There was a time when I genuinely loved Tiger Woods.
Almost 30 years ago, in one of my first PR jobs, I worked on the team that helped announce his partnership with American Express. In May 1997, shortly after his historic Masters victory, then 21-year-old Woods signed a groundbreaking five-year deal worth over $25 million. At the time, it was huge.
The deal positioned Woods as a global spokesman, featuring him in major campaigns that highlighted his rapid ascent as an icon. Our team worked to get that story in just about every major media outlet in the world.
Tiger’s father was managing him, and I recall he was very demanding — understandably so, given how quickly his son became a global superstar. Still, you couldn’t help but admire the phenomenon.
And for years after that, who could resist? If Tiger was in contention on the back nine of any major, you weren’t going anywhere. You were planted on that couch on a Sunday, watching him pull off miracles. He was singular. Extraordinary.
Then came the crash, literally and figuratively. In November 2009, Woods, in a drugged-up stupor, crashed his SUV near his Florida home following a confrontation with his then-wife, Elin Nordegren, who had discovered his infidelity. The incident triggered a massive scandal, revealing serial affairs and forcing him to step away from golf.
We learned Tiger had a sex addiction, and in light of his struggles with painkiller dependency, it’s become clear he’s someone vulnerable to addiction. It hasn’t been easy to watch. But I rooted for him. A lot of us did.
Until I couldn’t anymore.
My breaking point wasn’t the addiction. Last week, Woods was arrested for a suspected DUI after a rollover crash on Jupiter Island, Florida, where his SUV clipped a trailer and landed on its side.
Body camera footage shows a disoriented Woods saying he looked down at his phone before the “boom.” Police reported hydrocodone pills in his pocket, signs of impairment, and failed sobriety tests.
The video also shows him telling deputies he had just spoken to “the president,” later struggling to stay awake in the patrol car.
And in that detail lies the moment that erased my sympathy.
Woods walked away from the scene at one point. When ordered back, he said, only slightly paraphrased, “Sorry, I was on the phone with the president.” Presumably, he didn’t call his girlfriend Vanessa Trump, Donald Trump’s former daughter-in-law. He didn’t call his agent or a friend. He called the president.
Why?
He didn’t just name-drop Donald Trump. He used it like leverage. The implication was unmistakable: mess with me, and you’ll have Trump to deal with. That’s not a man battling demons. That’s someone who has bought into a world where power, and proximity to it, is everything.
And that’s when the bigger picture snapped into focus.
If you or I crashed our car and failed a sobriety test, we’d be cuffed and in a cell before we could call anyone. We’d get that proverbial “one call” from a payphone.
Tiger Woods is a billionaire. He has money, fame, and enormous cultural influence. Donald Trump gravitates toward people like that. Wealth and fame can blur lines that shouldn’t be blurred.
Donald Trump loves people like that. Woods’ money and fame whitewash his skin color. Woods would metaphorically be that one Black person at a MAGA rally that Trump would point to, but Woods gets an invitation to Mar-a-Lago, and that one Black rally guy gets a pink slip and higher gas prices.
Tiger Woods is a Black man in America during the bigoted Trump era, and instead of speaking out, he’s on the phone with the racist-in-chief in the moments before an arrest.
Black men are disproportionately stopped, searched, and arrested due to systemic bias in policing. These patterns, combined with socioeconomic inequality, create a cycle that’s hard to escape — even when behavior is comparable across races.
But not Tiger Woods. And it’s hard to ignore how invoking the president in that moment lands against that reality.
Woods embraces Trump, the man who stood in front of cameras after Charlottesville and called neo-Nazis “very fine people.” Who has referred to African nations in terms I won’t reprint here. Who traffics openly in the language of racist dehumanization about migrants, about cities, about entire populations of people. Who just shared a video depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes.
So I keep asking: Does Tiger not see it? Or does he see it and simply not care?
I think it’s the latter. Extreme wealth can pull people into a separate universe, where the indignities faced by ordinary people no longer register. The Epstein files are teaching us again what we already knew - money doesn’t just insulate you from consequences, it can insulate you from your own conscience.
Tiger used to represent something. Not an underdog, exactly — he was always the favorite — but a kid who worked relentlessly to become the greatest golfer alive. That meant something to a lot of people, especially in the Black community.
Now he’s using Trump’s name to try to dodge a DUI.
I used to hope for a Tiger comeback. Even something modest like a win on the Senior Tour. Not anymore.
He’s in a dark place, made darker by the company he keeps and the values — or lack of them — that come with it. If Tiger Woods thinks invoking Donald Trump to a police officer is power, he has it exactly backwards. It’s the most pathetic thing I’ve ever seen him do.
Trump and Tiger can keep each other. The rest of us have moved on.
