"I had no interest in trashing him": James Patterson on why he needed to tell Tiger Woods' story

"I just wanted to tell the story and let people figure out."

When the "story" in question is recapping the entire life and career of an athlete as illustrious — and scrutinized — as professional golfer Tiger Woods, the stakes are considerably high. 

If anyone's up to the task, it's James Patterson.

"Tiger, Tiger," the uber-prolific best-selling author's latest book (July 15, Little Brown and Company), strays from his thriller-heavy fiction portfolio. It's a biography born out of Patterson's general enjoyment of golf — he's already penned a fiction series centered on a burgeoning pro golfer — and the shared knowledge that Woods as a major figure.

Second only to the legendary "Golden Bear" Jack Niklaus in his Masters Tournament victories (Woods has five Green Jackets to Niklaus' six), Woods from a young age was considered to be a golfing prodigy. His parents, Earl and Kultida Woods, were immensely supportive of their son's talent and ambitions, even taking out a second mortgage on their home so that a teenaged Tiger Woods was eligible to play in the then-nascent American Junior Golf Association (AJGA), where he could compete amongst top junior golfers and gain exposure to college recruiting scouts.

"Tiger, Tiger" delves deeply into Woods' family, presenting a candid portrait of their unique dynamic and diverse background. Woods' multiethnic identity — Earl was half Black, a quarter Native American and a quarter Chinese, while Kultida is half Thai, a quarter white and a quarter Chinese — has been a focal point of the athlete's career and his life more broadly, and as Patterson elucidates, sometimes a point of contention. "Tiger, Tiger" notes how though his mother, Tida, calls him the “Universal Child” who can “hold everyone together,” she also expressed frustration about how the media often construed him as explicitly Black. Woods, who coined the self-referential term "Cablinasian" to describe his mixed heritage, drew public ire in 1997 when he told Oprah that he shared in that same frustration. 

In the book, Patterson also doesn't shy away from addressing Woods' personal woes — namely, his bouts of infidelity that led to the 2010 divorce from his ex-wife Elin Nordegren and the stark shift in Woods' public perception that lingered for some time after. But to hear it in Patterson's own words, "Let's forgive people within reason."

"I had no interest in trashing him," Patterson tells me over Zoom of Woods' past controversies. "He's had some real bumps in the road and they're in the book, but I'm not going to make judgments."

Check out the full interview with Patterson, in which he explains how he told Woods' story differently, why he thinks Woods is a good dad in spite of his past scandals, and the "big problem" of book censorship. 

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

I'm 26, and I've grown up around your books my whole life.

Oh, so what? Stop bragging. I don't care how old you are.

(Laughs) Your books have been in my mom and dad's curio cabinet since I was a kid. I've read several of your thrillers but I've actually never read anything of yours about sports. What in particular drew you to want to write a biography about Tiger Woods other than his fame and talent? He's been the subject of plenty of biographies already.

Other than his fame or talent? Come on, that covers too much ground. I tell stories and I think in general most of the people who write about him — they're not storytellers. They put a lot of facts down where they editorialize, and what I wanted to do was just tell story after story after story that kind of captures — not necessarily for sports fans but for everybody because I think he's an important figure in history. That's just because of his golf but also because of the trajectory of his life — from being on "The Mike Douglas Show" at five and predicting that he would beat [Jack] Nicklaus and Tom Watson before he was 21 to the fact that even though he lists himself as Asian, he's talked about as Black. And that was obviously a big deal for his father too. Earl really was interested in him making some real inroads into golf and also into white-dominated sports.

So I just think he's a major figure. I think this is a book for a lot of people who aren't necessarily golfers, who don't care about golfers but I would like to hear his story and want to hear it as a storyteller would tell it, not as a sports writer. There's a lot of editorializing these days on the front pages of newspapers which I don't really approve of. I don't think they should be editorializing on the front page. I think on the front page, just lay out the story as best you know with the facts. And same thing with sports writers. They always want to editorialize and show us what they are. I just wanted to tell the story and let people figure out. They'll do their own, you know, how do they feel about him, how do they feel about us human beings. I had no interest in trashing him. He's had some real bumps in the road, and they're in the book, but I'm not going to make judgments.

In fact, I think it's interesting in terms of who he is, how those stories, how his life is a big part of what happened. Like what happened with his wife. If you think about his life, he was always shielded from kind of — he was like, "Go golf, be great at golf, and don't worry about the other stuff." And when he grew up and he was a stutterer and he was nearsighted and then when he went to Stanford, they called him Urkel. He was a nerd, you know, and he was kind of out of it. And I think that when he fell in love with this very beautiful, I think quite nice person, I don't think he was ready for it. I don't think he knew what was going on. I don't know if he even dated much. There was very little that I've ever read or heard about with him in terms of, you know, so I don't think he was at all prepared for it. That doesn't excuse him for running around and whatever, but you understand it a little better.

The level of attention to detail in the book is incredibly noteworthy. You include conversations and observations that span decades of Tiger's life. And in specific regard to his ex-wife, you even include, for example, a text message that Tiger sent to one of his alleged mistresses. And Elin sends a lure text to the woman after seeing it. How do you approach conducting research for a biography like this and how that might differ from writing?

Yeah, they're everything I can get. I have some researchers. My general thing about research is, if it's about Hawaii, I'll go and do that myself. If it's a crack house in the Bronx, I might have somebody else go do it. So this is a combination. A lot of this stuff I kind of knew. I followed him up to a point. I knew where to look for some of it. My editor, Denise Roy, was really involved as well. So she found a lot of things. And we just put it all together and then try to turn it into a story. But I think if you go through the whole story, even like the crash in California, if you look at his history of the operations and the fact that he was in pain for a long time, you understand — and I don't know for sure that that had to do with the crash, but I suspect that it did. Whatever the heck he was taking — and I don't know if he was overdoing it necessarily, but I just think it makes a more complete story. And once again, I'm not going to excuse him for either one of those things, but I like context.

I didn't want to go in this thing to trash him or turn him into a hero. I think he's a really interesting character. I think he's an important person for a lot of our lives. I think he's had some importance in American history and he is a spectacular golfer as well.

The effect of his parents was extreme with Tiger. And I think mostly good. Everybody has their own theories about how you should bring up kids. But I think it was a loving environment. I think his dad recognized that he had unbelievable talent early. And I think up to a point he left it up to Tiger, and Tiger chose to really go with the talent. Right. But I don't think his father pushed, pushed, pushed him. And interestingly, I think his mother in some ways had more of an effect on the way he golfed because her thing was, "Crush them! If you're up nine strokes going into the four, I want you to win it with 15 strokes ahead."

Tiger Woods with his parents Kultida and Earl Woods at the Johnnie Walker Classic at Blue Canyon Golf Club, Thailand. (David Cannon/ALLSPORT/GEtty Images)I wanted to turn really briefly to a conversation Tiger had with his mom that you include toward the end of the book. It almost threads together her relationship with him as a kid and then her relationship with him as an adult, specifically after the cheating scandal and after the accident. Right before part six, it says that when Tiger was young, Tida would warn him, "You'll never ruin my reputation as a parent because I'll beat you."

Right. And so that's kind of just a little humor there. 

But then she ends up defending him so fiercely in the face of this media frenzy that comes about after all this scandal unravels when public perception of him is not great. How do you feel about the way Tiger was portrayed after all this happened? Was it fair?

If it's fair, I don't know. I tried to be as fair as I could be. I had an interview with an English newspaper earlier today and they said they find it interesting over there because their style is if somebody gets big, they want to cut them down. And this, the reporter felt that Americans didn't really do that that much, American press. And I said, to an extent, I don't think they do. I think they give Tiger a little bit of space — I mean, they could be harsher. And they are. But, you know, look — it's the world we live in. You've got X number of people and . . . you can go online and you can anonymously throw whatever you want to have out there. And it's in the drinking water now so everybody does it. I wouldn't say I'm a super great, great, great Christian anymore, but I always have that thing about like I'm like, "Let's forgive people within reason." I think he's been a good dad in spite of all this stuff. And one of the characters that I hadn't really read almost anything about was Sam [Woods' daughter]. And the notion that when he asked her to give the speech when he went into the Hall of Fame, she said, "I inducted you in the Dad Hall of Fame a long time ago." And that's nice. And I think he's close to Charlie [Woods' son] as well. And then she would make fun of him saying, well, "How important can you be if you go to Comic Con dressed as Batman?" You know what I mean? And that's good stuff.

There's another scene that I love in terms of Tiger and Sam. He always had trouble sleeping. I think he's always had some anxiety problems and stuff like that. And so he frequently would get up if she was crying as a baby. But what he would do — I don't know if you remember this — but he would go in and he would do leg presses with her on his legs until she would fall asleep. 

I do remember that!

And that's interesting to me. But I think the notion that he really wanted to be a good dad, even though he obviously screwed up as a husband . . . I think somehow he's maintained the dad thing to within reason because the kids both seem to be very close to him. I'm not exactly sure what the dynamic there is, and I would suspect that a lot of that comes from his own relationship with his parents who — whatever people are always judging about, well, "I wouldn't have done it that way." Look, you bring up your kids, and they're always going to find something that you did.

They go like, "Oh, you know what you did to me when I was 12?"

"No."

"Well, I'll never forget it."

And that's always a piece of the puzzle. But I think his parents did well by him. And if I brought up a kid and they went on to become the best golfer in the world and a good dad, I'd be saying, "Yeah, OK. Well, you know, he's not perfect. I'm not perfect, but I'm cool with it."  That's just where I come from. And part of the storytelling thing is a combination of trying to be truthful and then having some compassion when it's appropriate. 

Right. And I feel like you're able to convey this story about a golfer in such a way that speaks to your ability to write compelling thrillers. It's structured in a way that really lent to that style that you typically tend to engage in. 

It's a story, story, story. When I was running J. Walter Thompson, I wasn't a great public speaker. And I remember going out and I did a thing for the New York Times and there were five writers and I followed this woman and she was fricking hilarious. She was hilarious. She just told story after story after story. And I read from the book and it was awful. And I learned that lesson — just tell stories, even if you're giving a speech, tell stories. They want to be entertained. They're not there to listen to you, "Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." Yeah, whatever. That's where it came from.

What was the most surprising thing you learned about Tiger? I wasn't sure how much you spoke to him throughout this process.

I didn't speak to him at all. Never spoke to him. I've only been in a room with him once and it's kind of interesting. My wife and I played in a — my wife by the way, she's the big shot, a four-time all-American swimmer. But we played in a FedEx thing, the pro-gas kind of thing or amateur pro whatever. And afterward, there was a cocktail thing and they were celebrating his caddy who had just gotten into the Caddy Hall of Fame. It was a dark room and Sue and I were sitting near the back and I noticed coming in the back — Tiger came in late and he just stood in the back by himself. And I couldn't stop watching him, and he was laughing his ass off about his caddy. And you could just feel the closeness that he had with the caddy and just that human thing was, was very nice. To watch him when he was unguarded and not worried about — little did he know he was being observed. But it was nice. And once again, you felt a little bit like you kind of got a little peek at who he was. And that's one of the things that I try to do with the book to really give people a peek or a lot of peeks actually at kind of who he is.

I think one of those really important peeks has to do with his identity. Tiger's ethnic background has been a focal point of his career as a professional golfer, but also more broadly.

Not for him so much. At least in his own way he expresses it. Yeah. You know, the fact that he's always said that he's Asian and in terms of his father being kind of 50-50 and his mother essentially being Asian American.

How did you go about deciding what to include about Tiger's identity? What felt the most pertinent to you?

Enough so that you get a feeling for it. I mean his father obviously clearly wanted him to make more noise about — because I think his father felt what it meant to be perceived as Black in the military, perceived as Black when you go to golf. And I think it puts a chip on your shoulder — his father's shoulder. Tiger doesn't seem to have that same chip on his shoulder. And I don't know how he really feels in his heart of heart . . .  I think he probably does feel Asian and I think he probably feels this is not, hasn't been a huge thing in his life, or he's great at compartmentalizing and just kind of being like, "OK, fine. That is what it is. I'm not going to worry about it."

I have a thing in terms of driving me through life up to a point, which is I try not to worry too much about things that I can't do anything about. It's like, things happen. There was a quote today — [James] Carville. It was a thing in The Times — that editorial Carville did. It was an interesting thing about what he thinks the Democrats should do now. And at the end of it, he quotes — he doesn't know whether it's Churchill or somebody else — but something to the effect of, "Never waste a good crisis." Something like that. And I don't know. I think Tiger's a really smart person, and I think he's figured some stuff out about the way he needs to navigate his way through life. And I don't know if he's still figuring out how to deal with being with another human being, a partner — for whatever reason, who knows why that happens.

In 2014, you spoke with Salon's Chief Content Officer, Erin Keane, about encouraging younger generations to read. The two of you chatted about doing so by using professional athletes as conduits, both from a promotional perspective and as a subject matter perspective. I was wondering how you see Tiger Woods and "Tiger, Tiger" fitting into that mission.

I think it's a good story for kids. I mean, you get to a certain point and you can read anything. Yeah. And that point could be when you're 10 and it could take longer. But I think it's one of those adult books that kids can definitely read. There's nothing in there that kids aren't like — OK he had affairs or whatever he had. The kids — whatever. They know. I think you know, once again, I did not expect a lot of kids to read it, but probably the kids that will read it are kids who are very sports-oriented. Actually, what I would always try to do with kids is get them just good stories. Even this thing of like, "Well, you're a boy and you like baseball — you should read a lot of baseball books." I don't know. There are some good baseball books and a lot of bad ones. And I guess if you're obsessed with it, you don't care. And if you're learning how to be a better reader, that's OK too.

Tiger Woods, Charlie Woods and Sam Woods of the United States during the final round of the PNC Championship at The Ritz-Carlton Golf Club on December 17, 2023 in Orlando, Florida. (Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images)I read in a GQ interview that you did in 2023 that your high level of productivity — because obviously calling you prolific almost feels like an understatement —

It's an insult, actually. 

You mentioned your productivity was owing to your daily routine, which typically includes playing golf. And I'm wondering what is your background in the sport and what intrigues you about it, say, more than baseball or football or some other sport.

I have no background. As a kid — I'll give you my sports reel. I'm 5'11, I could dunk in high school, and I have nine holes-in-one. Sue, my wife's, is six [holes in one.]

That's a great resume between the two of you.

And she's really irritating. At a certain point, she had four and I had three. This is a true story. And so on Feb. 6 of that year, I had another one. And she's very competitive. So she said, "I don't like it, but I can live with it." Two days later, we were out playing together. I had another hole-in-one. This is two hole-in-one in three days. We're standing on the tee. Does Sue give me a big hug? No. Does she say, "Nice shot, honey!" No. She looks at me and very appropriately says, "You've got to be s****ing me." So that's Augusta, and we both enjoy it.

When I was a kid, I was a good student — you know, pretty well-rounded. But if I had to study or if I was reading a bunch of stuff, I would always go out every once in a while and just shoot baskets in the backyard. For 15 minutes or whatever. And that would clear my brain. Still does. It just clears my brain. Everything's gone. No deadlines, no anything. And that's the way it works for the two of us. And Sue and I, mainly we'll go out for like nine holes, which would take us like an hour and 15. There's a course that we play; they literally will let us go out at six in the morning if we want to. We go bang the ball. Nobody's in front of us. Nobody's in back of us. We're done in an hour.

This is the college English major in me wanting to ask this question, but I was curious — did you draw inspiration, for the book's title from the William Blake poem, "Tyger, Tyger?"

I just stole it. I mean, God! (laughs) 

One of the opening scenes in the book is when Tiger wins his fifth Masters Tournament in 2019 and the crowd chants, "Ti-ger, Ti-ger!" 

"The Thomas Berryman Number," my first book. Thomas McGuane, who was one of my favorite writers back then — a little older than me. When I was writing my first novel, I sent a note out to three novelists that I admired. Larry Woiwode is one of them. You probably haven't read him. I don't know if you've read McGuane either. He publishes now a lot of short stories in the New Yorker. He's — I don't know what he is. He's old. And he wrote back from Montana and he just said, "Dear Jim, Write a good book. Your friend, Thomas."

So that's where the Thomas comes from. The Thomas Berryman of my first book and Berryman was the poet [John Berryman.] So yeah. So I've always been a little literary snob.

In 2023, Your "Maximum Ride" sci-fi YA series was removed from Florida's Martin County school district board.

Among others.

You were understandably rankled by this.

And I don't rankle easily. I'll tell you that.

Given the "crisis" you alluded to before — the fraught political state of the country — what concerns do you have regarding future literary censorship? 

I don't think it's a huge deal right now, honestly, but it's irritating right now. And it doesn't even have to do with book banning. It just has to do with in general, the direction we're going in is awful and hideous and destructive. And people love to get up there like, "Oh, you know . . ." So my book got banned. Who cares? It's not the end of the world. I mean, there are more serious ones, obviously — Toni Morrison, etc. Shouldn't do that. The thing of it is, I try to talk to the people who are on the fence. I'll try to talk their language, and one of the things I said about the book banning is, "I don't want the people, some stranger to tell the people in my family what they should and shouldn't read." And the reason I say it that way is most of these people are libertarian-oriented and you want them going, "Yeah, goddammit! Right. Why should some stranger tell us what we —" . . . and that's the really, really bad thing about this.

For example, in Martin County, one woman went in and complained about X number of books, including "Maximum Ride," which she had never read. And they pulled them . . . that's crazy. The other thing about parents is — and this is always what drives the drums or whatever — is, "I should be able to be careful with my kids read." Yes, you should do that. Absolutely. And if your seven-year-old comes home with "The Hunger Games," you should be able to say, "Honey, let's talk about this because I'm not sure if you're ready for 'The Hunger Games.' You know, it's kind of violent."

(Imitating child) "Yeah. No, but it's about hunger and . . . "

So once again, just turning it on people. Yes, you should be concerned with what your kid — more about what they're watching on their telephones and stuff. Take care of your kids. Absolutely. But don't take care of my kids. Take care of your own kids.

Does the censorship issue inform your approach to new writing?

Don't sit there writing and say, "Jim thinks there isn't a big book banning problem." There is a big problem.

Agreed. So does it affect how you approach your new projects, for example, or how you think about them? 

Trying to do stuff that'll get banned on purpose? Yes! 

I'm glad that the biography will be out in the world. I didn't know that much about Tiger, so I'm glad to have had the opportunity to speak to you about him.

I think that's the thing that's useful about the book. I think it is very readable and I think it's good for people to know. It'd be silly to go through life and not have a clue about that guy, 'cause he's just one of those people. More important than George Clooney. Even though Clooney got to do an editorial at The Times. It was a stupid editorial too. That's why it was just like, why? It was bad. It was just a bad piece.