Tiger Woods’ former coach says golfer wanted to join Navy SEALs

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Tiger Woods’ former swing coach has revealed in his new book that the star golfer seriously considered becoming a Navy SEAL.

Hank Haney writes in his upcoming book, The Big Miss that that he tried to convince Woods, whose father, Earl, was a special forces soldier in Vietnam, not to go on secret training exercises with the SEALs, but the golfer was obsessed with joining the Navy’s elite fighting unit.

When he told Woods that SEALs could not be older than 28, hoping to show him it was a pie-in-the-sky ambition, he writes, Woods responded, “It’s not a problem. They’re making a special age exemption for me.”

“I thought, ‘Wow. Here is Tiger Woods, the greatest athlete on the planet, maybe the greatest athlete ever, right in the middle of his prime, basically ready to leave it all behind for a military life’,” the New York Post quoted Haney as saying in the book.

He writes that Woods undertook dozens of trips to naval bases across the country “in a program that approximated the training for a Navy SEAL candidate.”

“To my knowledge, he did training in parachuting, self-defense, urban-warfare simulations and shooting."

“I never heard of Tiger doing any training in the water with the SEALs, but he was already a pretty accomplished diver,” Haney wrote.

According to the book, Woods talked about a three-day trip during which he parachuted as many as 10 times a day and touted his long-range shooting skills.

“He talked all about the different guns and how to allow for wind and the flight of the bullet, almost as if he were describing a golf shot,” he wrote.

Woods seemed most proud of his self-defense achievements, according to Haney, who writes that he told him “he really wanted to be able to protect his family and his home if anything ever happened.”

The more stories Haney heard, the more concerned he became about the golfer.

“When I later learned the full truth about the dangerous exercises that Tiger engaged in with the SEALs, it caused me to question whether the greatest golfer the game has ever seen severely hampered his chance at surpassing one of the most revered marks in all of sports - Jack Nicklaus’ record - because of his fascination with the military,” he wrote.