A jet-lagged Tiger Woods teed off on July 18 at the annual Open Championship, which is taking place in Scotland this year.
The golf icon admitted that he struggled to sleep during the flight across the pond following the attempted assassination of Donald Trump during a political rally in Pennsylvania on July 13.
Woods said, as he flew from his home in Florida to the United Kingdom for the golf tournament, he was glued to the media coverage of the shooting that killed a 50-year-old former fire chief and critically injured two other men.
“I didn’t accomplish a lot because I wasn’t in the right frame of mind,” Woods told BBC Sport. “It was a long night [due to the assassination attempt] and that’s all we watched the entire time on the way over here. I didn’t sleep at all on the flight, and then we just got on the golf course.”
While Woods’ personal relationship with the former president is unclear, he recently accepted the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Trump in 2019.
Woods’ latest comments on Trump set off a firestorm on social media, with some pointing to the golfer’s cheating scandal, which led to the end of his marriage.
“Tiger Woods has no credibility anymore. He’s a drunk cheater who crashes his car,” one person wrote on X.
“Sounds like Tiger Woods was on his usual cocktail of Ambien and bourbon. Tiger is a wife cheater too, so birdies of a feather,” a commentator added.
Others shrugged off the golfer’s personal struggles to reach the REM phases of sleep. “Tiger woods? the adulterer? the cheater? I give a rats a– about his sleep in what never never land? No, don’t care,” a social media user wrote.
“Where’s his ex wife at??… I need her to make another trip,” an Instagram user commented.
“One thing about tiger…he gonna find an EXCUSE. boy bye,” someone wrote in the comments section on Instagram.
A third Instagram user asserted that Woods should still have sleep issues over his failed marriage. “Sir…hush…you should be losing sleep over the amount of those monthly payments to your ex-wife…Good day Lie-in I mean tiger.”
Woods’ life has always been synonymous with extreme highs and equally drastic lows.
Tiger woods? the adulterer? the cheater? I give a rats ass about his sleep in what never never land? No, don’t care.
— Finley (@wintastogga) July 18, 2024
In his storied career, Woods has won the prestigious Masters Tournament five times. He is considered the greatest golfer in history, but his success story is unique. He was born in California to an athletic father, Earl Woods, who also served in the US Army. Earl Woods met Kultida “Tida” Woods when he was on a tour of duty in her native Thailand in the 1960s.
Tiger was a child prodigy who went on to dominate a historically white sport. Woods is credited with increasing golf’s popularity in the US, particularly within the Black community. On July 18, ESPN ranked Woods as the No. 8 on its list of the top 100 pro athletes of the 21st century.
While Woods has been praised for his outstanding achievements on the golf course, he has received considerable criticism for his personal problems away from the game. In 2009, tabloid The National Enquirer ran a story detailing an alleged months-long affair the golfer had with a New York City nightclub employee named Rachel Uchitel.
He eventually finalized a high-profile and costly divorce to Elin Nordegren after more details trickled out on the string of mistresses and sex workers Woods had allegedly been involved with. In 2010, The Guardian reported that Woods was in a sex addiction clinic in Mississippi.
In 2017, Wood was arrested under suspicion of driving under the influence near his home after police found him asleep inside his car with the vehicle running. Woods later pleaded guilty to reckless, ABC News reported.
He has also struggled with substance abuse in the past. In May, he made an appearance at his TGR Foundation’s charity poker event in Las Vegas. His face appeared swollen, and he seemed somewhat groggy as he stumbled over a few of his words in a video alongside professional poker player Phil Hellmuth and Twitch streamer Ninja.
