5 Things We Learned From Tiger Woods’ Insightful Time Interview

Image via Complex Original

The Q&A starts off with golf journalist Lorne Rubenstein asking Tiger, “Where are you right now with your recovery?” in reference to the back surgery he underwent last month. It seems like a softball question meant to get things warmed up, but Tiger’s answer is surprising. “I have just started walking,” he says. “That’s it.” That’s it?

Later, Tiger also admits that his current rehab doesn’t involve long hours in the gym or intense physical therapy. Instead, it includes walking for 10 minutes on the beach everyday. Yes, that’s it. Which is to say that Tiger is a long, long, LONG way from getting back on the golf course and that, ultimately, there’s a chance his golf career could be over. At this point, he's just not sure.

Tiger’s extramarital affairs are well documented. But despite his troubled past and his broken marriage, Tiger says that he is now “best friends” with his ex-wife. They “talk to each other all the time,” and Tiger thinks he knows why their marriage didn’t work out, outside of the obvious.

“In hindsight, it’s not how I would change 2009 and how it all came about,” he says when asked what he would have done differently before and after the end of his marriage. “It would be having a more open, honest relationship with my ex-wife.”

One day, Tiger’s kids Sam and Charlie are going to start using the Internet. When they do, Tiger is going to have a looooooot of explaining to do. He says he’s ready for it.

“I’ve taken the initiative with the kids and told them up front, ‘Guys, the reason why we’re not in the same house, why we don’t live under the same roof, Mommy and Daddy, is because Daddy made some mistakes,’” he says. “I just want them to understand before they get to the Internet age and they log on to something or have their friends tell them something. I want it to come from me so that when they come of age, I’ll just tell them the real story.”

It’s kind of hard to blame Tiger for feeling some kind of way about the media, seeing how there are so many negative stories out there about him. Some involve golf, most don’t. But his way of getting around it is by ignoring the stories and staying off the Internet.

“One, you don’t listen to it,” he says. “And two, in today’s world, you don’t go online.”

He also says that, while he is friendly with some members of the media, there are plenty of reporters that—without naming any names—he doesn’t like.

“I have a lot of good friends in the media,” he says. “Guys I’ve gone out to dinner with on countless occasions. With respect. There’s also a flip side of people that I really don’t care for. Hey, they made their career being negative and being outlandish. They’ve made a career out of it. But that’s their take. They’ve almost created a character, per se.”

At one point, Tiger is asked about whether or not he thinks about his legacy, and his answer is not what you would expect. He tries to use Michael Jordan’s legacy as an example of how he wants to be remembered, which is to say he wants people to remember what he created rather than remember him as an athlete.

“The greatest thing that could happen is to not be remembered,” he says. “What I mean by that is, the kids right now, they don’t know that Michael Jordan played. They see a Jumpman [logo] and they think, ’That’s so cool.’ I’m talking young kids, really young kids, single digits in age, they have no idea who Michael Jordan was, but the Jumpman logo is cool. Now, for me, they don’t understand who that is. My learning center, kids go through it and they don’t know who I am. They don’t know what I’ve done. But it’s a safe haven for them to learn and grow.”