MELBOURNE, Australia — The dark sedan backed into a spot next to the clubhouse at the Australian Masters earlier this month, trunk open, waiting to whisk Tiger Woods to the airport. Lingering behind the car was a friend who was still wrestling with divided loyalties — to Woods and his former wife.
They approached each other, awkwardly at first, then shared a quick embrace and quiet words.
Woods believes he finally is ready to move on after a self-destructive year that cost him his marriage, his mystique, millions in endorsements and, lastly, his No. 1 ranking.
What remains are relationships to repair, along with his golf game.
Still to come is Thanksgiving.
“I think it’s going to be great,” Woods said in an interview with The Associated Press. “I’m going to be with my family. My mom is going to be there. We’re going to have a great Thanksgiving. We’ve turned the corner, turned the page, and it’s time to move forward.”
Woods realizes the public might forever connect him and Thanksgiving with perhaps one of the most shocking downfalls in sports.
It started with the National Enquirer story of an affair with a nightclub hostess. Then came the still mysterious, middle-of-the-night accident last Nov. 27 when he drove his SUV over a fire hydrant and crashed into a tree beyond his driveway.
His wife tended to him in the street, the back windows of the Cadillac Escalade bashed in with a golf club.
On the 911 call was the chilling voice of his mother as she cried out, “What happened?”
One year later, that remains a relevant question.
Woods had spent 14 years carefully cultivating an impeccable image that brought him worldwide fame. Just like that, he went from being universally revered to roundly ridiculed.
“That’s fine, totally fine,” Woods said in Australia, leaning forward on a leather sofa, elbows resting on his knees. “I made my share of mistakes. People can look at that as what not to do, and if they choose to make fun of it, that’s fine. I can’t control that. All I know is that I can only control myself.
“And at that point in my life,” he said, “I wasn’t even able to do that.”
At a gala dinner in Melbourne’s Crown Towers, the same hotel where the nightclub hostess was spotted a year earlier, Woods shared the stage with Shane Warne, known as the Tiger Woods of Australian cricket, on and off the pitch.
Warne built his legend partly as a prolific womanizer.
“I think we’ve got a little bit in common,” Warne said with a smile, pausing for effect. “I love golf, too.”
Woods flashed an easy smile. It was the first time he has laughed publicly about such an embarrassing episode in his life, perhaps a sign that he had indeed turned the corner.
On the golf course? Not quite.
For the first time in his career, Woods didn’t win a single trophy. Instead, he shot the highest 36-hole score of his career and the highest 72-hole score of his career.
In so many ways, it was a year no one could have predicted.
The day after Thanksgiving started out like any other. Then came a crawler on the TV screen that was shocking: Tiger Woods seriously injured in a car accident.
The National Enquirer story suddenly had legs. Four days after the accident, Us Weekly linked him to a cocktail waitress in California who said she had 300 text messages to prove their 31-month relationship.
At least a dozen other allegations of affairs followed.
“It’s the new way of the media world,” Woods said. “It can happen very quickly. The world has gotten so much smaller. If this had happened to someone in the ’60s or ’70s, it wouldn’t have been as big. It wouldn’t have gone as global as fast. Our times have changed, and I totally get it.”
Woods headed to the Pine Grove Behavioral Health and Addiction Services, home of the Gentle Path sexual addiction program.
What did he learn about himself?
“How far I had slipped away from where I was as a kid, from how I grew up,” he said. “That was the sad part about it. It was a reality check and I learned a lot, unfortunately through a very painful process.”
In the past year, his biggest tournament check was $330,000; a year earlier, he had averaged $618,127 per tournament.
“My mind was not on that initially,” said Woods, who always said he only enters a tournament to win. “I had a lot of things I had to deal with in order to get myself in the winner’s circle. This summer was very difficult.”
When your wife is divorcing you, and two children are involved, some things simply can’t wait. A phone call from a divorce lawyer. A proposal to approve.
Asked how often that was the case last summer, Woods said, “Every day. It was difficult.
“I never would have thought I’d get divorced, but it became a reality,” he said. “Never thought I’d change swing coaches, and that became a reality. I’ve certainly had a lot of change.
“I’m not going to have my family around,” he said. “Business as usual? It is, but it’s not.”
He lost three major endorsements that cost him more than $100 million. His golf bag, once the most coveted billboard of all, has carried only his name. Mark Steinberg, his agent at IMG, said they are starting to test the market, and more business deals are expected.
What’s his appeal?
“Arguably the greatest golfer that’s every played,” Steinberg said. “Exposure. Rehabilitation. Changed man. Redemption.”
Woods took his first steps toward that last week when he wrote a guest column for Newsweek. He was a guest on ESPN Radio with “Mike & Mike in the Morning.” He began using Twitter.
But he remains stuck at 14 majors and 82 victories worldwide — four majors away from Jack Nicklaus’ record, one many once assumed Woods would surpass.
“I’ve got a career ahead of me still,” Woods said.
“I’m in a better place than I ever was. That’s the beauty of it. That’s what is fun and
exciting about the future.”