(Image source: Wikimedia Commons )

 

BY NIELS SCHACK NORGAARD

 

Tiger Woods was ready to quit golf to become a Navy SEAL.

 

That’s the claim of his former coach Hank Haney in a book called “The Big Miss” that reveals secrets from his six-year-employment as Tiger Woods’ swing coach that ended last year. He tells Golf Channel about Tiger’s infatuation with the military:

 

“He started talking about it more and more and more and I started getting the sense that he’s thinking about joining the military. ... I started to think, ‘This might actually happen.’”

 

Tiger Woods’ father, Earl Woods, was a green beret, serving two tours of duty in Vietnam and retired as a lieutenant colonel. WMCH reports the details of Tiger’s military training:

 

“The book by his former coach Hank Haney says Woods took part in four days of military training in 2004 and nearly abandoned the game. And he says Woods loves parachute jumps, hand-to-hand combats and did four mile runs in combat boots.”

 

Tiger’s agent Mark Steinberg is furious about the book — and the superstar hasn’t made an effort to hide the fact he’s slightly annoyed his former coach wrote a book about him. Last week, he told ESPN:

 

“I think it’s unprofessional and very disappointing ... especially because it’s someone I worked with and trusted as a friend. There have been other one-sided books about me, and I think people understand that this book is about money. I’m not going to waste my time reading it.”

 

“The Big Miss” comes out in late March, but Golf Digest has already published excerts from the book . It reveals how Tiger Woods would worry his physical therapist because he took long runs in his military boots, putting extra pressure on his fragile left knee. Also, it discloses Tiger’s fear of the driver.

 

“‘One of the adjectives most often used to describe Tiger Woods was fearless. But the more I observed him close up, the more it became clear he wasn't,’ Haney writes. ‘Sometimes, to make it less of a big deal, he'd remind me that he had never considered himself a particularly good driver...’”

 

Woods has refused to answer specific questions from the media about the Navy SEALs rumor. He’s currently preparing for The Honda Classic in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.