Originally Posted by Daveinjax
Tiger was was a guy who was never comfortable in his skin. He played golf because of his father and it is what he’s always done. I read where he wanted to join the military and be a special forces guy at one point.


Wouldn't doubt it. His old man served our nation honorably, I've read.

"Earl Dennison Woods was born March 5, 1932, in Manhattan, Kan., raised there and went to college there — at Kansas State, which granted him a scholarship as a baseball catcher. At the time he was the only black athlete in the Big Seven (now the Big 12). He earned a degree in sociology in 1953, joined the Army in 1954 and stayed 20 years. He did two tours of duty in Vietnam and attained the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Green Berets."

On his folks: "Tiger Woods’ guiding lights were a bull of man — his father, Earl — and a tiny woman — his mother, Kultida.

Together, they helped shape the kid he was and the man he would become. But it wasn’t the infantry officer who served two combat tours during the Vietnam War and was a member of the elite U.S. Army Special Forces who was the disciplinarian. No, the shortest member of the Woods household held sway.

“As we said in our family, my mom was the hand, and my dad was the voice. I could negotiate with him, but not with my mom. There was no middle ground with Mom,” Woods wrote in The 1997 Masters: My Story (Grand Central Publishing) released March 20. With Canadian Golf Hall of Fame writer Lorne Rubenstein, Woods reflects on his life inside and outside the ropes that led to his historic march to the green jacket in 1997.

In an exclusive interview with USA TODAY Sports, Woods said his parents never pushed him to play golf and never were disappointed no matter what score he shot. The two were equally influential when it came to his studies, curfew and his treatment of others."

Golf has never held more than a passing interest for me, but I applaud any guy who is able to rise from the ashes--even if the ashes were a result of a fire he started himself--and push through and succeed in the highest level after years of being written off.