Tiger Woods portrayed as never being satisfied

TIGER Woods’ fascination with the Navy SEALs and how he might have incurred his leg injuries are sure to generate plenty of buzz when Hank Haney’s book goes on sale next week.

There also is plenty of gossip involving other players, such as the time Ian Poulter invited himself to ride home on Woods’ plane after a practice round at Oakmont. But there is a bigger picture in The Big Miss, which chronicles the six years Haney spent as his swing coach.

He shows Woods to be a complicated person who sought change to keep stimulated, who was rarely satisfied, self-centered in his pursuit of greatness and whose work ethic in the gym was geared toward being accepted as an athlete.

“In Tiger’s mind, satisfaction is the enemy of success,” Haney writes. The book goes on sale next Tuesday and it has already been getting plenty of attention because of a few sections that raise questions about how Woods injured his leg.

Haney cites Corey Carroll, one of Woods’ closest friends, as saying that Woods injured his right Achilles tendon doing Olympic-style weightlifting as he returned from reconstructive knee surgery in December 2008.

Haney also tells of a woman who approached him during an outing in Minnesota last year. Her husband was a Navy SEAL in California and told her Woods came in for training in 2007 at a Kill House – an urban-warfare simulator – and “got kicked pretty hard in the leg, and I think he hurt his knee pretty bad.”

Haney said that matched a story from Carroll, who said Woods revealed to him that the complete tear of his left knee ligaments really happened in a Kill House when he had lost his balance and been kicked in the knee.

“My immediate thought upon hearing Corey’s account, which so closely paralleled that of the woman in Minneapolis, was that it was true,” Haney writes.

“And if so, it meant that if Tiger never catches Jack Nicklaus, it will very likely have as much to do with the time and physical capacity he lost as a result of his bizarre Navy SEALs adventure as anything else.”

The injuries are relevant because Woods has had four surgeries on his left knee, and he withdrew from his last tournament two weeks ago with tightness in his left Achilles tendon. That’s the same one that caused him to miss two majors last year. Woods said it was only a mild strain, and he is scheduled to play for seven days in a row this week, including at Bay Hill.

While the injuries are timely, the rest of the book is sure to satisfy the curiosity of golf fans – particularly those who have watched Woods win at a record rate and to whom he has revealed so little over the years.

Haney said Woods ignored phone calls when they started working together, but later began returning text messages. Haney said he was not aware of Woods’ extramarital affairs, except for Woods making the occasional comment about a woman he saw in the gallery. He also wrote that Woods told him his ex-wife wanted him to take two years away from golf after his serial adultery was exposed.

“I wanted to write the book about my observations of greatness, an athlete superior to his competition,” Haney said. “Obviously, people will have their thoughts. But when people read the book in its entirety. . . if Tiger read the book, in his heart, he’d have to say it’s an accurate portrayal, and it’s honest.”