Like most sports superstars, Tiger Woods is insulated by not only a team of agents, managers, and publicists, but also close friends who are so loyal to the golfing great that they would never dare speak publicly about his private life.
That’s why the new two-part HBO documentary “Tiger” is so revealing because directors Matthew Hamachek and Matthew Heineman were able to do just that: get people from Woods’ inner circle to talk about him. Many did so for the first time ever.
Because of the revelations from the people who were standing alongside the golfer,
“Tiger” is a roller-coaster ride of ups and downs following Woods’ life. This includes the caddie alongside Woods for his glory years, Steve Williams, and Rachel Uchitel, the woman whose face was splashed on tabloids when it was revealed that she was Woods’ mistress.
Hamachek, an editor and producer of documentaries like “Cartel Land” and “Amanda Knox,” said it had been an obsession of his to do a documentary on Woods that delved not just into his amazing career, but also his troubled life off the course that included a sex addiction and drug dependency.
It became a reality for Hamachek more than two years ago when he teamed up with Heineman to co-direct. Oscar-winning filmmaker, Alex Gibney, signed on to produce.
“So much of Tiger’s story is misunderstood and lacks nuance and that’s one of the things that Matt Heineman and I set out to correct,” Hamachek told Insider. “Everybody has an opinion of Tiger that he’s either a hero or villain, and what I think we both wanted to do was make people’s understanding of him more complex.”
Hamachek said the key was gaining the trust of those close to Woods.
“Our mantra making this film was finding people who intimately knew Tiger Woods,” Hamachek said. “Anyone can make a doc where you get experts and people who never met him and just have opinions, but it’s different when you have people who spent time with him.”
The starting point was attaching the authors of “Tiger Woods,” Armen Keteyian and Jeff Benedict, as executive producers. Their 2018 bestselling biography on Woods delved deep into his youth as a golf phenom thanks to the tutelage of his father, Earl. It also chronicled how Woods’ womanizing ways when he became the greatest golfer in the world led to him destroying his image.
“Their book was the inspiration for the telling of this story,” Hamachek said.
With the authors’ participation, the doc landed people like Dina Parr, Woods’ first true love who revealed how he was once closed-off from the world as a twenty-something.
Hamachek recalled having to wait outside the home of Parr, Woods’ first love, to finally get her to agree to be interviewed on camera.
Some of the women who partied with Woods when he became famous and took trips with Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley to Las Vegas also appear in the documentary.
But Hamachek and Heineman uncovered more on their own. Like getting former pro golfer Joe Grohman to reveal how as a kid Woods witnessed his father having affairs with women; and Woods’ former caddie Steve Williams (who was fired in 2011 after he began caddying for Adam Scott while Woods was injured) sharing what it was like to be alongside Woods for many of his most memorable PGA Tour wins.
However, the biggest get by Hamachek and Heineman was Rachel Uchitel and it took months to secure.
In her first-ever interview, Uchitel gives jaw-dropping details about her affair with Woods, including the phone call she had with Woods’ then-wife, Elin Nordegren that led to the now infamous 2009 car accident Woods had outside his Florida mansion over Thanksgiving weekend.
“Rachel felt strongly that nobody had ever told her side of the story,” Hamachek said, “that the media had taken her and turned her into a caricature.”
Soon after that accident, a slew of women went public with their affairs with Woods, but Uchitel, a New York City night club manager, was locked in by the tabloids as the one who broke up his marriage with Nordegren. Woods and Nordegren would go onto divorce in 2010.
Hamachek said Uchitel was the first interview they filmed and it lasted between seven to eight hours long.
“She really did tell her entire story of meeting Tiger, up to what happened [on] the night that their relationship came to an end,” he said.
And though there are a lot of moments that show Woods at his lowest points - even the police footage of Woods’ 2017 arrest in Jupiter, Florida for driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol - Hamachek said they did have a line they wouldn’t go beyond.
“There were tons of salacious details we could have gotten into, but we wanted to get to the heart of who this guy is and why all this happened to him,” he said. So it begs the question: Why would all these people want to talk for the movie? Did they have an axe to grind?
Hamachek actually said it was the opposite.
“Even the people who were scorned by Tiger [or] had a bone to pick with him, they are fiercely protective of him,” said Hamachek, who noted that Woods was approached to be in the doc but declined.
Parr, Williams, and Uchitel somehow they still have an allegiance to Woods even though their relationships didn’t end well.
“That was the most surprising thing,” Hamachek said. “The loyalty and caring they still have to this day for him despite breakups or being fired.”
Hamachek believes what finally got everyone to agree to be in the movie was because he and Heineman weren’t trying to do a hit piece on Woods. They wanted to weave a story that makes viewers better understand Woods, regardless if you are a fan of him or not.
“From the minute he was born, he was thrust into this stage and everybody around him - his father, Nike, the public - threw all these expectations onto him,” Hamachek said. “The pressure that comes with that was remarkable. I have a great deal of sympathy for him.”
(The Insider)