Tiger Tells Tale Of First Year Woods Says He Loves Golf More Than Ever

Tiger Woods shifted in his seat, a twinkle coming to his eyes and that magnificent smile melting away the game face he hides behind so well.

“You know what I miss?” Woods said about his life before becoming one of the world’s most famous athletes.

“I miss having a beer with the guys in the dorm,” he said about his days at Stanford, the excitement building in his voice. “I miss seeing my friends again after a long vacation and trading stories about what we did.”

At times, when Woods makes a point that truly astounds him, his eyes roll toward the ceiling and he exhales that long woosh as he does so often before an important shot.

“I miss sitting around with a bunch of the guys and talking about Descartes for three hours,” he said of the French philosopher. “How many time does that happen on tour?”

Woods, speaking Wednesday at Bay Hill Country Club with a dozen sports writers, painted his first full year on the PGA Tour as more exhausting than anticipated but a success he intends to build upon.

“I love playing golf more than I ever have,” he said, shaking his head when asked if the year eroded his passion for the game. “No one can get to me out there.

“When I get to the range it’s, ‘Ah, here we go,”’ he added, his hands instinctively coming together in a golf grip and his arms making a graceful half swing. “I’d like to dominate the game. I’d like to be able to make golf one of the core sports of America along with basketball and football.”

For most of the three-hour conversation Woods came off as an intelligent, articulate college senior - which he should be - longing for a normal life while trapped inside a $100 million shell of fame.

“I think 99.9 percent of the people forget that I am 21,” Woods said.

Woods said he was accidentally stabbed twice this year by pens in the crush for autographs, once dangerously close to his left eye.

“I have grandmas grabbing me and saying, ‘Sign this for my grand kid,”’ he said. “That doesn’t happen to Arnold (Palmer) and Jack (Nicklaus) because of the respect factor. People don’t push and shove them.”

While appreciative of his wealth and privilege - “I get free Bulls tickets and get to go to the front of the line at nightclubs” - he is still also a kid who played pingpong for hours to pass the time while on his way to his record Masters victory last April.

And he is amazed at the public’s hunger for details of his personal life.

“After a while the public doesn’t want to know how good I hit a 5-iron,” he said. “They want to know what I do off the course. That part gets a little intrusive.”

Clearly, his biggest challenges have been guarding his privacy and budgeting his time. He has avoided one-on-one interviews and initially opposed this session with writers, his most intimate talk with the golf media since bursting on the pro scene 15 months ago.

“I was apprehensive in doing this,” he said. “Are you looking for me to slip up and then you write about it?”

Woods got testy twice during the conversation. Once, when he referred to writers who have suggested that Earl Woods may have given his son no choice in becoming a golfer. Another time, when discussing a player’s reaction to Woods’ brief indecision over involvement in a charity event.

Woods won the first tournament of 1997. Then he pushed golf onto the front pages by becoming the youngest and first non-white Masters champion, winning by an astounding 12 strokes.

He won his next tournament and by early July had won four times. But that would be his last victory of the year.

“I definitely hit a wall right around the U.S. Open mentally, and physically toward the end of the year,” he said. “Trying to understand everything that was happening in my life wore me out mentally.”