As the perspiration glistens, he blows out his cheeks, hiccups and yawns. And within a few minutes of sitting in the back of the patrol car, he appears to doze off.
Footage of Tiger Woods’ arrest in Florida last week, after a hair-raising smash with a slow-moving cleaning truck and trailer, depicts the champion golfer looking more like a confused elderly man than one of history’s wealthiest athletes.
Woods, 50, spent eight hours in jail last Friday after being charged with driving under the influence, causing damage to property and refusal to submit to a urine test after flipping his SUV.
But it is his tragic demeanour in that shocking bodycam footage from the arresting officer that has sent shockwaves around the world and through the highest echelons of international sport. Looking bewildered, he doesn’t seem to understand what’s happening and turns to a female officer to ask in disbelief: ‘I’m being arrested?’
For a man who has won 15 majors and is the sport’s highest earner with an estimated fortune of £1.5billion, it’s a pitiful sight.
Sadder still is the fact that this was not a descent into recreational drugs but a desperate attempt to return to the height of that sporting prowess. For although a breathalyser test showed no signs of alcohol, two opioid pills, used to treat severe or chronic pain, were found in his pocket.
Woods, say those who know him best, has been reliant on pain medication for years, after a series of sporting injuries and car crashes left him in agony. ‘He’s drugged up to the eyeballs before he can leave the house because of the pain he’s in,’ one friend told the Daily Mail this week.
Another agreed: ‘He needs his medication in order to function. It’s not about getting high or altering his perspective on life. It’s about pain management. He does not do recreational drugs.’
Tiger Woods pictured yawning in the back of a police car after his arrest for driving under the influence last month
Woods spent eight hours in jail after his arrest following the incident in which he rolled his Range Rover
Certainly no one on Jupiter Island in Florida where he lives seems too surprised by the latest driving debacle – his fourth. One told me: ‘Tiger’s problems were there long before the arrest. People are acting like Tiger was doing well and was ready for a big comeback then suddenly he gets pulled over and arrested and his life has fallen apart. No, no, no. Not true. His life was difficult and his mind was messed up before this.
‘The man has been broken by injuries. He’s taking so many drugs as part of rehab and pain medication. I know everyone thinks he’s a fool but he’s had a tough few years.’
Woods has endured seven operations on his back and 20 on his right leg, which was badly smashed up in another road accident in 2021 when his SUV came off the road after he lost control while speeding.
Perhaps unsurprisingly for a man whose entire life has been defined by golf – he was crowned the youngest Masters champion at 21 – Woods is singular in his desire to return to the top of his game. He trains constantly and has no hobbies or interests – aside from video games – to temper his obsessive focus.
You can see why he thinks he might pull off the impossible, as he has done it before. An extraordinary win at the Masters in 2019 came a full ten years after his previous major title, at the 2008 US Open.
He had missed the 2016 and 2017 Masters with back problems and many had written off his chances. Tiger admitted that his children Charlie and Sam begged him to stop golfing. He said: ‘They would say: “Dad, don’t try and play, don’t try and practise, because you’ll be in more pain.”’
Put bluntly, nobody but Tiger thinks that he can make a comeback and people who know him say giving up that dream is the one thing that might save him.
The question though, is who or what can persuade Tiger to quit before it’s too late.
Ironically for a man whose problems can be traced back to the sex scandal that caused the break-up of his marriage to Elin in 2009 – when he was found to have been unfaithful with multiple mistresses and was treated for sex addiction – salvation may yet come from his latest girlfriend, Vanessa Trump.
For it is Vanessa – his partner of 18 months and former wife of President Trump’s son Donald Jr – who has issued the golfer with an ultimatum. Contrary to reports the pair have already split, Vanessa has been pivotal in insisting he go to rehab and conquers his problems once and for all – something he revealed on social media this week he is committed to doing.
Yesterday Vanessa uploaded a photo of herself with the golfer to her Instagram account with the caption ‘Love You,’ and those close to Woods say that she – along with his long-time manager Mark Steinberg – holds the key to the golfer’s future.
A source said: ‘Tiger’s manager told him straight away that it would be a good idea if he went in to therapy when news of the crash broke but Tiger didn’t want to do it. But now he has agreed to go because of Vanessa.
‘She made him go into therapy, not as a PR stunt but because she’s been telling him for some time that he needs help – and this was the moment to force his hand.
‘The two of them have a pretty decent relationship as far as I can see. She likes golf. It works. But she said privately that if the relationship failed it would be because of his obsession with playing golf at the highest level again.’
Certainly, Tiger appears to have as many cheerleaders now as he did in his glory days. Friends, golf pros, commentators and even President Trump have offered supportive words.
Trump said: ‘I have [spoken with him]. I think he’s doing great, he’s doing good. He tested negative for alcohol, as you know, and he is under a tremendous physical pressure from his various ailments, you know, the back and the leg. He lives a life of pain. He’s an amazing guy. He’s an amazing athlete.’
Wood with his ex-wife Elin Nordegren, whom he was unfaithful to with numerous women
Woods’ partner Vanessa Trump uploaded a photo of herself with the golfer to her Instagram account with the caption ‘Love You,’ and those close to Woods say that she – along with his long-time manager Mark Steinberg – holds the key to the golfer’s future
Woods is pictured on the phone next to his Range Rover in Jupiter Island, Florida
Yet it is this very notoriety that keeps Woods trapped in a perpetual cycle of pushing his body beyond its limits. He won’t get a driver, because he thinks that they tip off the Press as to his whereabouts and he detests publicity.
Not only that but he is surrounded by people whose income depends on him trying to reach glory again. Naturally, their advice will be to keep on striving. A spinal surgeon, speaking on condition of anonymity, said many believe that the multiple operations he has had have gone ‘beyond’ what would be considered sustainable.
He said: ‘As surgeons, we can repair, stabilise and extend a career, but cannot control the personality of the patient. In Woods’ case, that personality is obsessive, relentless and utterly unwilling to stop. The issue is that the surgeon needs to refuse to operate.
‘The surgeon’s primary concern should be for the health of the individual. No one should be operating on a broken body to this extent. It’s exploitative. With elite athletes, if one doctor says stop, there’s always another opinion available.
‘This raises an uncomfortable question: at what point does treatment stop being about recovery and start becoming part of the very cycle that keeps an athlete going when, physically, they shouldn’t?’
One source said: ‘While Tiger is trying to get the Tiger show back on the road, he needs biomechanics, physios, psychologists, coaches, trainers, swing experts, equipment and all of that.
‘If he said tomorrow, “That’s it, I’ve achieved all I can and now I’m going to sit in my garden,” those people wouldn’t have any work to do. They are persuading him that he can be great again and it’s causing him great pain.
‘This is a guy who gets people switching on their TVs and reading newspapers. He’s still box office. The trouble is – it’s all come at a cost and now he’s a broken man.’
Even the local police, who ought at the least to be upholding speeding laws, may be inadvertently contributing to Woods issues.
One on Jupiter Island told the Daily Mail: ‘Most people around here know Tiger drives fast along these narrow roads where the speed limit is 30mph. But what you also have to understand is that some of the police around here are almost a concierge department for wealthy local residents.
‘They know their cars and will rarely stop them unless there is something really serious.’
That Woods is now facing another major crisis is not in dispute. And, some believe, it can only be overcome if he faces up to the pain of losing his parents. My source says: ‘Vanessa is insistent that he has not yet processed the deaths of the parents who drove his sporting ambitions.’
The loss of his mother, Kultida, in February 2025, was indeed a heavy blow. Woods described her as a ‘force of nature’ and his ‘biggest fan’, crediting her for instilling the work ethic necessary for his success.
She also supported him unstintingly after his life collapsed following the cheating scandal in 2009. His father Earl, a talented sportsman who served two tours in Vietnam, died in 2006.
The friend says: ‘Vanessa doesn’t think he’s dealt with the death of his father or his mother and all the injuries and the lack of focus in his life. He needs help.
‘You can’t go from front page and back page and being adored around the world to losing parents, losing your life’s work and being physically wrecked without getting help. We’re all hoping this will be the making of him and he’ll use this as a springboard to the second half of his life.’
Woods and Vanessa, a former model who was married to Donald Junior for 13 years before their divorce in 2018, began dating in November 2024. They met at parents’ events at $38,595-a-year Benjamin School, attended by Tiger’s 17-year-old son Charlie and Vanessa’s daughter Kai, 18, both budding golf stars. For all his riches and acclaim, Tiger leads a relatively mundane – even ‘boring’ – daily life with Vanessa, according to sources in Florida. President Trump’s former daughter-in-law has a home in elite Jupiter Country Club, ten miles from the golf legend’s $72million estate.
Woods’ compound is huge. Occupying 12 waterfront acres on the island, it boasts a small golf course, a 14,000sq ft main home plus an adjoining 12,000sq ft building, two pools and a boat dock, giving the couple ample space and opportunity for leisure. It’s five miles from where he crashed.
The couple largely shun nearby ritzy Palm Beach high society and are rarely seen out together except at golf events.
A member of Vanessa’s circle in Palm Beach said: ‘I would say Vanessa spends roughly 60 per cent of her time at Tiger’s place. Her country club home is luxurious, but there’s not much private outside space and it’s like living in a fishbowl.
‘Tiger has far more privacy, so she’ll go over there where they often spend time putting on the greens together. Then there’s the children, which provide another link to their day-to-day lives.
‘Tiger makes a point to drive Charlie to school each day and pick him up whenever he can. Vanessa often does the same for Kai,’ said our source. ‘After pick- up they head off to a nearby Starbucks for coffee. That’s largely it. It’s pretty mundane.’
Another close source, a former Woods employee, adds: ‘Vanessa is sweet and well-liked by the three or four bodyguards who work on Tiger’s property, but they don’t see her as the liveliest spark.
‘And when she’s not around, Tiger spends a lot of time playing video games on his own. It’s a lot less exciting than people think.
‘They simply aren’t sociable. Apart from Tiger’s 50th birthday celebration in January, no one has ever seen them at large functions in Palm Beach.
‘If they do go out occasionally it’s to Tiger’s own sports bar style-restaurant in Jupiter, where they will get a table at the back.’
Perhaps for the forseeable future a quiet table at the back is exactly what this sporting giant needs to piece his life together again.
- Additional reporting: Greg Woodfield in Florida
