Tiger Woods is far more interesting as a person than as a golfer

Two Tiger Woods stories, to start:

2009. East Lake Golf Club, Atlanta. Tiger Woods is walking along the narrow fairway of the 18^th hole, just two strokes away from winning the Tour Championship. His eyes seethe beneath the brim of his black TW ballcap, locked on the flagstick ahead. A six-year-old boy is trying to get his attention, waving and calling out “Hi Tiger Woods! Hi Tiger Woods!” Woods glances in the boy’s direction, nods almost imperceptibly, and walks on. In his wake, fans congratulate the boy for getting even that miniscule reaction out of Woods.

2015. The Old Course at St. Andrews, Scotland. Woods has just putted out at the 9th hole, late in the afternoon on the second day of the Open Championship. Long shadows from grandstands and the town’s nearby buildings are stretching across the links. Woods is already 16 strokes off the lead, nine holes from missing the cut in yet another major. But the few fans left applaud him, one shouting, “You got this, Tiger!” Woods looks up into the quarter-full grandstands, mouths “Thank you,” and doffs his cap. He smiles a resigned smile, and his eyes are lined and weary.

Time to admit the truth: we used Tiger Woods. You, me, all of us. We spent the last 18 years turning Woods into whatever we needed him to be: Savior of golf. Battering ram against the sport’s inherent whiteness. Marketing juggernaut. Family man. Philanderer. Disappointment. Icon. Failure. There was an element of truth to all of these one-dimensional facets, but only an element.

Tiger Woods used “Tiger Woods,” too. He knew the weight his presence carried in the clubhouse and with golf’s governing bodies. He could intimidate in minor ways—walking off the green while his opponent had yet to putt, taking the whole gallery with him in a distracting mass exodus, for instance. Through his handlers, he could stiff-arm media and strong-arm sponsors, negotiating the deals that made him a billionaire while showing only a carefully crafted, deliberately bland persona to the world.

Now, though, Woods has nothing left to lose. And that means there’s nothing left to use.

Tiger Woods’ Hero World Challenge is underway, and Woods is now as much a part of the proceedings as Arnold Palmer is at the Arnold Palmer Invitational: a name on the tournament, not the leaderboard. It’s a loaded event – Jordan Spieth, Bubba Watson, Adam Scott, Rickie Fowler and Zach Johnson are all in attendance – and yet this particular tournament deserves to be remembered not for what was done on the course, but what was said beforehand.

In a pair of remarkable interviews – one as part of a press conference, one a Time magazine Q&A – Woods revealed more about himself than he has in decades, and in so doing immediately became a far more fascinating, and complete, individual, than he’d ever been before.

Woods’ press conferences are boring as hell. He’ll spend plenty of time filibustering about club selection and course analysis, spooling out rote recitations about the “process” he’s going through to improve his game and the “reps” he needs to get back to his championship level, which is right around the corner, guaranteed. Even after a disastrous round—of which there have been many—Woods always insists that he’s right there, that salvation and validation are at hand, that he’s going to begin stacking majors like firewood any minute now.

Until this week. For the first time in…years? Ever? Woods conceded that he had no idea what lay ahead for him. Woods has undergone three surgeries on his back in the last 20 months, and now has difficulty even walking for long stretches.

“That’s the hardest part for me, is that there’s really nothing I can look forward to, or build towards,” Woods said. “It’s literally just taking it day-by-day, week-by-week, time-by-time.”

There was a time that Woods would have conceded a putt to win the Masters before he’d admit that kind of vulnerability. But as it turned out, that was just the first glimpse Woods was willing to allow.

Woods rarely consents to one-on-one interviews. He’ll hit the marks of what he must do, media-wise, and then he’s gone. So it’s noteworthy that he merely agreed to do a Q&A with Time, and the result is even more so.

From his perspective on watching golf on TV (“I can’t stand it”) to watching his kids grow and play (“oh my God, it gives me so much joy”), Woods opens up on topics that would have earned any questioner a withering glare and, probably, a revoked credential had they been asked earlier in Woods’ career. He talks openly about his relationships with his ex-wife and his ex-girlfriend, the prices he paid to become champion and the mistakes he made along the way.

You can’t read Woods’ anecdote about collapsing while practicing alone, the agony in his back dropping him to the ground, and not come away feeling sympathy for the man. Woods’ daughter Sam was the first to find him.

“Daddy,” she asked, “what are you doing lying on the ground?”

“Sam, thank goodness you’re here,” Woods replied. “Can you go tell the guys inside to try and get the cart out, to help me back up?”

“What’s wrong?”

“My back’s not doing very good.”

“Again?”

It’s easy to imagine this interview as a coda to Woods’ remarkable career. He concedes that his time on leaderboards may be done. “It’s not what I want to have happen, and it’s not what I’m planning on having happen,” he said. “But if it does, it does. I’ve reconciled myself to it. It’s more important for me to be with my kids.”

After Thanksgiving 2009—you remember, the Night of the Hydrant, the night all Woods’ deceptions started to crumble—we can’t view anything Woods does without suspecting that there’s some ulterior motive. Perhaps this is just more of the same, re-molding his image as a more sympathetic, fully-rounded figure rather than a cold automaton. Or perhaps this is Woods finally sick of the artifice, sick of presenting a perfect face to the world, then going home and playing online video games alone in a mansion, not talking lest other players recognize his voice.

Either way, what we have now is a Tiger Woods that’s far more compelling, a Tiger Woods that is—against all odds—a sympathetic figure. Journalists are biased, as the old line goes, in favor of a good story. Tiger Woods muddling along ten strokes off the lead isn’t a good story. Tiger Woods trying to discover how to put his life together stripped of the one thing that gave it meaning? That’s less SportsCenter, more Shakespeare. How Woods meets that challenge will be as fascinating as anything he ever did with a golf club in his hands.

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Jay Busbee is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at jay.busbee@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter or over on Facebook.

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