Maradonna thing because of the scene early in the Maradonna documentary where his parents cry the first time they see him on a soccer field. And you got the same vibes with Tiger, where it was like, he's on the Mike Douglas show, but well before that, every time he's hitting putts, he probably,

at what month could Tiger Woods beat us in golf? When he was five months old? So you're referring that Mike Douglas scene that you're talking about is in the first episode where Tiger Woods puts on a swing and putting display in front of Bob Hope and Jimmy Stewart on the Mike Douglas show. And he's two years old, I believe, at that point.

And I'm fairly convinced that Tiger could have beaten me at two. At my, at the best, I can possibly be a golf. I feel like he probably, the thing that he would not have that I have is meltdown holes. Two-year-old Tiger doesn't know what a meltdown hole is. And I think that when I am in hell and I'm blowing it off the face of the earth and I'm somewhere in a endangered bird's nest,

trying to decide whether to just chip it out or pulverize it through, I just feel like Tiger doesn't make those mistakes. You know what I mean? What about you? I think they're right around the Mike Douglas time. He beats me. Definitely a match play. He gets in my head.

And I think I was, listen, Tiger's not going to open up. We've seen that. And, you know, I think a lot about even when he was at his peak, how closed off he was. I remember an anecdote Rick Riley once told about being in between Tiger's mother

and Phil Knight at a tournament. And I think it was Augusta. And Tiger walked out and just didn't acknowledge all three of them. And Rick was like, that's fine. They didn't acknowledge me. He didn't acknowledge his mother and Phil Knight. One raised him.

one gave him hundreds and millions of dollars. Like that, he wants his image to be closed off in a way. And I don't think we're ever going to see the last dance. So you have to tie in these pieces. Now, this is essentially the documentary version of the book that came out a couple years ago by Jeff Bennett, Norman Catan, which I think was one of the best books of the last 10 years in sports. And I learned so much from that book.

I feel like I didn't learn a ton from the documentary if you've read the book. But if you haven't read the book, I think you're going to learn a lot about the ins and outs of Tiger the person. I think there's a lot to learn if you're not a massive Tiger Stan from this. So this is the fascinating thing. I think the thing that the last dance did, and to some extent to think that Diego did, even though Diego is largely, it's not a talking head documentary. It's largely a footage documentary. It's pushing, it's shaping a narrative with this incredible treasure trove that Asif Capadilla found of Maradona and his time in Napoli. But I wanted more tiger. I also want a more.

golf. Like I, I, and you know, our buddies over at, there was almost no context for the shots. Yeah. And our buddies had these shots. Yeah. And no laying up often talk about like this kind of, this is a great golf podcast. And they often talk about the kind of like weird self-loathing golf media, like golf television media, it seems to have for its own product. So you can watch like, you know, you can watch Brandl Chambley after a tournament round and he'll give you a lot of insight into something. But for the most part, you know, the fact that they have this artist, really, like this artist athlete who were so obsessed with and that they don't actually get into the art. They don't get into the context of the moments that made him so special that are burned

into our brains. And really, they kind of just rely on the play-by-play delivered. And there are some iconic calls that we see in this first episode. But they don't really get into what made him a special golfer, what made him a special competitor and what made his legend rise as he won the U.S. Open, as he won the Masters, as he won the British Open after bearing his father. I 100% agree with you. And I think if there's one failing in this documentary, it's that. Because in the second one, I don't want to get ahead of ourselves, but in the second one, there's a brief time when they're talking about playing with

Tiger and how we can get into your head. And, you know, anyone who says they think they're ready, they have no idea, right? And I could have, honestly, I could watch 20 minutes. This would be the last dance style thing. I could watch 20 minutes of golfers from the late 90s saying like, man, Tiger Woods owned me. You and I would love to watch 20 minutes of that. Just like Ernie Ellis being like, Jesus Christ, man. That was something else. And I kind of think if you're going to do the God version of this, I think it's going to be along the lines of that. I think that maybe, maybe two episodes was was not enough. Maybe he's worth five, six, seven episodes.

And maybe all the golf stuff. Yeah, no, Faldo's in the first episode of Tiger. But maybe all the golf stuff comes if Tiger ever does when he's 65 or whatever, decide, I'm ready. I'm ready to talk. I'm ready to talk about all these tournaments. And maybe that's when he cashes in and he says to all these guys, like, feel free to discuss what it was like getting your soul handed to yourself by me,

you know, at Pebble Beach. Well, it's interesting because, as we know, the Warriors Parade coincided with Michael Jordan saying, let's make the last dance. That is now understood. And we thought maybe there was a legacy problem, or the LeBron Parade, excuse me, LeBron Warriors Parade. And I wonder if it's going to take a similar situation, oh, LeBron James coming in to golf and all of a sudden he's winning 14 majors, 15 majors in the same way Tiger did, threatening those

numbers. I wonder if in 15 years, that would be the catalyst for Tiger to be like, guys, you really have to remember how crazy my accomplishments for. Let's do this. So we basically have to pull for Brison Deschambo to rattle off like five majors. We do not, we do not have to pull for Bryce and Deschambo. We can, we can, we can. Because otherwise we don't get the last dance. I'm sure there's many more likable junior golfers somewhere that we can root for. So you read the book. I actually did not. But in the book, I assume they get pretty deeply

into his interpersonal relationships and specifically his romantic relationships. And I think as a viewer, I was a little bit surprised by the amount of screen time someone say like Dina Par gets, who is Tiger's first, I guess first girlfriends,

first significant girlfriend, first romance. And she is essentially the narrator for the second half of the first episode talking about their relationship and its abrupt ending that came when Tiger writes this letter that seems to be prompted by his, parents to end his relationship with his girlfriend. Because essentially the implication is that she's

encouraging him to have a more of an independent life from his parents and also to like have a life outside of golf. What did you make of the role of Tiger's ex-girlfriend, but also like the way that they tried to sort of burrow into his psyche through his love life? Sure. I thought it was interesting. I thought that the letter that was read, which obviously in the book, was part of a bigger pattern that reveals itself in the book, which is that Tiger kind of, Tiger and Team Tiger tended to cycle through people a little bit

and write those sort of letters. And that wasn't just the girlfriend thing. It was all, you know, Earl had a business partner who helped Tiger's career, who at one point was basically just iced out of the whole thing. There were a handful, you know,

there handful of golfers who Tiger was friends with. And one day he just wasn't. Even there was another friend in there who basically said one day Tiger to stop talking to me and that was it. And so the Dina Par thing has more context.

in the book. I would say the book is probably a little more salacious. It has, has these details that are just not covered at all. You know, the, the mom, Tita, there was some of how much, you know, she did bring him to the golf course, all that stuff. But really, when you read the book, you understand that like the killer instinct stuff, a lot of it comes from her. She called, she used to call Phil Muckus and Fat Boy on the course, which was not in the documentary. And this is just a creative, this is just a note. I'd make the entire documentary about how she used to called Phil McIllison Fat Boy. Does he be two episodes of that?

Why are we missing that? Yeah. And so I think that, again, any book is going to have more detail. And so, but was I surprised that someone like Dina Parr played a huge role? No, because I think that was their way in. I mean, obviously, at the end of the first episode, we see that Rachel Oketel participated in this and then we see that in the second episode as well, more flashed out. But I think that there's, I'm not surprised they took that route because

it was one of the biggest stories, and I'm sure you remember where you were, it was one of the biggest stories in modern sports history that month. And I think that you cannot, for as much as people may not want to, they may want to make it strictly a sports story. You can't make Tiger Woods strictly a sports story. And we saw how many different angles there were on Tiger Woods in just that first episode. We're going to Earl saying he's going to change more lives than Gandhi, all that stuff. So you have that off the course. You have the personal life stuff off the course. And so This is the way Nike tried to sell him as like an icon and his participation and whether like his comfort level and whether or not they would push like what is described in the in the episode as the race card. But this idea that they would play off of his racial background as like a selling point essentially for for you know,

merchandise essentially. Without a doubt. And so you can't tell the encore story of Tiger Woods about the off course story. And I really like this documentary because of that. because there's no one angle to take on Tiger Woods. They took them all. So, no, I was not surprised nor kind of taking aback that Dina Parr was in this. Yeah, I kind of want to find out a little bit more about the production cycle of this documentary

because in some ways, it feels like it's germs where when he was still bailing out on tournaments after a practice session and his back was stiff. This feels pre-masters win to me in some ways. It feels a lot like the rise and fall of an American sports legend. and Elin is in his wife, Elyn is in the documentary but is not spoken in it. But she plays a huge part

in the second half of the first episode and that he has this sort of moment of grace where he's found stability in his personal life and seems to have like this sense of belonging that then obviously in the last few scenes of the first episode, we start to see that unwind a little bit and then when Rachel sits down,

you're like, oh shit, I can see where this is going. Yeah, you're right. I mean, I think that Ultimately, what were some of your favorite moments of the episode in any case? Like, what were some of your favorite moments of the first episode that you had either couldn't believe you were seeing or you couldn't believe you were hearing? So I'll say this. I was interested to see because of the orbit of Team Tiger, I was interested to see who was in

the documentary who sat down for it. Someone like Ann O'Mira, who obviously got to know Tiger Woods through marriage to Mark O'Meara, one of his best friends. That was interesting to me. Seeing one of Earl's old friends was interesting to me. Seeing the guy who I guess coached Tiger a little bit with Earl and finding out, and maybe this is in the book, but I don't remember it about how Earl would just loudly talk when Tiger was a youth player

because he wanted Tiger to be able to play through distraction when he was, you know, four or five years old because he knew he was going through the tour. So I think that there were so many things. I wanted to see, you know, Hank Haney, who wrote a whole book about Tiger Woods. Was he going to be in this? Turns out he wasn't. But Wright Thompson, who did one of the best pieces on him was. So I wanted to see just from a,

I was actually surprised to see Nick Faldo in this, knowing that Nick Faldo is there every single week, calling it on broadcast and that he's going to face Tiger at one point. And I would expect from the way Tiger sort of views these things, that that will, if they had any relationship that that might frost over because of his participation in this. So I think that aside from just learning more about Tiger Woods and seeing it and the visuals of it,

of it. I was really intrigued to see in a sort of an unauthorized documentary who dared talk about Tiger. You know, from a just a playing standpoint, I thought that seeing him from a young age was phenomenal. I think, you know, there was

one time where he said, where's my fade because he couldn't fade the golf ball. I liked seeing him that you related to that. Yeah, I was like, oh man, I, yeah, where's my fate all the time? But I don't think I just, I enjoy, seeing all of it, the golf shots and sort of the further context about who he was. Yeah, I think the parts that I really loved were the parts that I wanted more of.

And that was things like the bits of mid-90s, late 90s sports nostalgia for me, where I would have loved to have spent more time at the Nike campus when Tiger is first getting there and having them explain a little bit about that place that Nike had found itself as Jordan was sort of on the way out and them looking for this Jordan replacement, the PR person from Nike who's a talking head in the in the episode talks about like at Nike all we talked about was finding the next Jordan and then this guy emerges this guy comes along in the mid 90s and I thought that was just really cool even like the overhead shots of Beaverton and the still photos of of the people talking to Tiger and Earl inside of conference rooms in in at Nike was really

really cool to me so I would have been excited to see more stuff around there like Tiger opening up a nightclub in Atlantic City like the legend's cafe or whatever whatever. All that stuff was catnip to me. So hopefully they'll have more of it in the second episode. Do you have a non-Tiger winner of the first episode of Tiger? Well, the former coach of his who said, sorry, champ, and basically apologized directly to Tiger Woods for speaking out of turn in the middle of documentary was a breaking of the fourth wall I've never seen before. Did you notice that where he was talking about how he and Earl were not faithful in their marriages.

Yeah. And he actually said out loud, he said, he's going to hate this. And then he punctuated the anecdote with, sorry, champ. Yeah. And it was like he, it's that you could see the wheels turning and being like, oh, my God, I can't believe I'm actually saying this on camera right now. And then he apologized. It was an amazing, amazing might be the wrong word, but it was just a very raw moment

where you realize what these sort of documentaries mean, not only to the person who it's about, but also the people making it. So we've got this episode is out Sunday. the second episode next week, we'll be back with a TV concierge next week covering the second episode, the final episode of the Tiger documentary. Kevin Clark, thanks so much for joining me. I forgot to mention Gary Smith. It's also an MVP. Sports Illustrated legend. He's great. Just crushes this episode. He just crushes it. Yeah. Also, Brent Musburger and Jim Hill. Nice little cameos for them, too. Talk to next to you. This is a documentary about the media, okay?

Bye, Chris. Spring just slid into your DMs. Grab that boho look for that rooftop dinner, those sandals that can keep up with you, and hang some string lights to give your patio a glow up. Springs Calling. Ross, work your magic.