It’s worth remembering now that one of the first times “Tiger Woods” and “drugs” turned up in the same sentence, it was just a punchline.
That was 2007. Woods was still crushing the field at just about every event and the PGA Tour, coincidentally, was hammering out the details on its first formal drug-testing policy. In a lighthearted moment, then-European Tour CEO George O’Grady suggested his American counterparts could save plenty of time and money by testing exactly one golfer: Woods.
“If he’s clean,” O’Grady said with nearly flawless logic, “what does it matter what the rest of them are on?”
Flip that script forward 10 years and it’s Woods who needs drugs because his body is falling apart like a used car.
He’s had four back surgeries in three years, the last one just a month ago. We already knew he wasn’t coming back anytime soon.
He had four prescription drugs in his system, including the powerful opioid painkiller Vicodin, when police arrested him Monday. He couldn’t tell the officers where he was going. “Nowhere” would have been accurate enough.
