More to the story. Tiger, HBO Sports’ two-part documentary on Tiger Woods, explores his complicated relationship with his father, his marriage to Elin Nordegren and his affairs — including his high-profile romance with Rachel Uchitel.
Part one of the doc began streaming on HBO Max on Sunday, January 10 and focused on his upbringing, which included strict rules and training led by father Earl Woods.
“He would work with him from the green back,” Woods family friend Pete McDaniel recalled in the doc. “That was the secret to how Earl instructed Tiger.”
The documentary also included interviews from the golfer’s high school girlfriend, Dina Parr, his former pro caddy, Steve Williams, and several family friends.
“Earl and Tida, they had this image of who he was supposed to be and I think that they were worried about me because I certainly didn’t fit into that,” Parr claimed, referring to Tiger’s parents. “I felt that their plans were creating this robot.”
One year after he turned pro, Tiger won his first major, the 1997 Masters, at the age of 21. As his success as a golfer continued, he struggled the fame but found support in Nordegren, whom he married in 2004.
“Ironically the spotlight that first repelled her suddenly bonded them; sort of us against the world. It was just the two of them and she believed it was everything,” Nordegren’s friend Sandra Sobieraj Westfall recalled.
Tiger and Nordegren welcomed daughter Sam in 2007 and son Charlie in 2009. Their marriage made headlines that same year when dozens of women claimed they had affairs with the athlete, including Uchitel. After he underwent a 45-day treatment program for sex addiction, Tiger broke his silence and apologized to his family and friends in February 2010. He and Nordegren finalized their divorce after six years of marriage in August 2010. (She went on to marry former NFL player Jordan Cameron and welcome son Arthur in 2019.)
Part one of the doc ended with Uchitel asking the cameras, “OK. So, what do you want me to talk about?”
Tiger, for his part, was not interviewed for the film. His agent slammed the movie — and Armen Keteyian and Jeff Benedict’s biography — in a statement to Golfworld: “Just like the book it is based off of, the upcoming HBO documentary is just another unauthorized and salacious outsider attempt to paint an incomplete portrait of one of the greatest athletes of all-time.”
Part two of Tiger starts streaming on HBO Max Sunday, January 17, at 9 p.m. ET. Scroll through for the biggest takeaways of part one: