HBO’s Tiger Features First In-Depth Interview with Rachel Uchitel Since Tiger Woods Affair
HBO’s Tiger Features First In-Depth Interview with Rachel Uchitel Since Tiger Woods Affair
“For the last ten years, I have stayed quiet about this story, but at this point I have nothing left to lose.”
It’s practically a journalistic platitude that the best sports stories aren’t really about sports, and Part II of HBO’s Tiger documentary proves the platitude—while also condemning the very Sports Story factories which produce it.
The vehicle for this critique is Rachel Uchitel, the New York City nightclub manager who, with Tiger Woods, engaged in a much-publicized extramarital affair. Tiger directors Matthew Hamachek and Matthew Heineman reached out to Uchitel for interview—her first in-depth interview since the affair was made public in 2009—before production even began. She accepted. She wanted to finally tell her story.
The story the Tiger documentary wants to tell is, indeed, a sports story. But it’s also an indictment of media coverage—surrounding sports and athletes and off-the-field drama—of which all brands, even this one, perhaps in this very story, are likely guilty. The documentary asks why we come, why we see, and why we judge.
Maybe because we can’t look away. Maybe because when an athlete signs mill
