The biography that finally nails Tiger in all his glorious and wretched humanity won’t be done for a while, perhaps not till Tiger is dead.  While he’s alive, the people around him, the ones who each know a piece of the story, will be, for the most part, silent for fear of offending him. Tiger’s certainly too practiced a liar to expect him to come clean in the autobiography he’ll doubtless produce when the money to be made becomes sufficiently convincing.   But after he’s gone, as archives and courthouse files open up, as those who survive him tell their tales, a great work will be done. When it is, Hank Haney’s The Big Miss will be important source material.

Haney’s story is carefully limited. It’s neither his own nor Tiger’s life history. It is, instead, a memoir of his relationship with Tiger, from a nodding acquaintance when Tiger was a junior golfer to six years as his swing coach, from 2004 to 2010. He steers clear of some of the lurid aspects of that period, particularly Tiger’s serial philandering. Haney says he wasn’t there and he didn’t know. Given the cold self-absorbtion that apparently passes for friendship from Tiger, that seems entirely plausible. Tiger needed Haney for swing advice, and that was where their friendship started and ended.

But within that relationship of coach and client lie some of the keys to the epic tragedy that is Tiger Woods.  A few of them were picked up in the excerpt that Golf Digest featured. Haney describes Tiger’s obsession with the Navy SEALs and indicates that some of the injuries that have damaged his golf career came during SEAL training exercises that Tiger never disclosed to the public. Haney shows how the death of Earl Woods coincided with the beginning of both these military misadventures and the philandering.

It’s one of the fascinating contrasts between Tiger and Jack Nicklaus, whose record in the major championships Tiger is trying to surpass. Both lost their fathers at about the same point in their careers. But they reacted differently. Jack has stated that when his father died, he was in a fallow competitive period, having won nothing of consequence for several years. He vowed to rededicate himself and make his father proud. Tiger was at the top of the golf world when his father died. Tiger went off the rails.

Haney gives some other useful insights into his erstwhile client. (Not the least of them: Tiger was stingy enough to pay Haney a paltry $50,000 per year to be at his beck and call and arrogant enough to neglect to make Haney sign a non-disclosure agreement.) Haney goes into detail about the reasons for Tiger’s almost inexplicable desire to overhaul his swing, something he has done three times in his 15 years as a professional. Mere mortals might have been content to try to maintain the swing the mechanics Tiger had in 2000. Haney relates that to Tiger, “maintain” is a revolting term. In part, Haney writes, Tiger wanted to smooth out the flaw that sometimes, even in his best years, led to his “getting stuck” and spraying his tee shots. In later years, he needed to change his swing to reduce the stress on knees that were wearing out. But it’s also true that it’s hard to practice as many hours as Tiger practiced, hitting as many balls as Tiger hit, while just trying to repeat the same motion. He needed something to work on, something to change, if only to avoid going out of his mind from boredom. That segment of the future biography that dissects Tiger’s swing and its changes will be based in part on what Haney says here.

So will the parts that attempt to capture Tiger’s personality. It is, as Haney documents, cold and self-centered. Tiger either doesn’t know or doesn’t care about the small courtesies and pleasantries that most of us understand are part of a relationship. He wants what he wants when he wants it. Otherwise, don’t call him. He’ll call you when he needs you. The people in his life seem to be confined to functional compartments–coach in one, agent in another, caddie in another, wife in another.

Haney doesn’t know whether this is the way Tiger has always been, or whether this is the personality his talent and celebrity have imposed upon him. One can theorize that a happy, normal little boy slowly developed into the unpleasant, self-absorbed man because of the way the world, beginning with his parents, responded to his gifts. Maybe if he’d lost a limb in a car wreck at the age of eight and never played golf again, he’d be a nice guy to hang around with today. Maybe part of genius in any intensely competitive, individual field is a lack of empathy. (See Fisher, Bobby.)  Haney, to his credit, doesn’t speculate. He sticks with what he knows as he sticks it to Tiger.

And there is more than a bit of vindictiveness. Haney closes the book by saying that he appreciated the chance to work with Tiger and wishes him well. But the book’s too full of nasty little Tiger vignettes for that to be credible. Haney recounts in detail how Tiger would sit and play video games or watch TV on nights when Haney was staying in his house at Isleworth, disdaining conversation once they had left the practice range. Occasionally, he would get up, go to the fridge and get himself an ice pop. He never offered Haney one and Haney was too intimidated by Tiger’s self-absorption to ask. One can imagine Haney relating this story to his ghostwriter, Jaime Diaz, and grinning a tight little grin when he thinks about Tiger reading it.

He gives a multitude of reasons to think Tiger will not surpass the Nicklaus record of 18 majors. There’s his health. There’s the persistent problem with the driver. There’s the new problem with the putter.  And according to Haney, there’s a problem with desire. Tiger used to out-work everyone. He doesn’t any longer. As Haney notes, it’s rare that a golfer in his mid-30s can overcome these kinds of problems. And, as Haney says, Tiger has been competing at golf since he was a very small boy. Right now, he’s 36. But it’s an old 36.

If Haney’s right, it’s likely that eventual definitive biography will be written as an Icarus-like tragedy, the story of a boy with great gifts and fatal flaws, for a while the greatest golfer the world has ever seen–but, ultimately, a failure.

The four-leaf clover on my golf ball. Darren Clarke uses a shamrock to mark his balls, but his has only three leaves. Too bad, Darren.

I have, I must confess, been a bit of a dullard when it comes to the golfing ritual of marking my ball so it will be unique and identifiable. When I opened a sleeve of balls, I took a red Sharpie and put one red dot under the number of the first one, two under the second, and three under the third. When my foursomes tossed balls on the first tee to pick partners for a round, no one picked mine up and said, “Titleist with one red dot–way to mark it, Bob.”

http://anthonypioppi.com/golf/blog/474/ngf-says-1575-courses-closed-in-011-19-opened

It’s a recent report by my friend and TheAPosition.com colleague Tony Pioppi, putting some numbers on the decline of golf in America. Last year, 157.5 American golf courses closed and 19 opened. Since 2006, there has been a net reduction of 358.5 courses countrywide. (A 9-hole course is counted as half a course.)

What does that have to do with the Masters? In my opinion, it’s this: By stubbornly clinging to their no-girls-allowed membership policy, the members of Augusta National have become one of the reasons for the statistics in Tony’s post. In short, they’re part of golf’s problem, not part of the solution.

I don’t for a minute dispute Augusta’s contention that Americans have a right to private associations of their choosing. I understand that. I know that women and members of racial minorities form and join clubs to which men or members of other racial groups are not invited. And I know that goes for golf clubs, too. I have enjoyed playing as a guest at a couple of male-only clubs, Pine Valley and Burning Tree. While I would not personally want to join a club that bars anybody on the basis of gender (not that either Pine Valley or Burning Tree is about to invite me) I recognize their right to run their clubs as they see fit. But both Burning Tree and Pine Valley go out of their way to be truly private. They eschew publicity.

Augusta National, on the other hand, has arrrogated to itself a special role. It’s a role the club took on willingly, when it started the Masters back in the 1930s. It’s a role the club willingly keeps: the only venue that hosts a major championship each year. No other tournament attracts as much attention each year as the Masters does. Augusta National, for better or worse, is the face of the franchise in American golf.

As such, the club ought to recognize that it has special responsibilities. In some ways, it does. Players from countries just emerging into the golf world often receive special invitations, helping to grow interest abroad. Augusta could make a lot more money from the Masters than it does, but it opts to restrict the advertising minutes in each hour of the tournament telecast. And you won’t see corporate hospitality tents at Augusta Nationa, either. The club seems to recognize an obligation to honor the game as more than a marketing opportunity for American commerce.

Sadly, however, that sense of a special responsibility to the game doesn’t seem to extend to the club’s own membership policies. Every year, Augusta broadcasts to the American public that golf, at its core, is a game of privileged males who don’t want women in their ranks. The public hears this insulting message loudly and clearly.

The message from Augusta drowns out the message that the game tries to disseminate at other times of the year, through programs like the First Tee and Play Golf America. Golf wants to be seen as inclusive and welcoming. Golf recognizes that its health depends on attracting everyone. But, thanks to Augusta National, golf is like a politician who needs to attract Jewish votes, yet runs advertisements touting his endorsement by Mel Gibson.

I don’t think it’s a stretch to go from there to the statistics about closing golf courses. The National Golf  Foundation, an industry arm that compiled the numbers, suggested that the disappearing courses were mostly cheap public venues that won’t be missed. But that’s not the way it looks in my part of the counrty. Up the road from me, a daily fee course called Beechtree closed a few years ago because its owner decided he could make more money using the land for a housing development; Beechtree was a first-rate Tom Doak design. Every time I turn on a televised golf tournament, I see ads for private clubs that have fallen on hard times and are begging for new members, offering steep discounts, no initiation fees, etc.  I hear stories about other private clubs that have given up trying to attract members and sold themselves to public course operators.

I don’t doubt that the sagging economy has a lot to do with this. But I also know that in a sagging economy, women who bring in half or more of the family income have a lot to say about how that income is spent. And I suspect many of them, having heard the message of Augusta National, are damned if they’re going to spend anything on golf club memberships.

And it’s not just women. Young men who are now in their 30s and 40s, the prime time for joining a golf club, grew up watching their mothers go to work just as their fathers did. Their first soccer teams had both boys and girls. To many of them, a  sport that denies memberships to women in its most prestigious club seems as fusty and appealing as a 1948 Studebaker.

Other pillars of the American golf establishment have moved, sometimes reluctantly, to honor the game’s commitment to equal access and opportunity. The PGA Tour won’t put one of its events at a discriminatory club. The United States Golf Association has, in the past twenty years, started awarding the U.S. Open to public and resort courses as well as private clubs. Only Augusta National clings stubbornly to policies that  besmirch the game.

This week, there has been still more scrutiny of Augusta’s policies, because of a woman named Ginni Rometty. In January, she became the chief executive officer of IBM. IBM is a Masters sponsor, and its last few CEOs have been Augusta members. Augusta chairman Billy Payne might have defused the issue by gracefully introducing Ms. Rometty or some other woman as Augusta’s first female member during his annual press conference on April 4. He didn’t. He took the traditional, stubborn Augusta position that the club’s membership is its own damn business and it won’t be answering questions about it.

There’s an outside chance that the club will wait till the tournament is over and quietly introduce women into its ranks in a way and at a time of its own choosing.

If it doesn’t, the spotlight on Augusta’s membership policy will grow still brighter.

Of course, that won’t bother the men who call the shots at Augusta National. They’ll still have their immaculate golf course. They’ll still have an obsequious staff that discreetly fawns over them when they come to visit. They’ll still have the tournament every golfer most wants to win. What they won’t have is any true sense of responsbility for the health of the game they purport to love.

To me, it’s not the snoring roommate. It’s not the ground ball I hit off the first tee because my back is still stiff from sitting in coach. It’s not even the three-figure green fee on a course the locals pay $75 to play.

It’s traveling with my golf clubs.

Everything about the process irritates me. First, it’s stuffing the golf bag into the travel cover. Ever since golf bags got legs, that’s been like trying to stuff a plump, squirming child who doesn’t want to go out into a snowsuit that’s a size too small. Then it’s getting the bag into the car or cab, an endeavor that only a spinal surgeon could love. Then it’s schlepping the bag through the airport. I submit my clubs to the tender mercies of an airline, knowing there’s a chance the bag won’t make my tight connection in Atlanta, or will be lost, or that clubs will be broken. At the other end, even if none of these disasters have befallen me, I’ll be stuck at a luggage carousel for half an hour waiting until all the other bags have been unloaded. And in the last year or two, the crowning indignity–a $75 fee demanded by the airlines for putting myself through this misery.

One alternative–not playing golf–is unthinkable.

A second option–shipping the clubs via a carrier like FedEx–solves only a small part of the problem. I’ve still got to pack them and schlep them. I’ll avoid the wait at the luggage carousel, but I’ll have to do without the clubs for a few days before and a few days after the trip unless I pony up for overnight air freight. Even if I choose a slower shipment method, I’m still going to pay–probably more than the airlines charge.

So on a recent golf media trip to Cancun, I decided to try a third option–rental clubs.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d rented clubs, but the memories were infused with negative imagery: Bright orange bags with “RENTAL” written on them in big black letters. Mismatched clubs at least 15 years out of date. Clubs that seemed suited for grandmothers or lumberjacks, but not for me.

I’d heard that golf resorts were responding to the higher costs of flying with clubs by upgrading their rental inventories. And there was another factor that induced me to experiment. With no fewer than five brands represented in it, my own bag was looking very motley. I’d picked up clubs for particular purposes–a sand wedge here, a hybrid there. I’d gotten a new set of irons, then decided that the old ones in the garage were better. All 14 clubs had served me well at times, but they’d also let me down often enough that I didn’t feel I couldn’t possibly play without them.

My choice felt good from the moment the plane landed in Cancun and I walked off with my carry-on luggage, bypassing the baggage claim area.

In Mexico, I played four rounds with rental clubs. In addition to asking whether I was right-handed or left-handed, the golf courses wanted to know what kind of shaft flex I preferred. A second good sign: There were no orange bags. A third good sign: My clubs were always shiny, new or nearly new, and always a matched set. I got the regular shafts I asked for.

My first bag, at the Moon Spa & Golf Club, was full of Callaway Diablos. They were clearly “game improvement” clubs. The irons were offset to help slicers square the club face at the bottom of their swings. The cavities behind the iron faces were big and deep. The soles of the clubs were wide to make it harder to dig into the ground and hit fat shots. The set consisted of a driver, 3- and 5-woods, 4-9 irons, three wedges and a putter. I would have liked a hybrid with the loft of a 3-iron, but there wasn’t one.

I thought that the driver, like a lot of “game improvement” clubs, looked like it was built with a face that was closed a degree or two to combat slices. My first tee shot, a dead yank into the woods on the left, reinforced that suspicion. For the rest of the round, I weakened my grip and tried to align the face a bit on the open side every time I teed it up. The rented driver gave me roughly the same distance I got with my own. The irons also carried roughly the same distance as my regulars and I liked hitting them. They picked the ball off the turf nicely and the sweet spot seemed enormous. The putter, an Odyssey blade, was like my own Ping. It made a few, missed more. By the end of the day, I could attribute only two of my 80+ strokes to the rental clubs–that initial drive into the woods and a skulled bunker shot that I blamed on the unfamiliar bounce of the sand wedge.

On my next round, at the Playa Paraiso course at the Iberostar Hotel in Playa del Carmen, I drew Ping G-15 clubs. Like the Callaways, they were game improvement clubs with offset heads and heavy perimeter weighting. As with the previous set, there was no hybrid in the bag. But the driver seemed to have a neutral face. I had no problems playing with them and discovered a little bonus that comes with rented clubs. On the 17th hole, I pulled a ball off the fairway. I had a pebbly lie and my backswing was cramped by a banyan tee. With my own clubs, I probably would have declared an unplayable lie, if only for fear of gouging a clubhead or bending a shaft. But with the rental clubs, I blithely took a swing. I was reminded of one of the first lessons I’d been taught as a reporter for Associated Press: Never take your own car to cover a hurricane. Always rent one.

My third rental set was provided by the El Camaleon course at the Mayakoba resort. The clubs were TaylorMade Burner 2.0 irons and woods. They’re not the latest models TaylorMade offers; it’s a company that prides itself on frequent model changes. But the set came with a 21-degree hybrid that got the ball high in the air and landed it softly from about 180 yards out. I also got up and down a couple of times using the hybrid to bump the ball through a chipping area and up to the hole.

One of the few reservations I have about rental clubs involves hybrids. If a golfer is attached to them, he ought to check in advance to see if they’re available.

I liked the TaylorMades. In fact, I’m starting to feel the yen to get fitted for a set. But even if I buy them, I doubt that I’ll be taking them on the road that often.

If I’m flying off to play multiple rounds of competitive golf with some serious friends, I’ll probably still take my own clubs.  But if the agenda is just a casual round or two on a vacation, I won’t. Rental clubs are the way to go.

At this time of the year, though, my game isn’t quite as sharp, and I sometimes find myself inadvertently watching commercials. Which means, perforce, that I see a lot of Cialis commercials. Cialis sponsors televised golf for the same reason that Kaptain Krunch sponsors Saturday morning cartoons: it knows where to find its target audience. But as I watch, I have to wonder: What’s up with those bathtubs?

You may know the commercials I mean. If you don’t, here’s a synopsis:  Aging-but-still-athletic dude shares a moment with aging-but-still-hot spouse. The spark catches. And he’s ready and able, thanks to Cialis.

But then, in a visual representation of conjugal bliss, the winsome couple is always shown in separate white bathtubs, always outdoors. There’s no plumbing attached to these tubs, so we can assume that any water in them is cold. The tubs are only big enough for one middle-aged body to fit inside, no matter how lithe and attractive the body is in comparison to the middle-age norm. So we can assume that as long as the couple remains in these bathtubs, the most they can do is hold hands. And I wonder: Who thought separate bathtubs were supposed to be sexy? Wouldn’t it make more sense to show the happy couple together in, say, a nice, steamy hot tub?

But, what do I know? I also can’t figure out how Bubba Watson even occasionally hits the ball on the golf course with an action that looks to me like a ballet dancer with a nervous tic. I click on the remote. Rock and Doris fill the screen. Doris is wearing a hat that looks like the beehive on the state flag of Utah.

Now, that‘s hot.

A family threesome leaves the final green on the Lakes 9 at the Moon Spa & Golf Club

A well-guarded hole location on the second hole of the Jungle 9

A tough chip as the sun goes down on the Jungle 9, Moon Spa & Golf Club

Iguanas will usually let you play through if you ask politely

The green on the second hole of the Dunes 9 slopes from front to back

There are lots of ways to play No. 7 at Riviera Cancun, but they all involve water

Some of the hazards at Riviera Cancun are alive

I personally don’t buy this. I do think Jack’s designs have become more playable. But I don’t think it’s because he’s getting older. I think it’s because he listens to his customers. He’s been in the design business long enough to be doing renovations of courses he designed twenty and thirty years ago. When the members tell him that they want him to change this or that aspect of their home course, Jack learns. He’s also become part of the effort to reverse the stagnation in American golf participation. So he knows that among the reasons people cite for playing less or giving up the game entirely are that rounds of golf take too long and the game is too hard.

An egret fishes in a marsh by the 9th fairway

That’s not to say Riviera Cancun is short, dull, or easy. It’s not. It can stretch to 7,060 yards, though the white tees come in at a comfortable 6,200 yards and the reds at 4,913. It’s got acres of water and mangrove swamps (along with an impressive array of wildlife living in those habitats). But when water is in play, as it is on 10 of the 18 holes, the layout is such that the prevailing winds will nudge your ball in the direction of the fairway, not the hazard. The course has holes that require thought by providing multiple options to the player. What it doesn’t have: long, forced carries off the tees, front bunkers guarding greens and long bunker shots to greens on par 4s.

A gray-necked wood rail poses in the wetland near the 15th tee

I also liked the 9th, a par 5 of 529 to 437 yards. A wetland crosses the fairway about 320 yards from the back tee. It’s in play for bombers who want

Artifice: Playing the blind third shot at Playa Paraiso's 18th hole

Can't get there from here: The green at No. 4

Crater-like fairway bunkers at No. 8

And Playa Paraiso abounds in artifice. Fairway bunkers can be shaped like craters on the moon. Greens can have roller-coaster slopes so severe that once a ball rolls over them and starts downhill, it’s not stopping for a while. If the pin is cut close to the slope, too bad. There’s a horeshoe-shaped green at No. 4 where you can’t putt from one side to the other because of an intervening pot bunker. The fairways have dramatic ups and downs and on several holes, the player can’t see the landing area for his tee shot.

There is an interesting take on the short, risk-reward par 4 at No. 13. It plays no more than 283 yards, but the green is hidden from the tee by humps mounds and no fewer than nine bunkers. The green is narrow, particularly at the front, and falls away sharply to tightly-mowed chipping areas.

Classic: No. 6, a par 3 around a pond

There’s out of bounds left and a patch of woodland right. It’s possible to hit a long, straight drive to that just misses the green, then make bogey or worse if your short game lacks finesse and touch.  There are a couple of places to lay up, but they’re guarded by deep bunkers. Altogether, it’s a hole requiring precision.

The cenote in the first fairway at El Camaleon

Smack in the middle of the first fairway at El Camaleon, on the Yucatan coast south of Cancun, there’s a cenote that says a lot about the intentions of  the course’s designer, Greg Norman. A cenote is a sinkhole, caused by eons of underground water eroding and washing away the soft limestone bedrock in this part of Mexico. The cenote on No. 1 at El Camaleon shows a wide mouth, a dry floor covered in gravel, and then drops away into a black hole that looks like it could lead all the way to China. It’s an impressive hazard.

The gallery behind the green at No. 7

But it’s the cenote’s location that makes it a great golf course feature. The first hole is a par 5, 554 yards from the tips and 532 yards from the white tees. The cenote is roughly 300 yards from the back tee. This means that the bomber who wants to reach the green in two has to deal with it. His drive will be landing right around the cenote. But the average player, hitting from the white tees, almost certainly can’t reach it. He can aim right at it if he wants. On his second shot, only a miserable foozle will be at risk of falling through to the Orient.

This kind of thoughtful use of natural features can lead an architect toward golf’s Holy Grail–a course that challenges the pros and yet remains playable and fun for the duffer. It’s an ideal that is probably unreachable, like breeding a horse who can both serve as a pony at kids’ birthday parties and win the Kentucky Derby. But Norman has come laudably close at El Camaleon.

A roseate spoonbill peers into a canal near the course

On the other hand, I played the course the day after the tournament ended, and I can attest that for the average player (and my game is very average) El Camaleon is an enjoyable round of golf. There’s nothing extreme or tricked-up about the course. The turf is plush. Forced carries are easily manageable from the appropriate tees. There are many places where water or impenetrable jungle or even a limestone ledge impinge on the playing area, but the corridors are generally wide. It’s not hard to keep the ball in play. Though I didn’t come close to the mid-80s score my handicap suggests I should have had, that was primarily because:

a) I usually played away from pins tucked near hazards and frequently three-putted as a result; and

A limestone ledge bounds the 11th fairway

Mayakoba is an extensive resort complex, owned by a Spanish corporation. There are presently three hotels on the site–a Fairmont, a Rosewood and a Banyan Tree. They’re all luxurious, and from their balconies and private pools a guest can see a tremendous variety of avian life as well as the fairways of the golf course and the jungle around it.