Subscriber

Colin Sheridan: Tiger Woods and the sad story of a genius who can't stop crashing

The golf icon was charged with DUI after a Friday afternoon incident.

Mon, 30 Mar, 2026 - 07:00

Colin Sheridan is a writer and columnist. A former officer in the Irish Defence Forces he has extensive deployment experience as a peacekeeper with the United Nations, having lived and worked in the former Yugoslavia, West Africa, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Palestine.

The most depressing thing about Tiger Woods is not that bad things keep happening. It’s that, by now, each crash - metaphorical and literal - feels inevitable. Late on a Friday afternoon, Woods attempted to overtake a truck at speed, clipped a trailer and rolled his SUV onto its side. He crawled out. There were no serious injuries. Police reported signs of impairment. He blew zero on the breathalyser, refused further testing and was charged with DUI.

And with that, the latest chapter in one of the most frustrating careers in modern sport wrote itself. Because the tragedy of Tiger Woods is not that he fell; it’s that he kept choosing to fall the same way.

This is exclusive subscriber content. Already a subscriber? Sign in