The Emotional Miseducation of Tiger Woods
“I might be sorta like a Michael Jordan in basketball,” a teenage Tiger Woods says featured in a new documentary on the legendary American golfer. Moments before, Woods suggested he could one day overshadow the veteran player Jack Nicklaus: “I might be even bigger than him—to the Blacks.” Such brazen statements pepper most sports documentaries, and HBO’s incorporates many hallmarks of the genre. We hear the young Woods predict his impending reign. In contemporary interviews, cultural commentators, journalists, and the athlete’s peers reflect on his decades of greatness. Clips of the prodigy holding a club in his unsteady hand give way to footage of him striding through—and dominating—verdant golf courses around the world. The ascent is clear: An uncertain child
