Elgin "Tiger" Woods appears on the February cover of Vanity Fair, photographed pre-scandal by Annie Leibovitz. There is a full portfolio inside--never-before-seen photos of the raw, unguarded biracial golf billionaire.Pulitzer Prize winner Buzz Bissinger, author of Friday Night Lights and, most recently, co-author of Shooting Stars, with LeBron James, reflects on Woods's downfall and what his future may hold.
A future that may hold $300 million less in it's bank account, if wife Elin Nordegen has anything to say about it
Woods "had always been the bionic man in terms of personality, controlling to a fault," Bissinger writes. He calls the pre-scandal Woods "the perfect man and pitchman for our imperfect times, a charming non-person," noting that "with Woods, everything was crafted to produce a man of nothing, with no interior--non-threatening and non-controversial."
But "in the end it was the age-old clash of image versus reality.... He deluded himself into thinking he could be something that he wasn't: untouchable. The greatest feat of his career is that he managed to get away with it for so long in public, the bionic man instead of the human one who hit a fire hydrant."
To read the full article, please go to VF's website.