Tiger Woods looms large for Rich Lerner.
The 65-year-old broadcaster joined Golf Channel’s on-air team in 1997 — just as Woods’ professional career was launching into the stratosphere. Lerner has had the opportunity to bear witness to Woods’ ups and downs for his entire three-decade stint on the network.
On this week’s episode of Subpar, Lerner joined hosts Colt Knost and Drew Stoltz to discuss his new book, the recently-released Aren’t You That Golf Guy? Lerner said he originally conceived the book as a “Tiger at 50” endeavor, but that changed as he added vignettes from his younger days that included stories and experiences from growing up at his father’s driving range. Lerner describes the book as similar to an Instagram feed, with short chapters, some funny and some poignant. But Woods remains an anchor throughout.
“It was the greatest thing I’ve ever seen,” Lerner said of Woods’ heyday. “I talk about it in the book at length. It’s not just how much he won, and he won prolifically, it’s how he did it in the most impossible ways. But it’s a complicated saga, we know that. I would say about a third of the book is Tiger, and chronologically the book sort of follows Tiger’s rise, his fall, and his comeback in this redemption story around which there are these dog-legs and detours.”
Lerner said the best story he ever heard that describes was Tiger was like as his peak came from an interview Lerner conducted with Ernie Els.
“I asked Ernie Els in 2010 — I sat down with Ernie in the run-up to the Congressional U.S. Open of 2011. So this is like 10 years, a decade after Tiger’s season for the ages, the 2000 three-major season, and I said, all these years later, how do you view that period of time and Tiger’s impact on you? Because Ernie was meant to win, you know, seven, eight majors, he was definitely gonna win a Masters. He had it all, big supple guy with soft hands.
“And Ernie said to me, in that great South African accent, he said, ‘You know, about 2000, my own father, he said to me, ‘Why don’t you stand up to that man?’ And I said to my own father, I said, ‘You have no f—— idea what we’re dealing with.’ And Ernie was not laughing when he said it, and that one stopped me in my tracks.
“Think about that,” Lerner continued. “‘You have no idea what we’re dealing with,’ as if Tiger were a force of nature, like a tsunami, that couldn’t be handled. And, he was. I mean, they didn’t have an answer for the guy. They just didn’t.”
For more from Lerner, including his thoughts on Phil Mickelson, check out the entire episode of Subpar below.
<figure class="youtube-facade" data-content="
“>
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: golf.com
