On April 14, 2019, a wicked Chicago ice storm swept over the McCormick Convention Center greeting Jedis with their lightsabers, princesses in their cinnamon bun wigs, and Sith Lords, some with what sounded like asthma, at the “Star Wars” celebration. About 860 miles separate Chicago from Augusta, Georgia; nevertheless, two marquee events stood still.
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I waited in a packed McCormick Center bar, avoiding the replicas of Rey’s staff from hitting my head, as every television was tuned to the Masters. The former golden boy Tiger Woods—he who once shunned so bright but is now so fallen—had not won a major championship since 2008. Yet he still had the power to captivate. On this blustery Chicago day, mere weeks before the promise of spring delivers the elations of summer, Woods lined-up a putt for bogey on the 18th hole to win the Masters.
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Woods, the golfing great known simply as Tiger, had spent over a decade licking his self-inflicted wounds before his return to these familiar greens. Before the sex scandals, the divorce, and the DUI—before he became his current shell—he dominated the pastoral sport with the same intensity as Michael Jordan brought to the basketball court. His meteoric rise and his Icarus-like fall is the stuff of Greek tragedy. It’s the hero’s journey (even though this hero might be the villain). And it’s the son answering for the sins of the father. Directors Matthew Hamachek and Matthew Heineman study all that and more in their two-part HBO docuseries, “Tiger,” a riveting series about a savant compartmentalizing his emotional voids that never quite gets us in the hole.
Hamachek and Heineman tee off with a tearful Earl Woods, Tiger’s father, honoring his son at the 1996 Haskins Collegiate Awards Banquet. As the lens fixes on Earl, for a while, until the camera whips toward a solemn Tiger, this celebration’s atmosphere seesaws between a eulogy and an anointment. From the moment Earl took a two-year-old Tiger on television to show off his inchoate skills to Bob Hope and Jimmy Stewart, ironically, the bastions of white America, his father has believed his son fated for greater heights. “He will transcend this game and bring to the world a humanitarianism that’s never been seen before,” a prideful Earl proclaims at the banquet. The statement would be silly, detrimental even, if not for the teen’s already Herculean talents.
In the 90-minute Part 1 of “Tiger,” Hamachek and Heineman autopsy a father-son relationship that more resembles Frankenstein and his monster than a familial bond. Home videos, which see Earl playing mind games with Tiger on the course, recall how the elder Woods did not raise his son, but manufactured him. The other revealing home videos, taken by Tiger’s ex-girlfriend Dina, also show a shy, beaming, genuine teenager playing air-sax or preparing for his prom. The sudden end to their relationship, some shocking manipulation that finds the once-sweet Tiger as empathetic as a college denial letter, demonstrates the tight grip the elder Woods held.
While Part 1 concludes with the golfer’s proclamation of being ‘Cablinasian,’ and is consumed by Earl’s belief that his son might become a bridge between races, Hamachek and Heineman aren’t as concerned with Tiger’s ambivalence with regards to his Blackness. And though the filmmaker’s spotlight the younger Wood’s rejection of his father’s rainbow coalition dream, and how he only leaned into his Blackness during an advantageous but brazen Nike ad campaign, they don’t approach the subject with the same depth as seen in “The Last Dance” or “OJ: Made in America.” Those offered the economic reasons behind MJ and OJ’s apolitical stances. But “Tiger” brushes past the internal racial conflict the golfer must have felt in the face of his father positioning him as an American racial messiah in lieu of sports highlights.
The docuseries is also missing Woods’ contemporaries. The golfer’s mythos hinges on his impenetrable mystique on the golf course, a killer instinct that routinely debilitated his opponents on the final day of any given major. But barring Sir Nick Faldo and Rocco Mediate, who’s his typical hammy self, we have little sense of what made Woods so intimidating. What was his reputation among golfers, not just as an athlete, but as a person? What was it like seeing him go to work at his craft? The filmmakers try to fill these blind spots with revealing interviews from the reporters who covered him. These efforts come up short.
The 100-minute Part 2 is no more detailed: Tiger separates from his father, begins training with Navy Seals, marries Elin, and endeavors on sex-fueled escapades in Las Vegas. Hamachek and Heineman never deviate from their thesis: Tiger’s unhealthy relationship with his father groomed a psychopathic winner capable of demolishing his competition by compartmentalizing his emotions to the point of personal self-destruction.
Unlike Luke Skywalker, however, not every problem traces back to Tiger’s father. Though it did whet his appetite for white blonde women, it didn’t cause him to denounce his Blackness or sever ties with his longtime caddy Steve Williams (who is interviewed in the docuseries). The filmmakers are far too myopic with their subject.
In “Tiger” there are of course triumphs. Seeing the golfer at his peak—fist-pumping among the impassioned gallery, completing his incredible Tiger Slam, limping his way with a broken leg to victory at the 2008 U.S. Open—is a honey suckled trip down memory lane for his fans. The conclusion, his return to glory at the 2019 Masters, where he hugged his children, is equally as rousing. But Hamachek and Heineman make the same mistake as Woods: They buy into the heroic resurrection of Woods without fully excavating his villainous journey.
While they do have one hand each tied behind their backs—they were unable to interview Elin and his influential mother Kultida; Woods gives the briefest sit-downs—it’s all too threadbare, one-note, or reliant on the aura of Woods’ story to carry our attention. Instead, Hamachek and Heineman’s docuseries “Tiger” misses the fairway for the rough. [C]
“Tiger” Part 1 debuts on HBO on January 10.