He launches into a disquisition on the
falsity of media attention and the men-
dacity of image-creation that ends with a
concession: Feherty never anticipated how
long Woods would take to regain form.
“People forget how good Tiger is when he
plays well,” Feherty says. “We mortals can-
not conceive of just how stupifyingly bril-
liant his game was or how thoroughly he
changed everything. Tiger won 40 percent
of the events he entered! It was like all of a
Woods’ pro debut roughly coin-
cided with Feherty’s first appearance
as a network analyst. The two became
inextricably entwined in 1997 at Pebble
Beach. After Woods had gambled in the
final round and reached the 18th green
with a 3-wood,
Feherty asked,
“Were you
concerned at
all by that big
blue thing to
the left?” He
meant the
Pacific Ocean.
Since then,
he and Woods
have remained friendly—
engaging in innumerable if barely audible on-course farting
duels—though not especially intimate. “I’ve been accused
of being so far up Tiger’s ass that he can barely make a
full swing,” says Feherty. From his privileged redoubt, he
maintains he’s seen a facet of Woods that the public seldom
does: an immense vulnerability. “Tiger got so famous so
quickly that he had little or no control over the firewall that
was built around him,” he says. “As a result, who he really
is vanished for most of us overnight. I imagine it must be
hard for him to live a life in a manner that he may not have
chosen, and I think he struggles with it. Just a theory, but
he’s so much nicer than the general perception of him.”
Feherty says he’d love to interview Woods on his show,
but “only when he’s ready.” The guest he most covets is the
person he most fears: Bill Murray. Feherty can quote virtu-
ally every line from “Caddyshack,” a film he credits with
exposing golf’s “racist, classist” underbelly. To him, Murray
is one of the game’s most important figures—his character,
Carl Spackler, made the game cool. Feherty acknowledges
that Murray is a “nightmare interview,” but he wants him on
“Feherty” precisely because he’s a nightmare interview.
Side trips: Feherty’s
love of cycling has
led to some close
calls; (below) an
unapologetic Woods
fan, Feherty says
the star is nicer than
many perceive.
GOLF WORLD:
What would you like to be
reincarnated as?
FEHERTY:
Myself. I’d like a mulligan.
In the pooling black night, Feherty and a couple of
disabled Green Berets shoulder semi-automatic weapons
on the deck of the Texas man-cave. The three of them
spend several hours firing off rounds into the darkness. One
veteran is a former sniper named—believe it or not—John
Wayne Walding. He lost part of a leg in 2008 during the
Battle of Shok Valley, a 6½-hour firefight in Afghanistan.
Feherty is deeply involved with the Troops First
Foundation, a charity that helps wounded soldiers. He’s
hired Walding to assemble custom rifle stocks in his garage.
“I owe so much to David,” Walding says. “Every time I’m in
a dark spot, he’s the one who pulls me out. He’s helped me
adjust to the new man I am.”
Walding calls Feherty a skeptic who questions ev-
erything but the dignity and worth of others, and who
recognizes an obligation to serve the larger community.
Feherty says he hasn’t always been that way. “For a long
time, I felt the world would be a much better place with-
out me on it,” he says. “But I’ve found that the longer you
spend on this planet, the more important the time you
have left becomes.”
His musings on mortality echo those of the great Irish
writer Samuel Beckett. At the end of Beckett’s novel
Murphy, the protagonist’s ashes are to be flushed down the
toilet of the Abbey Theater in Dublin. Asked how he’d like
to die, Feherty says, “In someone else’s sleep. That way,
when they woke up, I’d still be alive.” N
