Roaring Back: The Fall and Rise of Tiger Woods

By Curt Sampson

The incredible true story of Tiger Woods’s dramatic return to glory at the 2019 Masters following his humbling and very public personal, physical, and professional setbacks.

One publicly imploded marriage. Two car accidents. Eight surgeries. And now, a miracle of hard work and storied talent: five Masters wins. Once hailed as “the greatest closer in history” before he fell further than any beloved athlete in America’s memory, Tiger swung at the world’s wildest expectations and beat all the skeptics by earning an unlikely fifth green jacket in April 2019. Roaring Back chronicles his road to Augusta and the improbable, phenomenal comeback of one of the greatest golfers in history.

New York Times bestselling author Curt Sampson details the highs and lows of Woods’ career in four gripping acts. Beginning with his stunning arrival at the 1997 Masters and culminating with his dramatic, come-from-behind victory to secure his fifth green jacket, Sampson traces Tiger's extraordinary arc to include his startling loss at the 2009 PGA Championship, his detrimental obsession with his swing, his innumerable injuries, and the infamous late-November night involving a furious ex-wife and a nine-iron. Featuring exclusive interviews with past instructors, caddies, notable golf scribes, Augusta locals, and PGA tour peers, and gleaning insight from valuable secondary sources, Roaring Back places Tiger's comeback in context with the greatest in golf's rich history.

In the end, Roaring Back finds the forty-four-year-old golfer alone on Augusta's eighteenth green as he achieves victory against all odds. As this enthralling book reveals, Tiger Woods never doubted the perseverance of the winner he saw in the mirror. Read it to find out how.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Diversion Books
• Release date: Oct 29, 2019
• ISBN: 9781635766820

Curt Sampson

Curt Sampson is a former golf touring professional and a regular contributor to Golf magazine and golf.com. He is the author of seven books, six of them on golf, including the bestsellers The Masters and Hogan. His most recent book, Royal and Ancient, is a behind-the-scenes look at the British Open. He lives in Ennis, Texas.

Reviews for Roaring Back

[mstrust · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A heavily researched bio of musician/songwriter Lou Reed. It covers his childhood in Brooklyn and Long Island, through his college years, having shock treatment after a breakdown, to his first contacts in music and his breakthrough with The Velvet Underground, then solo success. There are the romantic relationships and his working relationships, most notably with Andy Warhol. And throughout it all is Reed's narcissistic personality, which reared up while still in school. I've never read a bio of someone who is described independently by so many people as "a prick".That's the toughest part about reading this book, seeing Reed mistreat so many people over so many years, and there are lots of famous people who weave into the story. Reed was a talented rock 'n' roll star who broke barriers, but the fan who feels Reed could do no wrong probably wouldn't be happy with this.

[kellswitch_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Before reading this book I didn’t really know much at all about Lou Reed beyond his belonging to the Velvet Underground, a history of drugs and a number of his hits songs….and alI can say is I am glad he was never a person in my life. He was a very damaged and very, very unpleasant person who left a lot of pain and anger in his wake. It can’t be easy to write about someone and nasty as Lou Reed was, to show that ugliness and still be sympathetic towards them and I feel overall that the author did a really good job walking that line, he only slipped times trying to justify or minimize some of his behaviors. I did really appreciate how mater of factly he covered Reed’s history of mental health issues, he didn’t gloss over them or over sensationalize them, he used them to inform on Reeds behaviors without using them to absolve him of all responsibility for his choices. I liked the balance between his personal life and his professional life, it didn’t feel glamorized and fake and more like a real person doing a real job, which is easy to forget being a professional artist of any kind is. Enough was shown where you can get a feel for what it was like to be a musician in that time period, but it never took over the story. It was fascinating to ready about his time with Andy Warhol, but I didn’t need to read about Andy Warhol here, and I appreciated the author keeping the main focus on the subject of this book. This book is well written, approachable and easy to read (except for those times I had to put the book down due to just how much of a prick Reed was, but that nota fault of the author) and you can tell a lot of research and love went into writing this. In the end I could see and understand how who Lou Reed was ended up in his music, and how his music couldn’t have been anything other than what it was.

[mandersj73 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I enjoyed the writing and the storytelling of this biography, however I think I would have enjoyed it exponentially more if I would have known more about Lou Reed going into this. The author takes for granted that the reader has a good baseline of knowledge of his subject matter before reading, and that is a fair assumption. However, I went in to this knowing that I enjoy music biographies and not necessarily Lou Reed, specifically.There is plenty of juiciness; Reed was bisexual, and even though many people described him as non-sexual, the author found plenty of evidence of numerous sexual relationships throughout Reed's life. And the alcoholism and drug addiction is duly noted throughout, as well.And, the stories behind the songs, the discography, the tales of the way his band and his music morphed through the years is all well documented. I'm sure if you are a fan of Reed and the Velvet Underground, this book would be wonderfully enjoyable. I, however, am not, and that downfall is on me and me alone.I won this book from LibraryThing.

[seriousgrace · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Confessional: I had a really hard time reading about Lou Reed. I had always heard stories about his despicable character and was hoping most of it was a lot of bunk; I wanted it to be that Lou felt he had to keep up a persona cultivated by his involvement with Andy Warhol and the drug infested 1960s. I was wrong. He was a dick seemingly from birth. There is no doubt Sounes is very sympathetic towards Reed and his less than admirable character. He made excuses for his bad behavior throughout the entire book, calling Reed a "provocateur extraordinaire" as early as the high school years. It is very obvious Lou loved to push buttons early on and did not care in the very least about the consequences. It was if he had a bone to pick with the entire world and spent his entire life trying to get even. He was a troublemaker. He was mean. He acted strange. He was often cranky. Drugs made him even more paranoid than he naturally was. He was a chauvinist and had a thing against women. He welcomed violence against women and had a habit of smashing, shoving, smacking, slapping them. At times Sounes seems conflicted. He states Reed clearly meant to project an image by being a prick, but in the very same sentence admits Reed was the person he projected (p 160).Reed and his "provocateur extraordinaire" personality aside, Sounes's exhausted research and attention to detail jumps out of every page of the biography. You can smell the grit of New York's grungy streets and feel the beer soaked stickiness of the music scene. Warhol, Nico, Bowie, Iggy...they all live and breathe with vibrancy in Lou Reed. It's as if Sounes bottled their souls and that alone makes the read worth it.

[echalom-252939 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

A journalistic account of Reed's life. Lou Reed is such a fascinating person (or at least, that's the impression that I'm under) so it's hard to believe that his life was documented in such a mundane manner. Written like a documentation of facts, when really what I want is the story of Lou Reed. I don't need page after page of hearing that his music was mediocre, his fame wasn't that big, and pretty much everyone who ever met him thought he was a prick. Obviously well-researched - as a true history of Reed's life I'm sure this is close to as accurate as one could get. Kudos to Sounes for that. It's just not what I'm looking for in a rock bio.I won this book from LibraryThing.

[vaniamk13 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A superb and exhaustive biography of Lou Reed, whom some consider the original "Punk" rocker. Relying on first hand accounts from family, acquaintances and musical collaborators, plus decades of printed interviews and articles, Sounes presents a disturbing (to say the least) portrait of someone known mostly for songs showing the darker, or "wild", sides of life. Despite being raised in a seemingly stable and loving middle-class home, unresolved issues with his sexuality and a likely bipolar/personality disorder led Reed into a life of rampant drug abuse, dysfunctional inter-personal relations with nearly everyone he ever worked with, and often brilliant artistic expression. This all makes for painful reading for those, like me, who are fans of Reed's music. Special emphasis is placed on Reed's early Velvet Underground days, so one can also read this as a VU bio, but this is a a biography of the man, not his music. Sounes touches on every musical project Reed was ever involved with, but rarely is more than a single page spent on any of his many albums. That said, contemporary critic's reviews are provided for each album, so one does finish with an overall assessment of Reed's collected work.I'd previously read Soune's outstanding biography of Charles Bukowski: Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life, and consider it the best Bukowski bio, so much was expected from this effort. I wasn't disappointed. This should become the definitive Reed bio.

[etxgardener · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Extremely interesting and exhausting biography of the Velvet Underground rocker, Lou Reed. It's sad that someone who had so much talent could not resist the siren song of drugs, alcohol and bad companions that ultimately killed him.,

[jugglingpaynes · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Life of Lou Reed: Notes from the Velvet Underground by Howard Sounes is a well-researched account of the life of the music artist. The book follows the life and music career of Lou Reed, pieced together from Sounes' research and interviews with about 140 people. The result is a very fair account of Reed's life, the good and the bad. It's easy to tell from sections on the music and concerts that Sounes is a fan of Reed's music. Not having a music background, some of these sections move a bit slow for me. But I was interested in the human side of Lou Reed, his interactions with others and his struggles with addiction and mental illness. In all, I think Sounes did a good job of putting this all together.

[pomo58 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Life of Lou Reed: Notes from the Velvet Underground from Howard Sounes is, like most biographies, both enlightening and maddening. That is the nature of the beast. As biographies go, especially of someone as volatile and private as Lou Reed, this volume succeeds far more than it fails. I wasn't aware when I started the book that it is a reprint. That doesn't really matter much, I just thought I'd let potential readers know.I have read a couple of other biographies of Reed, one quite good but older and one, like this one written after his death, that was more like an extensive wiki entry. Of the three, this is by far the best and most comprehensive. That said, there are certainly gaps and holes from a lack of information. Since Laurie Anderson chose not to participate, there is a lot that might have shed light on the later Reed that we still don't know.I was a fan of Reed's since the Underground days, but didn't really get into the music more seriously until Reed went solo. At that time I developed an interest in him and went back to the older work and rediscovered it. Many listeners came to the Underground through Reed's later music and, while technically not the case for me, probably most accurately relates my appreciation of the overall body of work. So, background explained, on to the book.It is hard to read negative comments about people whose work you have come to admire. But many of his old acquaintances, friends, lovers, bandmates, etc highlight his bad traits alongside his creative abilities so it is what it is. I don't find Sounes as negative as some readers do, he simply relayed the remembrances as they were told to him. I also don't feel he gave any disrespect to Laurie Anderson either. What he could write about her was limited to what was largely already known since she didn't participate. And yes, I think she is immensely talented and I am a fan of both audio and video work she has done, so I am a fan of hers as well.The research Sounes did for this book is extensive and will be foundational for much that may be written later as some of these figures pass away. I would recommend this work to fans of Lou Reed and of the Velvet Underground, just understand that this is not a vanity project, it is an attempt to tell as much of his story as possible, blemishes and all. This is more of a journalistic style biography rather than a critically interpretive or analytical one. I do hope someone writes one of those one day, but until then I think this will be the best that we have. And, for what it seeks to do, it succeeds very well.Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.