No: #9: Tiger, King David, & the Cost of Power

Dear Pards,

5’11”, 215 lbs, 6.4. Landscaper.

First thing I saw before loading up the mowers on Saturday morning was that Tiger wrecked his ride again. The news had me white-knuckling my F-150 the whole damn morning hauling a trailer from job to job. Shame to see a legend like that spiraling. Glad to see no one was hurt. Guy’s got more lives than my ex-wife’s cat. Pops hauled my ass to church for years and I still keep a leather-bound King James by the bed for when the mind won’t quiet after mowing lawns all day. Found myself flipping through it last night and it got me thinking: who’s the Tiger Woods of the Bible?

-Not Judging in Jupiter

Dear Not Judging,

One of the few memories I have of my late great-grandfather is him rocking in a La-Z-Boy in his retirement home next to a Bible on the windowsill. His old King James was always open to whatever Proverb matched the day’s date. I’ve always found it fascinating how wisdom from millennia ago can remain so relevant today.

The news of another Tiger crash sent déjà vu through my mind as I walked off the golf course Friday. I spent the weekend listening to the media’s reaction and sitting with my thoughts as more details emerged. The Shotgun Start crew had some thoughtful words on Saturday, and the NLU boys followed on their Sunday night pod. But I think Kyle Porter’s words in his Tuesday newsletter summed it up best.

When I first read your question, my mind went to Samson—a powerful figure undone by pleasure and the opposite sex. A man who took down lions with his bare hands, yet found himself constantly entangled with women who weren’t his wife.

There’s a version of Tiger in that.

That said, I ultimately landed on one of the most towering figures in all of ancient literature—the greatest king in Israelite history, and the standard against which every successor was measured for centuries: David.

Already sounds a lot like the man we use to set the benchmark for all modern-day golf achievements.

Whether you believe the Bible or not, I think the story of David bears striking similarities to the golfing GOAT so many of us grew up admiring.

Hear me out.

Roughly 3,000 years before a two-year-old Tiger ripped a one-wood on The Mike Douglas Show in 1978, a young David was told by the prophet Samuel that he would one day be the next king of Israel.

Prior to taking the throne, David is brought into the court of the current king, Saul, serving as both his musician and armor-bearer.

Got no Tiger comp for that one.

Israel’s implacable enemy, the Philistines (no relation to Phil), make plans to invade Israel, led by their giant soldier, Goliath. I can’t suggest with a straight face that Phil is a modern-day Goliath—though the first image that comes to mind is a large man in a Ford polo barely getting airborne with a leap on the 18th green at Augusta.

Goliath taunts Israel for 40 days, daring them to send someone to face him. David, still a teenager and without armor, steps forward to take on the giant. It reminds me of an interview Tiger did with Curtis Strange before his first pro start in 1996.

What follows is a period of dominance for David as a military leader of the Israelites. On one occasion, returning home from battle, women sang praises of his victories:

“Saul has struck down his thousands, and David his ten thousands.” (1 Sam. 18:7)

That pisses off Saul, still the sitting king, and it sparks years of attempts to have David killed. It doesn’t work. In the end, Samuel’s prophecy is fulfilled, and David becomes king.

I realize no one was after Tiger’s head, though the following words might have been heard from a Denny’s waitstaff in Augusta in April of 1997:

“Jack won six times, but Tiger just won by 12.”

In Tiger’s early career, the “Saul” figures were the old heads protecting the game, wary of a dominance they’d never seen before. It led to “Tiger-proofing” golf courses—which, ironically, only helped pave the way for his king-like 80-win reign in the decades that followed. Like David, Tiger did things on a golf course that no one else was willing or able to do, seeming to operate by his own set of rules—both on and off the course.

This is where things get interesting.

At the absolute peak of his power, David sees a married woman named Bathsheba bathing on a neighboring rooftop and… you guessed it—knocks her up while her husband is away at war. He then tries to cover it up by summoning her husband home, hoping he’ll sleep with his wife and the math will take care of itself.

Uriah, the husband, doesn’t take the bait. He refuses to sleep with his own wife while his men are still in battle—sounds like someone we’d call a “dude.” So David sends him back to the front lines to be killed in the heat of battle, only to then steal his girl.

And for a while, he gets away with it.

Scumbag.

Again, we’re not talking Tiger in a white Bronco on I-5. But the Escalade in Orlando, the Hyundai in L.A., and the Land Rover in Jupiter all tell the story of a man clearly dealing with demons off the golf course, while simultaneously putting the public in danger every time he gets behind the wheel.

Here’s where the stories start to differ.

A prophet named Nathan confronts David, telling him a story about a rich man who steals a poor man’s only lamb. David listens and delivers his verdict: that man deserves to die. Nathan looks at him and basically says, “That’s you, bro.”

David recognizes himself immediately. In that moment, his self-awareness shatters the mirror of denial, transforming him from a one-dimensional villain into someone worth understanding despite his flaws. While there is genuine penitence, there are still consequences for his past mistakes. The child born from the affair dies. His family falls apart. One of his sons even stages a full rebellion against him. He dies old, the kingdom intact, but his household is in pieces.

Though Tiger’s story rhymes with David’s, it is not yet resolved.

Had my great-grandfather been alive last Thursday, his window-sill Bible might have been open to words that felt like foreshadowing for what happened on Jupiter Island just a day later:

“Like a dog that returns to his vomit is a fool who repeats his folly.” (Prov. 26:11)

Well, his would of readeth a bit more King James-eth, but you get the gist. Like David, there are clear consequences to Woods’ decisions to date. A fractured family. A fractured body. Things that can’t be undone, regardless of future remorse or lack thereof. But his story isn’t finished.

What is crazy to me, is that after all the shit David did, God called him a “man after his own heart.” If that’s not hope for Tiger, and for the rest of us, I don’t know what is.

The question now is this: will Tiger find his Nathan? That one voice he can’t tune out? For a man who’s spent decades building walls against anyone who pushes back, who’s surrounded himself with yes-men, finding someone brave enough to hold up that mirror won’t be easy. When that moment comes, and it must, will he break open with genuine remorse like David? Or will he, as David’s son Solomon wrote in Proverbs, return to his vomit and repeat his folly?

For the sake of his soul, I hope it’s different this time.

P╞r╠℮

P.S. This week’s Postage Stamp is the 18th at Bay Hill, a place Tiger won eight times, by Dave Baysden. If you’d like a copy, you can grab it here.