Twenty-three years ago, I woke up in a jail cell withdrawing from heroin.
Next week, I’ll be at Augusta National.
God has a sense of humor.

My time in recovery has given me a closer relationship to pain than I’d prefer. Once I recovered, I became involved in other people’s pain & I’ve come to understand much of the human condition through this lens.

My career at Nike gave me close relationships with athletes, agents and the business of sports. What I learned working with these larger than life figures is that, despite their accolades & awards, they are human. More human and broken than many of us imagine, and they are not immune from pain. (we mortals included)

Which leads me to Tiger Woods…

The Gift & The Curse
What do we love about Tiger Woods?
He defies the odds. He is stubborn, maniacal, cold and calculated, exciting and unpredictable. He is capable of figuring it out when no one else can. He is full of bravado and the exception to every rule.
The same traits that made him the greatest golfer who ever lived are, in many ways, the exact traits that have kept him isolated and alone.

What Most People Get Wrong About Addiction
There's a study about addiction you've probably heard. Rats given access to cocaine quickly begin choosing it over food, water, and sleep. The conclusion everybody drew: drugs are so powerful and leave you destitute if you try them.

But the study left out a critical detail.

Those rats were alone. Pulled from their families. Stripped of everything familiar.
When researchers ran the experiment again — this time placing the rats in what they called "rat park," with community, connection, and the things that make life feel worth living — none of them chose the cocaine.

The takeaway that Johan Hari drew in his great TED Talk was: “The opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is connection.”
I'm not here to diagnose Tiger Woods. I'm not his doctor. But, I have spent 20 years witnessing how pain drives our behavior when it has nowhere to go.

Discussions about Painkillers & the opioid epidemic are often misunderstood. Most people’s experience is that you take them for physical pain, you may feel groggy after a few days, and stop. And that's true… if physical pain is temporary and your only problem.
But if you carry trauma, grief, spiritual emptiness, deep loneliness…. These drugs treat all of that too. Remarkably well.

Tiger has had seven back surgeries [that we know of], Twenty-plus procedures on his legs and other parts of his body. He nearly lost his leg after a car accident in 2021. He has lived inside physical pain for over a decade. But the spiritual pain probably goes much deeper.

The Isolation of Exception
I can think of no athlete who has lived in more isolation than Tiger Woods. He has been in a bubble his entire life. Some of it by his own making- he is, by every account, an extreme introvert.

Tiger has no peer. That's not a metaphor, it's a massive problem. There is no one who can look him in the eye and say I know exactly what this is like.

There were child prodigies & good golfers & Black golfers before him, but Tiger has never claimed a singular racial identity. He is, by his own description, “Cablinasian” (a combination of Caucasian, Black, Native American, and Asian). Perhaps never fully at home in any single community. Never quite belonging to a ready-made group.

The people allowed into his orbit have either broken his trust or been cut off entirely. Several have written tell-all books. The only constant is his longtime agent Mark Steinberg - a relationship with an obvious financial dimension. His caddies, coaches, business partners have cycled through. Even Notah Begay, often cited as his oldest friend, has a TV commentary career built largely around one question: What is Tiger Woods really like?
Every relationship near him has a transactional layer. And the few people he's let in without one, he's hurt through his vices & self destruction.

The Savior Nobody Can Save

Tiger Woods does not move the needle in golf. He is the needle.
Last week TGL got a 2x ratings boost because Tiger showed up and hit twelve shots into a simulator screen. Twelve shots. The entire golf business hangs in the balance for him. There are so many people counting on him to bring eyeballs, drive ratings, draw crowds, boost businesses.

I'm not sure he's ever experienced the feeling of being able to count on others.
He is the savior of golf. And yet no one can seem to save him.

The Failures of Fame
We are not built to be worshipped.

It distorts us. This is documented across millennia, the modern era has simply accelerated the damage. Tiger was raised in a fishbowl as a social experiment: poked and prodded until he roared and dominated. But what remains after the roaring stops?

Michael Jordan, who may understand Tiger’s place better than anyone, once said about him: “He has no companion. He has to find that happiness within his life. He's gonna have to trust somebody.” That's MJ. The one person on earth who might understand the weight Tiger carries. And his verdict wasn’t about golf. It was about isolation.

Michael had a father devoted to him, but also to his mother. He had teammates. He seems to have kept a circle of real friends throughout his career and after it. Tiger & the people around him ran the MJ playbook, but the game had radically changed between their apexes. Tiger was one of the last truly dominant monoculture athletes and one of the first to come of age in the social media era. Even Michael Jordan didn't have to survive Twitter.
Then there's the Earl Woods factor. It is well documented that Tiger loved his father deeply. It is less documented that he hated that his father cheated on his mother. And then, as so often happens with the wounds we inherit, he replicated it exactly. The thing we most despise in the people we love has a way of becoming the thing we can't escape in ourselves. Recovery teaches you this the hard way.

What Recovery Actually Requires
The factors that enable healing are not complicated, but they are demanding. And not the type you can force your body through. Vulnerability. Accountability. Empathy. Close friendships with no transactional layer. Self-reflection. Consequences that are real enough to produce actual change.

Tiger has shown some of these over time. He’s handled fame & shame better than most of us would. The 2019 Masters, his comeback after most everyone had written him off, was one of the most stunning sports moments of our lifetime. He was the exception to the rule, one more time. But winning a major doesn't heal what's underneath. It only covers it. Like any achievement, it works powerfully, effectively …but temporarily.

My hope is that Tiger can find healing, not only in his body, but in his mind & his soul, so he doesn’t feel compelled to kill the pain any longer.

This was posted after I wrote this & is a great sign.

Education:

My latest YouTube Video breaks down Bad Rebrands…and How to Save Them! I got to go onsite with a Cracker Barrel shoot and see how they’re regaining trust with people through comfort food and football. They’re doing NIL Deals with Offensive Linemen in college and I even got to chat with Quenton Nelson, the Colts legendary Olineman!

The BrandFathers new episode is out! We compare PR in the modern age and the shifting landscape, plus The Fanatics Flag Football League and much more.

Inspiration:

Wright Thompson is my favorite writer and much of the content above is referenced from his bombshell piece on Tiger above.

Get your Masters education started early with this incredible series from the Golfer’s Journal! Listen to 5 parts of the founding of the best event in sports.

Blessings:

I’m in a life stage where I am constantly trying to remain deeply present because of the goodness of it… while holding closely the fragility of it all.

The stage of my kids & family life.

The projects I’m working on.

The experiences I’m being invited to (and often having to say no to).

The opportunities ahead & in motion.

My health after dealing with serious sickness last year.

I am very grateful - especially if you read this far. You are the reason I’m getting to do lots of these things, so thank you 🙏