It is unnerving to see the time on the video when the arrest is made: 3.11pm last Friday. The sky is blue and the setting unthreatening, in the middle of an affluent neighbourhood on a road lined with palm trees. By all accounts, he is in a happy and stable relationship with Vanessa Trump, the US president’s former daughter-in-law. Astonishingly, in the moments immediately after the accident, he claims to have called the commander-in-chief himself. “Just talking to the president,” he says to officers vexed by him wandering off down the street.
The president, for his part, has been unusually muted about the episode. “Very close friend of mine,” he said, in his only public comments about Woods. “Amazing man. But some difficulty. I don’t want to talk about it.” The awkward question is what Woods is doing dazed and confused on a quiet weekday afternoon, carrying hydrocodone, a potent opioid. That is just one of several drugs he lists for police, confirming the worst fears that he has been addicted, since a catalogue of surgeries, to popping strong painkilling medication.
Not for the first time, the pharmacological assistance that Woods needs just to navigate the day is released for all the world to see. In 2017, when he was first arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence, police found not just hydrocodone in his system but hydromorphone, another painkiller, as well as Xanax and Ambien, two sleep drugs, plus THC (tetrahydrocannabinol), the active ingredient in marijuana. His police mugshot that night, depicting him glazed and broken, would become the most vivid counterpoint to his coronation at the Masters two years later, punching his air to celebrate his fifth green jacket and perhaps the most improbable comeback in sport.