SOS.

Constantly afraid to see Tiger Woods in a headline

Mar 27, 2026

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I’ve said it before: There are virtually no biospheres remaining within which you can see Tiger Woods’ name pop up in a headline and think to yourself that something cool just happened. There’s no more, “What’d he win?”, no more, “Is he buying just the country club or the whole town?”

None of that. Tiger Woods in a headline = pure dread. That’s where we are now.

It happened again on Friday, when Woods was arrested near his home of Jupiter, Fla., and charged with DUI with property damage. Officials said Woods initiated a two-car crash in which his Range Rover clipped a work truck pulling a work trailer, which Woods was trying to speed around and pass on a two-lane road. Woods’ SUV flipped over and came to rest on the driver’s side.

First of all — don’t do that. Second, it feels like Woods, who survived a horrific high-speed rollover crash in California in 2021, is determined to find out how many lives he has. I say this with nothing but sadness. We’ve been watching a bright light dim.

Woods was able to safely scramble out of his overturned Range Rover on Friday, and neither he nor the driver of the pickup appeared to be significantly injured. When deputies from the Martin County Sheriff’s Department arrived, Woods took and passed a breathalyzer test (that’s for alcohol impairment), but he then refused to submit to urinalysis (that’s for everything else, including the medications that the sheriff’s department folks believe were in his system).

He got taken in because, the deputies said, Woods showed clear signs of impairment. In addition to the DUI, they tacked on a charge of refusal to submit to a lawful test (the urinalysis). Wood was to stay in the county jail for eight hours.

And, you know…we’ve been here before.

There is nothing interesting about a great athlete in free-fall. Don’t get me wrong; it’s occasionally compelling, and it can command your short-term interest, as Woods’ wreck did on Friday. But after the usual gawking, what is there left to say? Tiger has been down the road of addiction more than once.

He went into rehab in 2017 after being found passed out behind the wheel of his Mercedes on the side of a road, five different drugs in his system. He has been involved in at least four car accidents since 2009, and the 2021 single-car rollover incident near Rancho Palos Verdes, south of Los Angeles, remains remarkable for Woods having survived it, to say nothing of not hurting anyone else. (The sheriff’s department in that case said it wasn’t able to test Woods for drugs or alcohol because of the extent of his injuries, which required immediate hospitalization.)

Absent presentation of the full facts of Friday’s case, I have no problem imagining that Woods relies on and uses pain medication at levels that would shock most of us. He’s had seven back surgeries (that we know of), multiple procedures on his knees, including an ACL repair, and multiple leg/foot/ankle surgeries, most of them following the 2021 wreck.

Last year, he had a ruptured Achilles tendon repaired and then had a disk replaced in his lower back.

Tiger Woods is the oldest 50 in the world.

He has no keeper, clearly, and he cannot keep himself.

It’s all trouble.

“I feel so bad. He's got some difficulty -- there was an accident, and that's all I know,” President Donald Trump, a sometimes golf partner of Woods, told reporters late Friday. “A very close friend of mine, he's an amazing person, an amazing man. But some difficulty. I don't want to talk about it.”

Nothing good is coming from this. It is simply what there is. You no longer see Tiger’s name on a story and think, “Is he starting an academy? Did he fund a scholarship?”

We’re way past that time. Flying past it, speeding. We’re navigating hairpin turns and failing. Nothing good.