Before I did my research on this post, I was like “wait, wasn’t James Patterson involved with something controversial recently?” For some reason, I thought he said something positive about Donald Trump, but no, Patterson isn’t MAGA. He is pretty old and very white, which was the controversy in 2022, btw. Patterson did an interview in the Times of London where he lamented the dearth of opportunities for white men in today’s society, and said outright that the oppression of white men is “just another form of racism.” Patterson ended up apologizing but you know he still thinks that way. Anyway, Patterson has a new book – he always has a new book – and it’s a biography of Tiger Woods. While Tiger’s life story is fertile ground for would-be biographers, who wants to read Patterson’s version? Which may explain why Patterson decided to name-check Prince Harry to sell his book.

Tiger Woods is the Prince Harry of sport. So says his biographer, global sensation James Patterson, who believes the greatest golfer in history was trapped by his fame… and courted disaster when he tried to escape the gilded cage.

‘There’s a little parallel with the Royal Family,’ Patterson tells me in an interview about his new best-seller, ‘Tiger, Tiger’.

‘They’re not allowed to be real people, to be out in the world,’ he adds. ‘I think that’s probably a little bit [of the problem] with Harry. [He’s] just got to go out there and be a real person, you know?’

Tiger and Harry share another huge parallel: both men have, at times, been used to not doing things for themselves. Certainly, that’s how Woods’s former wife Elin Nordegren sees it. When fellow Swede and golf-pro Jesper Parnevik first introduced the pair in 2001, Elin was working as an au pair for Parnevik’s family. The blue-eyed 21-year-old had ambitions to train as a paediatric psychologist, was a keen amateur kickboxer and even a part-time swimsuit model. Woods, then 25, was smitten. But, instead of approaching her for a first date himself, Woods rather awkwardly sent a member of his back-up team to do the asking.

‘That’s the way he’s lived his life,’ says Patterson. ‘Whatever Woods needed, whether it was room service or a wife, his first instinct was to say: “Let’s get a manager to do that”.’

According to one of Patterson’s sources, Elin was deeply unimpressed to have been approached via proxy, describing the move as ‘weird and pathetic’. She already had a boyfriend back home in Sweden and it was months before she consented to go on a date with Woods. They tied the knot in 2004 – only for the marriage to collapse within six years in one of the messiest break-ups in sporting history, littered with sordid tales of addiction and infidelity.

[From The Daily Mail]

The Mail is running this as an exclusive. So, I have a theory! We know for a fact that the Mail asks every American they encounter about Prince Harry and Meghan. It’s basically the first thing Mail reporters do whenever they speak to any American. I suspect that was the case here, that the Mail probably encouraged or challenged Patterson to mention Harry in some way, and he was like… sure, Tiger Woods is like Prince Harry, whatever it takes to sell this book. Suffice to say, Prince Harry and Tiger Woods are nothing alike. Even Patterson’s comparison falls flat – Harry didn’t need a third party to approach women on his behalf. Harry chased Meghan himself and made it happen.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.