Steiny Pushes Back On New Tiger Book: “Egregious errors”

With the new Simon & Schuster published Tiger biography now widely available, the Woods camp has pushed back, calling the Jeff Benedict and Armen Keteyian tome a re-hash from older books and articles. 

I'm surprised that Agent Mark Steinberg decided to acknowledge the book at all, but given the visibility of the authors and some of the more salacious tidbits overshadowing the attention given by the authors to the price of celebrity, perhaps pushback was wise.

Rex Hoggard, writing for GolfChannel.com sets up the story and offers this from Steinberg:

“This book is just a re-hash from older books and articles and it’s hard to tell if there’s anything original at all,” Woods’ manager Mark Steinberg said. “The authors claim ‘we seldom quoted anonymous sources’ yet they relied on them at least 65 times.”

Steiny with a little self-reference in the third person action here...

“They insist that they ‘provide a wealth of new insight,’ but without any input from Tiger, [Woods’ mother] Tida Woods, Mark Steinberg or those closest to him, that’s obviously impossible,” Steinberg said. “It’s clear the sources they actually rely on are people that haven’t spoken or interacted with Tiger for many years, most with ulterior motives.”

Former Clinton Administration counselor to the President, Doug Band, wrote to Golf Digest, taking issue with an account in the book of the Learning Center's opening. Band says "there is hardly an accurate or true word in the excerpt."

According to Awful Announcing's Andrew Bucholtz, who also rounds up some of the issues at hand in debating the book, he quotes one of the authors pushing back on Band's account.

Keteyian then fires back at Band, saying “I called him to fact-check the information that’s in that section,” and reveals that Band is the source for the quote of “I’m Tiger Woods, king of the world, go eff yourself,” plus says he had another source in that fivesome who described that round. Benedict then talks about how there is new and fresh material in this book, like stories of Woods being comfortable with kids who didn’t know he was famous and one of his neighbors talking about him asking who he can trust, and Keteyian talks about the book illustrating “the cost and the price of fame.”

Authors Benedict and Keteyian on Outside The Lines (embed not working but link should).

Renowned documentarian Alex Gibney will be developing a “documentary series” based on the new biography, Reuters reported Tuesday. No outlet has been named but the combination of Tiger intrigue, Gibney's reputation and the host of streaming options makes it likely the series will find a home.