It wasn’t long ago that Tiger Woods was being condemned for, among other things, not caring sufficiently about playing golf for his country.
The son of a U.S. Army lieutenant colonel who did two tours of duty in Vietnam, Woods was cast as a reluctant – or worse, disinterested – member of the American golf elite.
He played for himself, the rap against him went, not for anyone or anything else, which wouldn’t make him unique among professional golfers whose vocation demands an inordinate amount of self-interest.
It was a bad rap, unfair and unjust.
Woods is unique for sure, his record and his presence both immense and, at least initially, intimidating. But Woods loves being one of the guys. He loves to needle his friends and he’s good at taking as much as he gives.
Critics cited his lousy Ryder Cup record (it fell to 13-21-3 after his 0-for-4 turn in Paris last fall), but try finding an American with a glittering Ryder Cup record in the past 20 years. The Presidents Cup (in which he’s 24-15-1) hardly mattered, skeptics argued, because of the Americans’ competitive advantage.
Yet to a man, Woods’ teammates have talked about his commitment to the teams of which he’s been part, his immersion in the matches, his dedication to one and all. When the U.S. Ryder Cup task force was formed after the 2014 matches to put together a consistent plan going forward, Woods was a powerful voice in the room.
“I’ve stressed this the entire time, be open and honest, be frank with me. I’ve had a lot of off-line conversations with all the players: ‘Just be frank with me. It’ll remain in a locked box, it’s just between you and (me). If you want to share with the team, share with the team. If you don’t, it’s between us.’ ” – Tiger Woods
Here’s an example of Woods’ willingness to be part of the team:
At the 2008 Ryder Cup, where captain Paul Azinger introduced his now-famous pod system that split the 12-man team into four-man groups, he had Woods on his roster until a knee injury sidelined him. Woods would have been in a pod with Kenny Perry, J.B. Holmes and Boo Weekley – and, Azinger has said repeatedly, he would have loved it.
All of it leads to next week, when Woods will captain the United States team against the International side in the Presidents Cup at Royal Melbourne in Australia.
It’s Woods’ first turn as an American team captain and had it been clear two years ago that Woods (who will turn 44 on Dec. 30) would be healthy enough to have come back and won the Masters and two other events in the past 15 months, someone else likely would be the captain Down Under.
Tiger being Tiger, he has regenerated his career and with his victory in Japan in October, essentially played his way onto his own team. (Woods subsequently made himself one of his four captain’s picks.) He will become just the second playing captain (Hale Irwin was the first) in Presidents Cup history.
“When I took the role of captain, I jokingly said I would like to be a playing captain,” Woods said this week during the Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas. “It was a joke but it turned into reality. Here we are.”
Woods comes into his captaincy having been a vice captain on the 2016 Ryder Cup team at Hazeltine. He was slated to be a vice captain to Jim Furyk at the 2018 Ryder Cup but wound up playing instead, though he remained integrally involved in team duties.
With vice captains Fred Couples, Steve Stricker and Zach Johnson, Woods has surrounded himself with a group of assistants who will carry out his wishes when he puts himself on the golf course as a player. To a lesser degree, Woods spent last week multitasking at the Hero World Challenge, where he handled host duties around his daily tee times.
“It’s a lot of hats going on,” Woods said.
When Woods was vice captain to Davis Love III in 2016, Love said he routinely receiving texts from Woods in the middle of the night, offering thoughts on various things from lineups to practice pairings to whatever else he thought was important even though the event was months away.
Now Woods is in charge.
“Tiger’s definitely someone who likes to kind of be in control of what he can be in control of and he’s definitely detail oriented. Loves all the info he can get,” said Rickie Fowler, whom Woods named to his Presidents Cup team after Brooks Koepka withdrew due to injury.
“He has every competitive gene you can think of.”
When Woods met with team members at Liberty National in August, he offered a history lesson related to the U.S. team’s only Presidents Cup defeat – at Royal Melbourne in 1998. He was part of that team and said the U.S. players weren’t ready and he didn’t want that to happen again. He encouraged players to continue playing through the fall to be primed for Australia.
“He just takes it really seriously,” Justin Thomas said. “It’s not just something to put on his résumé. He expects us to go over there and play really well. He’s taking it very seriously.”
At the Hero tournament this week, Woods set the first-round pairings and it was easy to imagine it was a test run for potential Presidents Cup pairings. Woods played with Thomas, Patrick Reed and Patrick Cantlay were together, and Xander Schauffele was with Gary Woodland.
The reality is the pairings are more critical for foursomes play than in four-ball competition, where golfers play their own ball and try to make as many birdies as possible. Woods brushed off suggestions he was test-driving some Presidents Cup pairings, saying he just wanted players to have fun, but there was undoubtedly a method behind the first-round tee times.
Woods faces the question of where he fits in as a player. He is required to play at least twice during the four days, including the Sunday singles.
Will he play more than that? When will he sit out? Whom will he play with? Who becomes captain when Woods is playing? Only the captain can offer advice to players during competition.
Each captain has his own style. Love was so popular as a Ryder Cup captain that he got a second turn despite losing in his first captaincy. Furyk was meticulous and prepared but ran into a European team that played brilliantly last year in Paris.
Except for the 2015 matches in South Korea, the Presidents Cup hasn’t produced much final-day drama. Two years ago, the Americans nearly clinched the cup on Saturday.
This is about playing for the United States but it’s also about playing for Tiger.
“Just the fact that it’s him,” Thomas said. “I’ve looked up to him my entire life. Playing for him is probably something I would have never really imagined happening when I was a kid.”
Fowler said he doesn’t expect Woods to be a rah-rah captain. He will have a plan, deliver it to the team and expect it to be carried out.
“I think it’s a little bit more like, ‘Hey, this is your job, this is what you need to go do, go take care of business. … Keep it simple. Go do what you know how to do,’ ” Fowler said.
Woods is a captain, not a coach. There’s a difference. What he doesn’t want is any surprises, before, during or after the Presidents Cup.
“I’ve stressed this the entire time, be open and honest, be frank with me,” Woods said. “I’ve had a lot of off-line conversations with all the players: ‘Just be frank with me. It’ll remain in a locked box, it’s just between you and (me). If you want to share with the team, share with the team. If you don’t, it’s between us.’
“I just wanted their honest opinion. And some of the things, we’ve been able to acquiesce and mold things into different things and we’ve been able to do it, and other things we’ve been able to talk through it. I just appreciate the guys’ honesty. That’s what I want.
“I’m trying to help them be in the best possible position to go earn points. That’s how we win cups.”
As a team.
Tiger’s team.