Nobody truly knows Tiger Woods. That's one of the biggest takeaways from Wright Thompson's incredible piece on Big Cat for ESPN. But some people sort of know him, and one of those people is Michael Jordan.
Jordan said he thinks Woods wants to hang up the sticks and drift off into retirement.
"I think he's tired," Jordan told ESPN. "I think he really wishes he could retire, but he doesn't know how to do it yet, and I don't think he wants to leave it where it is right now. If he could win a major and walk away, he would, I think."
That's pretty crazy, right? But if you listened to Tiger last winter, it's not as unfathomable as it seems for the 40-year-old.
"There's really nothing I can look forward to, nothing I can build towards," Woods said of his career. "It's literally just day by day and week by week and time by time. Where is the light at the end of the tunnel? I don't know. I think everything beyond this will be gravy. If that's all it entails, then I've had a pretty good run."
Thompson underpins this with this from M.J., who Woods is "close" to.
They texted in November, the day after a big group went out to dinner at Tiger's restaurant. Tiger got drunk and they all laughed and told stories, and Michael thought Tiger seemed relaxed, which made him hopeful. Tiger talked about his injuries a lot but not much about the future. "The thing is," Jordan says, "I love him so much that I can't tell him, 'You're not gonna be great again.'
"He has ..." Jordan says, and he pauses, searching for the right word, "... no companion. He has to find that happiness within his life, that's the thing that worries me. I don't know if he can find that type of happiness. He's gonna have to trust somebody."
Again, this is incredibly sad to read and really provides a human element to somebody we've propped up on a big stage for a long time. You can read the entire story here.
