...a confident and substantial book that’s nearly as sleek as a Christopher Nolan movie. It makes a sweet sound, like a well-struck golf ball. I found it exhilarating, depressing, tawdry and moving in almost equal measure ... This book is littered with the bodies of those Woods cut out of his life without a thank you or goodbye — girlfriends, coaches, agents, caddies. If you stripped most of the golf out of this book, you might sometimes think you are reading the biography of a sociopath, a nonmurderous Tom Ripley or Patrick Bateman or Svidrigailov from Crime and Punishment ... This intense book gives us Woods’s almost mythical rise and fall. It has torque and velocity, even when all of Woods’s shots, on the course and off it, begin heading for the weeds.
...[a] rich, thorough, and depressing new biography ... The most depressing episodes of the book are those that follow the revelations about his adultery, when it becomes clear he didn’t learn much from hitting rock bottom ... one can’t help but question whether these changes too are a product of the same old carefully constructed PR operation—feeding the press corps just enough morsels to launch the narrative that he’s become a better person. It’s a temptation that even Tiger Woods, a book that so rigorously avoids convenient narratives for its first 403 pages, succumbs to in its final paragraph.
It’s hard to know whether to give the co-authors of Tiger Woods an approving review or a consoling hug. Their task was intimidating: to illuminate a subject who spent decades plying his considerable intelligence into relentless opacity and manufactured dullness ... Staring down high hurdles, the authors deliver lush detail, from a depiction of the walls of Woods’s kindergarten to his 'dimly lit' room on the eve of the magical 2000 U.S. Open ... It is an achievement to captivate readers with a story about something as stultifying as golf equipment ... Many details will be illuminating, except to the most knowledgeable of Woods students ... Despite its occasional blips, Benedict and Keteyian have turned out a book of surpassing quality against untold odds.
...the authors have laid out a saga that is part myth, part Shakespeare, part Jackie Collins, plus a touch of ESPN and a larger touch of the Lifetime channel ... Messrs. Benedict and Keteyian bring us along for the ride in a whirlwind of a biography that reads honest and true. The future is up to the subject of their prose.
Any teacher or coach who’s dealt with a problem child — which is to say all of them — will tell you that once you meet the parents, you understand why the kid’s the way he is. That’s the dark thread running through Tiger Woods, the exhaustively researched saga of the meteoric rise and Shakespearean fall from grace of the greatest golfer of our time ... But as unsparing as they are in chronicling their flawed hero’s shortcomings and peccadillos, Benedict and Keteyian spend the final pages of Tiger Woods looking for signs of redemption — or, at the very least, a path to more trophies — in recent glimpses of a new (or newly chastened) Tiger who smiles more often and no longer cows would-be rivals and sportswriters with the death stare he learned as a teenager.
...[a] fascinating and highly readable new biography ... Benedict and Keteyian have produced a volume rich in its analysis and exposition of a life of fame and tragedy. It is, in turn, depressing and exhilarating, while endlessly fascinating. If you have any interest in Tiger Woods, golf, or the culture of celebrity and heroism, this volume will be worth your while.
The inside stories of his golf feats are fascinating, but it is the personal side of Woods’ story that provides the crux of this book ... Of course, there are frank details of Woods’ infidelities while married to his wife, Elin, all of which eventually were played out in the harshest of public eyes. Ultimately, the authors seek to explain how Tiger Woods became who he is, both on and off the golf course.
