Tiger Woods was the kind of transcendent star that comes around about as often as Haley's Comet by almost any measure he's the most talented golfer who has ever lived and arguably the greatest individual athlete in modern history for a 15-year span from August 1994 when he
won his first of three consecutive US amateur championships as an 18-year-old High School senior to the early morning hours of November 27th 2009 when he crashed his SUV into a tree and effectively ended the most dominant run in the history of golf Woods was a human
warwind of heart stopping drama and entertainment he was someone no one had ever seen or will ever see again at the height of Tiger's career golf beat the NFL and the NBA in ratings he was mobbed by fans wherever he went Kings and presidents courted him corporations
wooed him women wanted to sleep with him for the better part of two decades he was simply the most famous athlete on Earth despite his Killer Instinct on the course he was an introvert off of it more comfortable practicing and training in solitude as far back as childhood he
spent Far More Time by himself tiger is the most mysterious athlete of his time an enigma obsessed with privacy who mastered the art of Being invisible in plain sight of saying something while revealing virtually nothing the two qualities Woods values most are privacy
and loyalty so that begs the question why tackle the this project they're talking about the book why tackle this project in the first place our answer is simple very few individuals are known throughout the world by one word that is an excerpt from the book that I'm going
to talk to you about today which is titled Tiger Woods and was written by Jeff Benedict and Armen Canan there is a companion to this um to this fantastic biography it is an excellent biography or excuse me an excellent documentary that I walked that I watched a few years
ago or maybe like a year ago on HBO it's simply called tiger and so when they said hey you know why are we write reading this uh why are we writing this book very few individuals are known throughout the world by one word a few months ago I was in Los Angeles and I was going through a book shop uh a
bookstore and I noticed this book and it speaks to what they're talking about the fact that he is known by just by the word Tiger but he's also known by just his face I saw the book there is no title on the cover of the book all it is is Tiger's face and I immediately knew
what it was about and then the reason I picked it up is because it says on the cover that it was the basis of the HBO documentary tiger I was like oh wow I should actually I like the documentary I should read the book and so in addition to reading this book I also rewatch the
documentary and so I want to start in the prologue with a main reoccurring theme that you and I have talked about over and over again that pops up in nearly every single biography that you and I talk about that you can always understand the son by the story of his father the story of the father is
embedded in the son that is a quote from Francis Ford cop's biography uh regarding the relationship that Francis had with his father I covered all the way back on episode 242 we see it right away probably the arguably the main theme and what I'll probably spend most
time talking to you about today is the unusual childhood and unusual family that Tiger Woods came from I said and his father's name was Earl Earl achieved worldwide and you'll see exactly what I mean Earl achieved worldwide claim for his almost mythical role in raising the
most famous golfer of all time he was Notorious for making outlandish statements like the time he predicted that his then 20-year-old son would have more influence on the world than Nelson Mandela Gandhi or Buddha he is the chosen one orl said he will have the power to impact Nations and for his part
Tiger says tiger repeatedly said that no one in the world knew him better than his father the man he frequently referred to as his best friend and his hero and so I want to start in the early life of tiger when he's very very small and really focus on this relationship uh
that he had with his dad if you could look at all the notes that I left throughout this entire book um the most common note I just kept writing to myself over and over again is this reminds me of Mozart it happened so much that I actually went back and reread all
of my highlights for the biography of Mozart that I read this is episode 240 I want to read those highlights to you in advance because I really think it will help frame the relationship it is spooky uh I wrote down uh Tiger Woods is the Mozart of golf the parallels are
incredible um not only the talent you know uh Tiger Woods being the most famous maybe the best golfer of all time Mozart's widely considered the same uh in his field but the relationship with their father Earl makes the quot uh the claim in the book that he had his first
golf ball when he was like 11 months old mozar starts composing when he's like to and so I'm just going to read a few of the highlights uh from the Mozart book and really this is just a way to describe Earl and tiger Mozart's output was enormous much greater than that of
nine10 of other composers so my friend David Perell when he found out I was doing uh podcast on on Tiger Woods he sent me like notebook after notebook of all the data that he's collect Ed David's a huge golf fan and it sounds like a huge Tiger Woods fan he's got all
these quotes and these highlights and these graphs essentially like when I read this his output was enormous much greater than nine tents of other composers it is in line with all the the stats and the data that that David sent me there is two things I want to read
from here actually from David's notes that I thought was fascinating after I read David's notes after I read the book and it said Tiger's opponents were never people it was always history and then another early example that I think is a good parallel with Mozart is the fact
that you have somebody that's starts unbelievably early is unbelievably disciplined but also extremely gifted and born with like natural intelligence and this is an example of this this is a quote from Tiger when he was older by the time I was 11 years old I had already won 113 tournaments I peaked at
11 to be honest with you I went 36 and O that year and never lost a tournament all in California uh I also had Straight A's no a minuses they were all perfect A's so go back to the Mozart uh highlights he was a mature artist in most forms at the age of 12 what that's
exactly what tiger just told us there was never a month and often scarcely a week when he did not produce a substantial score another description of Mozart he was very he very rarely made any kind of mistake and when he did he noticed it we're going to talk about the
obsessive and disciplined nature of Tiger Woods the truth is he started earlier than anyone else and was still composing on his deathbed those 30 years were crammed with creation that he started so early was largely due to his father the parallels are spooky here Mozart's dad seemed to have decided that
his own musical uh future was limited and his efforts centered on his children Earl picks up golf later in life becomes completely obsessed he is completely obsessed by the time that tiger is born so there's a parallel there again when mozar was four his father decided to
concentrate on bringing him out and virtually gave up on composing and Performing himself Earl was retired from the Navy he had no other job than dedicating his his himself to his young son's uh Golf amateur golf career and then professional career uh he soon came
to the conclusion that he had fathered a genius that's what ear just said uh being a very highly religious man he that he was responsible for a gift of God to music so he talks about the fact Earl talks about the fact that this is like you know this this was meant to be
this is from God I don't know if I'd consider Earl a uh a religious man there's a lot in this this uh biography that's actually shocking back to moart it is important to grasp the strong religious element raiding from his father that existed in Mozart's life
from his infancy Mozart's father felt that the musical education of his son was a profound spiritual business as well as professional one so did Earl he literally thought that uh that that tiger was like the anointed one like he just said that he's going to that
through golf he's going to like cure racism and all this he just got a very interesting like uh almost like Messiah like vision for his son I guess is the way to put that and then one more highlight before we jump back into the tiger book uh he Mozart's father is often seen as a tyrant towards his
children there's no way you're going to read the book and not think girls the same way but the fact is he surrendered his own future as a musician for for their sake and their progress Justified his sacrifice and on that point after you read this book you get to the end
that is an unknown in my opinion let's go to 5-year-old Tiger Woods this is very unusual tiger felt different from all the other kids instead of toys his prize possession was a custommade set of golf clubs besides his parents his closest friend was his golf instructor
he is 5 years old uh by the time he was five he'd already appeared on national television and performed in front of millions of people this goes to his unusual I mean I'm going to read my note to you before I read the to you disciplined and obsessed at 5 I feel
ridiculous for even writing this note each morning his mother would drop him off at school and each afternoon she picked him up then she would drive him to the nearby Golf Course where he practiced tiger had an unusually structured routine that left little to no time for interacting with other
children outside of school academically he was also way ahead of other the kid of other kids in his class as well he was also unusually disciplined for a 5-year-old and he seldom spoke so just like Mozart's father was a obsessed with music before moar was born we see the
same thing with Earl uh says he Earl was instantly hooked uh this is right before Tiger's born if golf were a drug he would have qualified as an addict he liked it so much that it consumed him leading him to spend far more time with his clubs than with his wife I realized
what I've been missing my whole life Earl said I decided if I had another son I'd introduce him to golf early on and so there is this huge element you can't really understand uh tiger without understanding his father his father was a Green Beret uh he believed in engaging
in psychological warfare on his son even the name tiger came from uh Earl's experience in Vietnam he immediately nicknamed his son tiger in tribute to his to a comrade from Vietnam and then we go back to more notes where I feel even silly for writing intense training before tiger was one by the time tiger
turned one he had spent 100 and between 100 and 200 hours watching his father hit golf ball so what they would do is they' go out to the garage they'd put him in a high chair and would just sit there and swing and hit into the net over and over again tiger got so
transfixed by this he would watch he his mother would try to be feeding him and he would not eat he'd wait till the swing like the swing was done then he'd turn and open his mouth so his mom could feed him he'd take one bite then look again stare at the stare at the swing
back and forth that's how he ate uh when tiger was about 11 months old after watching his father practice tiger slid down from his high chair and picked up a club that Earl had cut down to size for him to make a new tour uh he waddled over to the carpet patch stood over over
a golf ball and swung all these things that I'm reading you are happening over over many many pages it's insane how consistent this is instead of carrying around a security blanket or stuffed animal tiger dragged around a putter from one of the house to the other it
seldom left his hand Earl deserved credit for recognizing so early on that his son possessed rare natural talents and abilities just like Mozart's dad when he was 18 months old uh his mother started bringing him to the driving range to hit balls after after tiger
like the baby version of tiger toddler version of tiger would hit balls she would put him back in the stroller and he would fall asleep by the time tiger was 2 years old Earl made sure that he'd spent 2 hours a day hitting golf balls this was insane tiger was developing the
habit of practice practice practice this is so I guess one of the reasons I wanted to read this biography so I don't I've never played golf I don't even know the rules of golf I've never watched golf but I know who Tiger Woods is I obviously can see he's clearly an
extreme winner clearly has a lot of the same uh parallels and the way he approaches his work to a lot of his she's great entrepreneurs but what really made me want to read this book is because one of my favorite books I've ever read for the podcast and one that's changed my life was episode 212 and
that's the biography I read a 600 Page biography of Michael Jordan and I was a huge basketball fan and Michael Jordan fan my entire life still my favorite game to play and what was fascinating is how the reason that book changed my life is because you know I always saw the
high like the games the highlights the Championships I never saw the practice and that the main theme of that book is the same theme of this book practice practice practice Tiger Woods idolize Michael Jordan Tiger Woods is definitely the Michael Jordan of golf the way they
approach their practice and their insane work ethic around improving parts of their game is identical Earl is this is the strange part where he's like constantly trying to get attention for his son even from a very early age and we see how Wild and like almost like
Messianic his uh how he feels about his son ear Woods made a decision that would alter the course of his young son's life he placed a call to a television station and asked for the Sports Anchor my son is 2 years old Earl said and I'm telling you right now that he's going to be the
next big thing in golf he's going to revolutionize everything including race relations this sentence might be the funniest sentence in the entire book it was a blunt way to open a call with a complete stranger so this Sports Anchor goes out it's like oh yeah there's a lot
of overzealous parents this might be BS but let me go out here and and and see if that's the case and he's like oh wow he he might be right not on the the Rel race relations but this he might be the next biggest thing in golf I see this little tiger hitting golf ball straight
I mean straight not kind of straight straight he was only a couple feet tall yet he was hitting it 50 yards and he was hitting the ball flush every time and so anybody that sees Tiger Wood's golf it's like you have a gifted you know once in a century Talent his
teachers would say the same thing tiger showed unmistakable signs of being a Bonafide gifted child in school he shared the textbook attributes of the gifted child quiet sensitive and isolated and so his parents don't really have any money uh but they find ways throughout the entire book to get
professional help even from an early age by the time I think he's 13 uh Tiger's getting recruited by like Stanford it was well known that he's going to be a pro and so there's a bunch of people that say Hey you know I'll give you my services for free that coach like a
swing coach trainer everything else just pay me back when he turns Pro and becomes a superar because it's obvious that that's going to happen those are their words and so they wind up getting this um this golf coach and same thing where he's just like this kid is so I
think Tiger's four at this time he's like this kid is so gifted I'm willing to help him uh for free and then we're going to get into another main theme of this book that tiger uses over and over again and it's the power of visualization so it says uh this is now his his golf coach I think he's four
years old uh instead of drilling the youngster over and over Duran simply allowed Tiger's natural abilities and his Love of the Game to grow organically tiger would play 18 holes of golf with Duran kindergarten was still months away but tiger was already starting to learn
valuable lessons Superior athletes don't have to pay for things not only do they have to pay for things they get every they get paid the the the business aspect of this is the same thing Michael Jordan realized where he's like listen the only reason that I'm a billionaire
now is because of my dedication to winning if I didn't win six championships no one's going to buy my shoes and then he had no way to predict that his shoes you know people were buying shoes not to play basketball in them but they wind up becoming like a very strong piece of culture you know to
this day he's gets a 5% royalty on gross sales of all the Jordan brand he's making about 150 to 180 million a year year you know 20 years after he retired so Tiger Woods at his Peak I think this like 2007 2008 he was making over 100 million year just from endorsements not
including any other businesses that he owns not including he's winning some golf or anything else and so today they they they they say tiger is still a billionaire and again it comes from this idea that Superior athletes like people want to be associated with winning and
winning is the Genesis of both Jordan and Tiger Woods uh Fortune tiger now this goes to the visualization part that I thought thought was very interesting a few weeks ago I did uh Ray Croc's autobiography and same thing he would drive around now Tiger's doing this when
he's a boy I think he's in elementary school when he's started doing this Ray Croc would drive around listening to these like positive affirmation tapes I don't think Tony Robbins was a thing at that time because probably before Tony might even be born or Tony was a kid but
it's that kind of you know positive mental affirmations so it says tiger was in grade school when his father furnished him with a cassette player and motivational self-help tapes tiger was filling his mind with words that were intended to make him great he wrote some
of the messages on a sheet of paper that he taped to his bedroom wall so he tape it to his wall and then read it over and over again what are these messages I'm going to read the every line to you I believe in me I will own my own destiny I smile at obstacles I am first in my resolve I fulfill my resolutions
powerfully my strength is great I stick to it easily and naturally my will moves mountains I focus and give it my all my decisions are strong I do it with all my heart and then the author says tiger listened to those tapes so often that he wore them out so now we're going to see
another parallel with Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant as well Michael Jordan would watch tapes of like uh Dr J all these other NBA players that came before him then Kobe and turn start to watch tapes of Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson same thing 10-year-old
tiger you don't get to the top of your profession without studying the great people who came before you this is very clear now we're 301 biographies in and this is in nearly every single one of them 10-year-old Tiger Woods started stared intently at the television it was
the final round of the Masters he was watching 46-year-old Jack Nicholas uh his reactions this is what Tiger's talk Tiger's reflecting back on this when he's older about him being 10 years old and doing this his reactions over those last holes of the 1986 Masters made an
impression on me because they were spontaneous and they showed me how much of yourself you have to put in to your shot Jack was 46 and I was only 10 and I couldn't put it into words then but I wanted to be where he was and doing what he was doing after the 1986 Masters Golf
Digest published a list of Nicholas's career achievements accomplishments it included his age at the time of each significant achievement tiger tacked the list to his bedroom wall from that moment on each morning when he woke up and each night when he went to bed Nicholas was there this is not unique
unique to golf it's not unique to Tiger it's no different than Jeff Bezos running around with highlighted copies of Sam Walton's autobiography giving it out to a ton of people T taking uh I think it was the bias of action and and and Sam's uh P pension for uh frugality
and EM bibing those characteristics and traits into the very Foundation of Amazon of of early days of Amazon one of my favorite rappers is this guy named J Cole I've heard interviews with him and he's also mentioned in songs when he was young he would literally print out other
rappers like Nas that he looked up to and print out their lyrics and hang them up on the wall that is exactly it that J Cole's version is exactly what tiger is doing with Jack Nicholas's achievements and tiger mentions this in the book and it's also in that file that David Perell
sent me that his goals were they they were confused that what he was chasing was pure numbers and he's like no I wanted to do it when younger than they were so he talks about um this is a quote from tiger that David sent me uh is there a misconception about what
drives you and then this is what tiger says here's the major M misconception that people have gotten all wrong it it's what was posted on my wall about Jack records it was not the majors okay that one was on there but it was the first time he broke 40 the first time he
broke 80 the first golf tournament he ever won first time he ever won the state amateur first time he won the US amateur and the first time he won the US Open that was it that was the list it was all age related to me that was most important this guy's the best out there
and the best of all time if I can beat each age that he did it then I have a a chance of being the best if you if you buy the book uh and read it which I highly recommend there's no reason not to and watch the documentary I'm focused on like things that you and I can take for our work in
our career right that's the point learning from history is a form of Leverage there is an unbelievable amount of like sex in this book makes sense in the sense that he was the most famous person maybe the most famous person on the planet when he had that huge sex
scandal back in 2009 2010 I'm not going to go into this guy's sex life uh at the same time I think if I don't mention it and then you buy the book whoa this you left that a big part what I'm focused on is how he could hate parts of what his dad did his dad was obviously a
philander it's in the documentary it's in the book he Lo tiger loves his mom his mom you know took him was was there just as much as his dad was and he hated what his dad his dad would cheat on his mom in front of like a 10-year-old this is some weird behavior and yet he wasn't
able to avoid he hated that part he hated what his dad did to his mom and then yet in many ways like he he followed the path like the the story of the father's embedded in the son at the same time though his family like I don't want this environment I don't care if my next my kid is the next
Tiger Woods or the next Michael Jordan or the next Taylor Swift because my daughter really loves to sing I would never push them like this he was raised in this almost psychotic environment so you take this unbelievably disciplined kid this unbelievably like genius level
IQ kid and you put him with parents that are listen to this this is this is Tiger's mom while driving him to tournaments she shared her philosophy he is like 10 while driving him to tournaments she shared her his philosophy with him in sport you have to
go for the throat she said because if it if you're if you're at all friendly they'll come back and beat your ass so you kill them you take their heart on the course he had only one rule and that was to play without Mercy sorry he's 11 when she's telling him this at age 11 T
tiger entered 33 junior golf tournaments and won every one of them there's no feeling I found that matches the feeling that have beaten everybody tiger said second place is first loser so I'm going to pause there right real quick you I I told you you and I talked about this
before a lot of times you can read a biography and autobiography somebody you have an idea of who they are like I just read James Dyson's uh autobiography before time I have an understanding of who he is I have no clue I've watched the tiger documentary twice read this
entire book this book's what 400 pages is I I know how he approaches work I know he's got almost like Terminator level levels of focus he's completely Relentless but the even the authors who you know interviewed like 250 people that knew him spent years I think they said they read every single book on
tiger as well he's just an enigma where you read Jordan's biography and his autobiography you have a sense of who he is this is very different now that's the thing that popped in mind this is the note I left on my page on this page okay later on in this book Tiger's mom said
that Tiger's dad was soft because his because his dad cries and he forgives and then they make the connection the book opens up with the death of his father and then burying his father I think it was in Kansas where he was born and they make the point that a decade later there's no grave there's
he's in a tiger's dad is in an unmarked grave and he's not in an unmarked grave because of tiger he's in an unmarked grave because of his mother his they were they were never they were technically never divorced but they were separated to live separately you know he
cheated on his wife over and over again and this you never make the connection right she's telling her 11-year-old go kill him no mercy go for the throat don't act friendly at all uh later on she's like there's no point in having friends in life like she's a Earl and
her almost like the same person and so these are not people my point is is like I would never wish I don't think any parent is going to wish for this environment for their kids so the reason I don't I'm not going to get heavy into judging him is cuz this happens I think
as you get older there was a lot of things my parents did that I did not understand and I did not I was like why would you do this and yet you get older you start having your own kids and then you like you just get a perspective with time and then I go back and like listen
I you know I'm obviously not going to do that my kids I understand I'm not excusing that behavior but I understand it it was like well imagine being raised by by their parents you know I had both sets of grandparents my great my my paternal uh grandfather I never met but
the the ones I did meet the three I did meet were all terrible and I just like the older I get I was like well listen I'm not excusing that behavior but imagine if that was like the environment you were raised in and like that was your parents and then go back even further like I wonder what their parents
were like they were probably not great people right but just imagine being told like you're going to be G you're going to be Jesus uh being forced to to practice two hours a day when you're 2 years old like your mom you're 10 years old I can remember being 10 I have like
my I have a 10-year-old she just turned 11 like they're still kids they're kids man this is crazy and then later on after ear's dead you know saying hey he was soft he cried and he forgave people I don't cry and I don't forgive anybody and then you put the father of your son
and your ex-husband in an unmarked grave that is some crazy ruthless behavior that this is not I read a lot of biographies you don't come across like this especially in the mother that's wild so then we go into moreon this this this level of training they wanted to
train not only Tiger's body but his mind his dad man some of the stuff I'm not going to read you because it's crazy it's insane Tiger's dad is nuts and so he actually has a psychologist that worked at the Naval Academy in in uh Maryland and he starts having him work
with with tiger and his dad Tiger's dad was like Hey I'm going to make sure that so you're so mentally tough that by the time you go to college you will never ever run into another human being on the planet that has more mental toughness than you brunza is the guy named brunza
started to teach tiger how to visualize shots he gave tiger cassette tapes containing subliminal messages that were custom made for him the two did breathing and visualization exercises together I wanted to bring that up because along with practice visualization is something that's
mentioned over and over again in this book uh the amount of pressure that he's on he's constantly like isolating himself whether it's the the night before a big tournament muting the world and really getting control of his mind so people the way that people describe
Tiger's level of focus and intense level of focus is very similar to how Steve Jobs where Steve would in people around him in apple would say he was focused so intently on one thing that you you could talk you could snap your fingers like you're not until he takes his Focus away
he's not hearing any of that there's a lot um a lot of that in in this book with with Tiger Woods when he was young but also when he was at the peak of his his golf career and so this is the section where his father's saying hey I'm I'm going to build a Bulletproof
Mind Tiger's 12 years old when all this is happening Earl put him through what he called Woods's finishing school he would use psychological warfare and prisoner of war techniques that he had once taught to soldiers Earl broke down his son in an attempt to toughen him up
I wanted to make sure that he would never run into anybody who was tougher mentally than he was and we achieved that tiger says my dad deliberately would use a lot of profanity when I was hitting golf balls all the time and throughout my swing uh so this is what
his father is telling his 12-year-old son he probably did it when he was younger than 12 to [ __ ] off tiger he would say sometimes it was [ __ ] this you little piece of [ __ ] this and then the line I'm not going to say at all calling him obviously racist term uh things of that nature he would push me
to the breaking point and then he'd back off he'd push me to the breaking point and then he would back off I'm not repeating myself Tiger's repeating himself here it was wild we had a code word that I could use whenever I thought I couldn't take it anymore but I never
used that code word I was never going to give in to what he was doing I was a quitter if I use that word and I don't quit that word was enough tiger simply overwhelmed and so this is the result this is when he said he was like nearest Peak tiger simply overwhelmed the
competition on the Southern California junior circuit at uh at an elite tournament that attracted the finest players in the region tiger absolutely dominated he was in their estimation a decade ahead of the other kids and then here's just one of another insane story that it's hard
to believe that's in the book imagine being so good at golf that the school district changes the boundaries for you tiger entered Western High School Western High's golf coach Don Crosby felt like his fledgling golf team had won the lottery when tiger arrived
months before school started the district was considering a modest boundary change that would have put Tiger's home out just outside of the Western High District in an urgent meeting with Western High's principal Crosby uh took out a map and Drew a circle around this specific parcel of
land whatever you do this summer Crosby told the principal do not lose this tract why the principal said because a kid named Tiger Woods lives there and then we go back to the Michael Jordan is Tiger Woods Tiger Woods is Michael Jordan something that pops over and over again in this book my favorite
maximum for this is the public Praises people for what they practice in private and we see that over and over again tigan tiger often average more than 10 hours per day on the practice range tiger was far more inclined to practice than to play a round of golf there's a
line just like that in Michael Jordan's a uh Michael Jordan's biography why don't you play the course more he was asked I like practicing better tiger said the first thing I taught tiger aside from the Love of the Game of golf was a love of practice his dad said when
he was real small people would ask him how did you get so good tiger and he would answer practice practice practice one of my all-time favorite quotes that I found during research for the podcast came all the way back on episode 50 it's from Mark Andre and he says the world is
a very malleable place if you know what you want and you go for it with maximum energy and drive and passion the world will often reconfigure itself around you much more quickly and easily than you would think we go back from a 10-year-old Tiger Woods watching Jack
Nichol uh Nicholas hopefully that's how you pronounce his name putting his list of achievements on his wall staring at it every night and morning to meeting him at this tournament and at one point he says Nicholas called on tiger to demonstrate his swing tiger is 15 years
old remaining poised Woods demonstrated his Flawless swing after a few swings Nicholas stopped him tiger he said grinning when I grow up I want to have a swing as pretty as yours it was a rare display of public validation from The Game's greatest golfer to the child
prodigy who had been anointed his successor few pages later one sentence I highlighted but I think I've already told you this but he says it EXP tiger says I want to be the Michael Jordan of golf I'd like to be the best ever later on Tiger Woods is going to be obsessed with us the US Navy Seals he
winds up training with them has this idea to quit Golf and become a Navy SEAL later on uh likely causes like a lot of problems with his golf game because it aggravates some of his injuries uh like this intense training that he's going through but he has this idea which like
this uh us I think it CES comes from the Navy Seals about violence of action violence of action is the unrestricted use of speed strength and surprise and aggression to achieve total dominance against your enemy I have no idea why but when I got to this section uh their
their description of Tiger's swing um early in his career reminded me of violence of action it was the speed and power of Tiger's swing that left the most lasting impression the adjective that came to mind was violent tiger swung so violently that he had raw spots
on his forearm from the friction created by their rubbing together on on on his release what's your go-to shot when you aren't swinging well Harmon asked that's I think his first or second swing coach swing as fast as I can unleash everything I have through the ball then
I go find the ball and I hit it again we got to read that again swing as fast as I can unleash everything I have through the ball then I go find the ball and hit it again violence of action in the form of a golf swing and so then it goes into some of the things that tiger
was witnessing when he was a kid and this is a main point that's made in the documentary where his dad would have like this Winnebago or this RV and they'd park it right next to the golf course and so tiger is a young kid and he'd see his dad start having drinks invite all these ladies over and then
like the WIA would start shaking and so this is going to become a big problem later on and it says he was he was conflicted over his relationship with his father he loved him and considered him his best friend yet he hated some of the things that he did and you see this
manifest once Tiger has complete control over his life he's a uh you know grown man world famous athlete overnight uh you know his net worth goes from zero to $60 million the day he turns Pro and his he spends less and less time with his father and I think in the documentary
it's his mom they know he's dying because he's got cancer diabetes he's had like a bunch of heart attacks he's like smoking and drinking and doing all kinds of crazy stuff there's a lot of crazy stuff this guy does even when when he's an old man in the book but I'm
pretty sure it was his mom that said hey you need to like go and you know patch things up cuz he's about to die and you're going to regret it if you don't um they also put a they also had no problem putting an unbelievable amount of pressure like Financial pressure on
him he knew so he's like listen um his father wasn't a CEO he had no money uh his mother was an immigrant From A Distant land his family had little money and few connections their only real chance for Upward Mobility rested squarely on Tiger's golf game tiger knew
that this was his way out his family could not pay for all the lessons um that that he needed the travel everything else so they put Financial pressure on him and then they kept he like kept engaging in this this psychological warfare over and over again and this is like his dad the crazy
thing about his dad is like he he he almost like bragged about it like he would be he would talk about it unprompted and he's like yeah when he gets a little cocky I say you weren't [ __ ] before you aren't [ __ ] now and you'll never be [ __ ] I could never
picture uh me talking to myself that way that just that seems insane to me um tiger eventually gets recruited to Stanford uh and then he winds up building a relationship with Bill Walsh who wrote that fantastic book The Score takes care of itself I think it's episode 106 of Founders I actually need
to reread that book um because I just have a I have I think I'll have a better understanding of it uh on the the the second time through but what's fascinating is you know Tiger's young bills towards the end of his career I think he'd already retired from San
Francisco 49ers I think he'd already won five Super Bowls and yet he he saw like a lot of parallels and stuff he could learn from Bill tiger had long admired Walsh and his reputation as a genius coach and so he went to pay him a visit Walsh and woods were both very private
individuals with cerebral approaches to their respective Sports they were both introverts to the extreme and they were more at ease by themselves than in the company of others they instantly connected they were both perfectionists with similar organizational qualities
and so game recognizes game Bill Walsh sees oh this guy's special he gave his own personal key to the weit room no other student athlete on the Stanford campus had such a key within a month Woods was practically living in the weight room and it sounded like getting away to college was one of the best
things could ever happened to him because there's all these people that are want going to wind up playing a role in Tiger's early career that are kind of recruited and um introduced to Tiger by his dad one was this guy named Merchant but Merchant uh became friends with Earl
but he saw that like the way Earl was with Tiger's mom and so I'm just going to read and there's a bunch of stories in the book I don't think I have to read all of them to you I think you'll get the point here because I'm really just trying to understand it's like what kind
of what did you expect when you have somebody that is raised in an environment like this so he says when he was in Earl's home Merchant W witnessed things that he could no longer ignore he had it with Earl's foul mouth abuse of Tiger's mother and the way he would tell
Tiger's mother to shut the [ __ ] up one night during Tiger's freshman year Merchant finally confronted Earl listen if I don't speak up my mother my mother will rise up out of her grave and slap the [ __ ] out of me if I allow you to continue to verbally abuse your wife as
you do in my presence so please stop it Merchant figured that if Earl behaved this way in front of him he no doubt did the same or worse in front of his son he knew how much tiger revered and loved his father and seeing his father mistreat his mother was bound to do
long-term damage and so then Merchant describes what I was trying to say earlier it's like yes the the impact of his father's I but we can't discount his mother either fans of golf and Tiger Woods see only the positive of the fatherson relationship and the accomplishments of the son Merchant
explained but Tiger's greatest fan without question was his mother she went to all the tournaments she walked around the [ __ ] golf courses everywhere he played she wore the Hat talk about worship she loved that boy beyond belief but Earl treated her like dirt and it
pissed me off it really did and so that may have played a role in Tiger turning pro earlier uh says the family dysfunction in a home weighed heavily on tiger at College his parents desperately needed space they needed separation but their ability to live apart was restricted by their
finances and so when you look at like the totality of you know Tiger's career you you say okay there are things like we can learn from there maybe to avoid and so his practice habits were unbelievable his workouts were extreme and a lot of people uh you know say like
he just essentially like a lot of the decisions he made later on also stem from the fact that he had so many surgeries and then those surgeries he was in so much pain and he's on all kinds of prescription medication and I saw this firsthand my mom was dying of cancer there's nothing they
could do and they just give a ton of pain medication and it just changes who that person is but I just can't help but wonder if tiger had like a bill Bowerman who know it if he would even listen to somebody like that but Bill Bowman I read his biography back on episode 153
Bill Bowerman is the co-founder of Nike he's a legendary track coach Phil Knight you know it's been on record over and over again saying that there is no Nike without Bill Bowerman and the interesting thing about bman was way this is decade people know the
importance of rest and Recovery now but he was decades ahead of the curve and so in that biography uh back on episode 153 I'm going to read from it real quick he talks about the fact that he just sees class after class after class of tracks track stars right and they all make the
same mistake and that they don't rest and they get injured and then their career goes to [ __ ] and I just wonder if he had a strong influence you know Phil Knight is a very formidable individual and yet he was able like he listened to and admired Bowerman Bowerman never let
Phil Knight overtrain and so this is the speech that bowon would give to the incoming freshman incoming track athletes every year Take A Primitive organism any weak pitiful organism say a freshman you make it lift or jump or run and then you let it rest what happens a
little miracle it gets a little better it gets a little stronger a little faster a little more enduring that's all training is stress recovery impr proof you think any damn fool could do it but you don't you work too hard and rest too little and you get hurt that was said
decades before tiger turns Pro and it sounds like that's like one of the biggest lessons that jumps from this book you work too hard and rest too little and you get hurt and so this is the first time in the book where it's many many surgeries he's going to have it marked the first of what would become
many surgeries over the course of his career stemming from excessive wear and tear on his body he never tiger never let on that he was in pain the mind he said is a powerful thing then we go back to this insane mentality that he's learning from uh his mother because a
main theme of the book is the fact that he had uh it says Tiger's lack of sentimentality and personal connection to others can be traced directly to his mother this is what she says I'm a Loner and so is Tiger I don't have many close friends and never have I'm independent
and strong willed that way you survive and So eventually tiger makes decision uh much with Nike's encouragement Phil Knight's a character that pops up there's a bunch of cameos of him in the book as well and so he makes uh this decision he's going to turn pro um and
he gets to meet starts getting to meet Michael Jordan uh who he idolized says Jordan was another story tiger had idolized him throughout his teenage years Phil Knight even saw tiger as Jordan's equal when asked whether tiger was comparable to Jordan Knight said
flatly you bet your ass he is Jordan the world's most famous athlete publicly stated that his only Hero on Earth is Tiger Woods it was a hell of a compliment for a 20-year-old tiger was too young to drink but with two strokes of a pen he had secured $60 million before playing his first round of golf
as a pro around this time this is where his dad start starting to talk publicly about his 20-year-old son he's going to be Gandhi he's going to be uh Mandela he's going to be better than all of them I know I was personally selected by God himself to nurture this young man that
is exactly exactly what Mozart's father said and so they have an entire chapter dedicated to the 1997 Masters I just want to go back to this point that the world is a very malleable Place uh tiger had sat in his living room at age 10 watching Jack Nicholas win the 1986
Masters on television and dreamed of doing just that here he was 11 years later and Jack Nicholas was now elbowing his way through the masses of Spectators trying to get a glimpse of tiger and so we go back into what was his his practice habits like what was his regimen uh after he turned Pro and
it goes back to maybe this is who knows you have to ask him if he went back and did it would he would he be take more like a Bowman approach or is is like hey he just has this like ruthless intensity and drive and competitive spirit that maybe he couldn't even control and so it
says tiger had compulsive Habits by the spring of 1997 he was consumed with practicing and working out a typical practice day for him entailed hitting 600 balls working on his short game working on his putting and then playing around a golf and working out in the gym
for two or three hours that was the life I wanted he said and he never rested after a win the joy he derived from winning tournaments was always fleeting uh even after shattering records at Augusta wasn't enough I didn't care if I won I didn't care that I won by 12 shots
he he said I was addicted to staying on the range for hours and so right away as he turns Pro he's breaking records he's winning all the time and then this is a this goes this is really helpful to have David Perell text me and and send me all this stuff because you know I'm not I
don't understand golf the way he does and he's like listen the man is wild he literally becomes the best player in the world twice and he like nope I'm going to I'm going to scratch everything and rebuild my swing from scratch he was relentless and so the first time he
rebuilt his swing it's going to take some time from he's you know winning winning winning he's like okay this isn't I may win now but I'm going to rebuild my my swing because I want to win long term and some people debate if this was good or bad or whatever the case is but the main point is he had
that means he has to go from dominating winning to Los and he does not like that and so this is what happens he goes 9 months between victories which is an excessive long time for him and this is just funny to me uh it had been nine long months since his last PGA Victory
tiger received the trophy and held it up so this guy named Rick who is the director for the tournament he's holding up Tiger's holding up the trophy and you go from the the end of the tournament to now they're going to go over to like the Pavilion where you take photos and you
do the media center and Tiger's like okay I head over there and then Rick's like I'll take the trophy reaching for it and Tiger's like no I just beat 155 guys I will take the trophy it was unheard of for the winner to carry the trophy from one stop to the
next following to the next stop following the tournament but tiger wasn't about to let it out of his hands his adamancy was an important clue to what makes Woods tick money didn't motivate him nor did Fame he played for the hardware he played for the win he
always cared more about collecting trophies than making friends above all Woods was a scorekeeper and trophies symbolized wins and wins denoted dominance and so let's go back to this idea that game recognizes game and the world is a malleable Place imagine what this must have felt like
and I wish he would elaborate on it but you're not getting anything out of the Enigma that is Tiger Woods and this is Jack Nicholas saying like there's nobody else like him there like he is the only one remember he's watching Jack when 10 years old he's has Jack's achievements
on his wall listen to this he joined Jack Nicholas at the post tournament press conference the great thing is my game is starting to come around tiger said I'm starting to understand how to play the game of golf a little better than I had before and then Nicholas says whoa I had
never seen this kind of playing before how old are you you're 23 now yes tiger said most players at 23 don't have your kind of imagination as far as he hits it there's no reason for him to even bother practicing his short game but he has and that is why he is winning I don't know
if anybody can play the way he does he has the ability to do things that nobody else can and then there's a bunch of golfers in this book just talked about if you competed with him at this point it was very intimidating Woods was a rare athlete who lik to practice as much as
he likeed to play whose obsession with perfection and ability to perform without fear gave him an intimidating psychological advantage and so he then goes into his mindset his inner monologue he's the night before the last day of play he would just he he'd get in
a room he started doing his visualization he says no one else stands a chance tomorrow that night alone in his room room Woods would close his eyes he visualized the first te from there he played every shot in his mind one by one all the way through the 18th hole then
he went to sleep the next day he shot 65 in the opening round with three rounds still to play everyone else had already recognized that they were playing for second place so I thought that was the night before the last day that was wrong there still three rounds to go this idea
of visualization sounds to a lot of people about hey it's Willy Fufu it's like some nonsense all I can tell you is that it is in a ton of the biographies uh that I read when I type in visualization in readwise I pull up uh all the notes and highlights I have about this this is Estee Lauder uh I
think first time I covered this was episode 136 I think the second time was episode 217 and this is what she said and she's writing this in like the 1970s 1980s so decades before where we are in the book visualize in your mind's eyes you see if in your mind's eye you see a
successful Venture a deal made a profit accomplished it has a superb chance of actually happening projecting your mind into a successful situation which is exactly what tiger is doing where we are in this book is the most powerful means to achieve goals if you spend time with
pictures of failures in your mind you will orchestrate failure countless times before the event I have pictured a heroic sale to a large department store every step of the way and the picture in my mind became a reality every step of the way that's exactly what tiger is
doing isn't it I have visualized success then created the reality from the image great athletes business people inventors and Achievers from all walks of life seem to know the secret that is the end of essay lauder's highlight I had wrote it written in my own note at this point
Bob noise Edwin Lance Steve Jobs Arnold schweger all did this and now we can add Tiger Woods to that list as well and so a large part of the book too is Tiger dealing with you know being relatively unknown to being literally one of the most famous people on the planet this is
something that I don't think anybody would actually understand unless they go through and we see him trying to cope with this like he would he's got two giant Yachts at the end of the book uh one is named privacy the other is named Solitude about a decade and a half
before that he gets obsessed with scuba diving and he says that he was obsessed with it and spent so much time under the water he even gets certified to be like a cave diver too which is kind of crazy but one the reason one of the reasons he did that is because that's one of few
places on the entire planet where no one could re recognize him and no one wanted anything from him and that he just felt very uh at peace being alone among the fish and he felt that there was no other place on the planet that he could achieve that level of Peace than on the
bottom of the ocean floor but there is one person that tiger could go to and talk like how do you deal with these kind of things just so happen idolize Jordan but also become friends with Jordan Jordan obviously was Tiger Woods before Tiger Woods was Tiger Woods
and there this is in the documentary it's also in the book it says perhaps it was inevitable that tiger would turn to Jordan there was no other athlete alive who had experienced the same level of Fame the two of them essentially belonged to their own exclusive Club
Jordan exercised considerable influence over Tiger's attitude toward Fame women and power and so that's when the book goes into a lot of detail I mean they're spending a lot of time in Vegas you can imagine what's happening uh you know I don't have to fill that in for you there
was one thing that was kind of funny though tiger went up to Jordan is just like well what do you like what do you say to these these all these women and Jordan goes you tell them that you're Tiger Woods and so that's like the conundrum or the Paradox maybe that that
tiger is in because if no one feels sorry for somebody that's super famous and super rich that's just not that doesn't happen but imagine being around every single person around you doesn't actually give a [ __ ] about you as a person they just want something from you
whether it's money Fame access something you can do like how would you make true friends if you're as famous as Tiger Woods and the answer is I don't think you do unfortunately not that he was gifted in making friends anyways now this is wild though this goes back to like his dedication and this is really
the the main reason like I think the book is is worthy for entrepreneurs to read is because tiger paid attention to every single detail every single aspect of any little piece part of his game or any aspect of it that he could improve knowing that these little improvements
uh over time like just create something that's so hard to compete with and so we see like just he had this innate sense of even the equipment that he used uh he considered Tiger's Mastery of every facet of the game right down to the equipment he used downright intimidating
for instance Nike had recently shipped a box of prototype titanium drivers to Wood so that he could test them there were six in total after putting the drivers through their Paces tiger told him that he preferred the ones that were heavier than the others but then they
this guy informed tiger that all six drivers were the exact same weight tiger argued otherwise insisting that one made more than the others so they send the drivers back to Nike uh and they this is what they found they found that Five drivers were exactly the same weight but
the sixth was 2 G heavier when they pulled the club apart they discovered that an extra dab of Goo had been added to the inside of the head by one of the engineers the weight of the goo was equivalent to the weight of two $1 bills yet tiger noticed the difference in the
way the driver felt in his hands and I think that story is related to the next sentence where it says he possessed unsurpassed talents that he honed through a lifetime of price practice it is just so hard to compete with somebody it's obsessed and that is just doing more work than anybody else
they said that they on on his college team like he practiced more than all of them combined so that is the part of the book that it's all about his career up until what people consider his downfall but I do think there's Point there's a few highlights that's worth pointing out
I've been going deep on Robert Caro and I've been I watch his documentary I've been reading uh his biographies I'm on the third biography of his right now I'm going to eventually do an episode on his autobiography called working which is all about his approach to his craft
because I like how deliberately inefficient it is he writes out his books by hand types them in a typewriter takes like 10 years like the level of detail this guy has is fascinating but something was interesting that I heard Robert car say I I read about an interview and also heard him say in the
the biography or excuse me in the documentary was that like people think he he's writing a biography on Robert Moses and he's writing this like five biography of lynon Johnson he's like no no I'm I'm using the form of biography to tell a story of how power works in
the real world and he had done this like uh he got basically like this Fellowship I think it was at Harvard I can't remember where he's taking all these classes and he kept talking about the fact that what he was learning at I'm pretty sure at Harvard uh it power
doesn't work like that that power as described in the classroom is not how power Works in a real world and he decided to dedicate his entire life to to educating us on how power actually works and this is the reason I would pay attention to Tiger story um and again I'm never going to
get on this podcast and like criticize I would say hey that's a decision I wouldn't want to make or I can avoid it uh my point is not to criticize my point is to understand and I the part of studying history the part of reading so many biographies is because I think the
understanding that I have of human nature and the World Around Me Now compared to when I started project is not even the same and I'm starting to understand how the world actually works and how humans actually are uh which I think is like just in a weird way
comforting and will benefit like I have a huge benefit as I navigate the rest of my life and my work and my career or and my personal life right and so this is after the Fallout where it becomes made public that he's got you know who knows how many Mistresses his wife didn't know
anything was going on winds up losing you know at point he was making over 100 million from endorsements so just all the stuff that's happening and what was crazy to me is it's in the documentary but the national choir has essentially a network of spice and a bunch of other
media organizations have this and so when I'm reading about this I'm like how many people know that this is actually how the world works so if I could tie what's happening on this page to what Robert Caro taught us he's like the way real power Works political power power
to shape cities in Robert Moses's case power to shape entire societies in Lyon Johnson's case it's not how they teach you that's not actually what's happening and I feel that that a large part of the world is like that and so first of all the the fact was that tiger was unbelievably gifted and
unbelievably intelligent and he did not see his demise coming that's a surprising T us right that and when I look at that I'm not like oh like what's wrong with that guy how I couldn't see it's like okay he had a blind spot what are my blind spots and then I get into
essentially like he had an entire like he was followed everywhere he went and people had were being paid a ton of money to contribute to his downfall so they could profit off of it I'm not excusing the behavior he made I'm just saying that these people also did some
really crazy things that I don't think most people would realize this is an example the national choir made its business to know what aess celebrities were doing after the sun went down to that end it employed a network of women pretty enough to blend right in at the
hottest clubs uh they backed up that surveillance with various valet bartenders bouncers and cocktail waitresses at every Hotel restaurant and Club everyone keeping tabs for the national choir was paid between $200 and $500 a night in cash to inform on the behavior of various actors comedians
musicians and politicians known to boost new stand sales think about and you wonder why he he names his two Mega Yachts privacy and Solitude like a decade after this is happening everywhere he goes he's in a restaurant a club he might think he's the the the waitress is you know helping him you
know get order food or get a drink and she's literally being she is a spy that is crazy and it gets even crazier because there is so much of the stuff that comes out from from in some of these Mist Mistresses like they're getting paid a ton I think it was said
something like he paid uh the main one Rachel you you could tell I forgot her name I how to pronounce her last name I think he had to pay her like $10 million but in in some cases like people magazine and all these other magazines they're paying like 100 Grand 200 Grand you
know I try to think about this as like having a daughter right to like how am I going to put this let me read this sentence to you in exchange for Cash She informed the supermarket tabloid of an upcoming trist between her daughter and woods what the hell is the implication
of that sentence there is a woman there is a mother willing to sell out her own daughter for money her daughter was telling her that she's having an affair with Tiger Woods that they meet in these parking lots do all these crazy stuff the details are in the book if you want to read it and
she's like okay let I bet you I can make a couple hundred grand off this and say and now you you Google her daughter anybody can Google her daughter and I did this for a bunch of the people in the book to see what's the first thing comes up you know what is the
first thing that comes up it is the affair they had with Tiger Woods and in graphic detail pictures text messages disturbing things and you sold out your daughter for money what does that say about our species and there's a line here with Tiger's friend these are people who live their lives failing so
they want to read negative things about people who have gone up and then come down and then it wasn't until I read the book because I missed the connection while I was watching the documentary I was like wait a minute like the this poor decision- making that tiger would
even say he was poor decision- making his his end too like something that could have contributed to it other than like the natural human nature is that fact that he's just had so many so much pain he's on a bunch of pain medication which there's just no way like when in
the documentary shows like him getting P like his car was just pulled over he's like sleeping in the car in the middle of the road and I think they they said he's like on vicadin Xanax ambian he's like mixing all these things he could have died um he was on the same the same
medication that Michael Jackson ODed on like the pin or something like that I don't know how to pronounce it and so I was I was sitting here thinking about this it's like okay and some of my notes are just very simple like avoid pills but it's like his greatest strength
might have wind up being his undoing his greatest weakness in the sense that he just worked so much harder and he had a high Talent or pain not realizing that that caused more injuries than necessary then his doctor say hey take it easy after surgery he doesn't take it easy he
goes back he's like this Relentless Drive in him and then it causes another surgery to happen and the more surgeries you happen the more drugs you have to happen the more drugs you have to happen the worse your decision making gets and so goes into now he's starting to be
distracted maybe he's distracted because he's also maybe he's interested maybe he just can't deal with the pressure but maybe he's also on a lot of uh pres prescription medication this is when he starts aggravating his injuries not from golf not from practice but from like
jumping out of planes and so they make the point that in 2007 you're going to think he's still amazing but his swing coaches and some of the the data they were collecting noticed that oh there's like a lag time between doing work that leads success and the success
but also failing before the failure by 2007 was the first time uh Haney started to think that Woods was closer to the end of his greatness than he was to beginning there were signs were too subtle to spot in tournaments they were more apparent in practice sessions and
in the shot dispersement charts kept in testing sessions Tiger's work habits began to slip there were more distractions the breakdown of Tiger's body uh as he was off often in physical pain and therefore taking pain medication were both attributed by his his caddy and his swing coach uh to his
extreme workout regimen and his fascination with Navy steel training they were pleading with him asking him please stop doing all this Navy steel stuff it's not good for your golf game tiger ignored them he stepped up his seal activities he started training in
army boots and going for military St military style runs while wearing a weighted vest tiger had both Williams and Haney or had told them both that he was thinking of leaving golf to pursue a career in the military tiger would do as many as 10 parachute jumps per day and
he admitted to a friend that he had injured his shoulder on one joke when he collided with a partner and so at 31 years old he's like all right maybe I'll just switch careers uh he says he was going to take concrete steps to qualify to join the Navy Seals but Haney pointed
out the tiger was 31 and the age limit for Navy Seals was 28 Woods insisted that they were making an exception for him and so he's pleading with him he's like what are you doing you're the best golfer in the world why would you do this doesn't Jack nichols's record mean
anything to you Woods stopped looked him in the eye and said no if my career ended right now I'm happy with everything that I've accomplished and so when I read this that might be true maybe it's true maybe it's he's under so much pressure and all this you know he's having a hard time it's got to be
disorienting what he went through and so one of my greatest one of my favorite quotes I discovered recently like probably like 20 episodes ago was from Charlie Monger Charlie says the problem isn't getting rich it's staying saying that human mind is not used to dealing
with extreme levels of success so few people are able to deal with extreme levels of success and actually stay sane and so they have an entire chapter on him dealing with pain this is where I wrote to myself avoid pills and tiger has like this internal monologue he's
like listen there's a difference between being hurt and being injured if I'm hurt I can deal with the pain pain is no big deal I can block that out but when I'm injured my body doesn't respond and this is the problem he's like he got taught he was played through pain his entire
life his first reported instance of using painkillers was in 2002 you can see highlights from his 2008 Masters appearance where he is like wincing they try to get him to quit and he says f f off I'm winning this tournament and he was using vicadin and I forgot something
else at least vicadin to manage the extreme pain that he had in his knees in during the master so he's had you know at least at that point half a decade maybe more of confirmed painkiller use and from all the medical professionals around tiger they're saying this doesn't
make any sense this is not possible they said it was hard to reconcile the condition of Tiger's knee with his performance he had won nine of his previous 12 tournaments and he had done it with a severely compromised left knee a few pages later this is the the inner
monologue of tiger again that's just what we do as athletes and competitors you have to deal with it uh it's trying to get up every day and knowing that you have to go in the gym and bust your butt and that it's going to hurt and you're going to put yourself in a different
place a different state of mind for me I just enjoyed that part of it and then both the book and the documentary do a great job of showing this this this very common arc uh he's coming up he's coming up he's coming up once he gets to the Pinnacle he's torn down we see him suffer we see him repent
he loses his you know his wife his family his endorsements then he starts working working his way back up the the Apex is when he wins his last major in 2019 his reputation today and present day is nothing like it was you know 15 years ago uh when all this happened and
I think one of the lessons and realizations he had after going through all this was actually a very positive one and one that you and I can use in our work and we'll end on what I think is one of the most important lessons in the entire book I learned one thing for
sure tiger said when I play golf again I'm going to play for myself I'm not going to play for my dad or for my mom or for my agent or for my caddy or for Nike or for my Foundation or for you or for the fans I'm going to play for myself and that is where I'll leave it
for the full story highly recommend buying the book and watching the documentary on HBO if you buy the book using the link that's in the show notes in your podcast you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time that is 301 books down 1,000 AO and I'll talk to you again soon