The 2009 British Open was held at Turnberry. Tiger Woods missed the 36-hole cut and acted as a fool in the process. The club throwing, profanities and self-pitying poses went from isolated to constant.
These antics were so far beyond what we had witnessed from Woods in the past that I wrote a Star Tribune column on the subject. It included an interview with Reed Mackenzie, former USGA president and a referee for Woods' matches as far back as the 1993 U.S. Junior Amateur.
Mackenzie talked of his admiration for Woods as a competitor and as a representative of the game, and agreed that Tiger's behavior at Turnberry went over the line.
One passage from that column read: "He's 33 and the father of two. Aren't 33-year-old family men supposed to be more mature than they were as 17-year-old in pursuit of a third Junior Amateur?"
As it turns out, there was an assumption in that column from last July -- the family man angle -- that might have explained Tiger's craziness during those two futile rounds in Scotland.
Looking back in the light of mangled mailboxes and SUVs, of hostesses, waitresses and porn stars, of therapy and curt apologies, the opinion here is that his display at Turnberry was the first public sign that Woods knew the lies were surrounding him and that his magnificent image was on the eve of destruction.
When you're driven to control every situation, every sentence of information, as was Woods, and you know the National Enquirer is on the trail of an endless supply of mistresses ... well, you can see why a guy might be extra-agitated with bad shots.
It would be a few more months before the tabloid was ready to reveal Rachel Uchitel as mistress No. 1, but we would learn eventually that the Enquirer had been on the hunt for Tiger's babes for a couple of years.