GOLF BOOK CLUB: PHILIP REIDreviews In Search of Tiger, by Tom Callahan.

I'VE BEEN to enough Tiger Woods press conferences to know that nobody really gets to know Tiger Woods. He'll speak eloquently and coherently and you'll enjoy being there, asking questions and listening to the answers; but, in truth, more often than not you walk away feeling as if you've been outmanoeuvred by someone who is far smarter and streetwise.

It's the same with this book. It is beautifully written for sure and is a very good read . . . but it doesn't succeed in its quest: to find out who Tiger Woods really is.

There's a reference at one stage to Woods's first caddie as a professional, a gentleman by the name of Mike Cowan who went - and still does, as bagman these days to Jim Furyk - by his nickname Fluff. The relationship didn't last.

As Callahan puts it in determining the reason for the parting of the ways, "Fluff may have popped out of too many suitcases in motel commercials, or he may have told too many people the terms of their arrangements ("a thousand dollars a week up front plus eight per cent of his winnings, nine per cent for top 10s and 10 per cent for wins") or he may have had a girlfriend half his 50 years and Tiger may have found her obnoxious."

But that is Tiger. He is private, and wants to keep things private. So, just as Fluff was jettisoned in favour of Steve Williams who keeps his mouth shut and more often than not is as much of a bodyguard as a caddie and friend, the problem for Callahan is that nobody really and truly gets close enough to Woods, least of all a journalist, to be able to tell us who he really is.

For all that, this is an interesting and well-written book that feeds enough titbits of information to keep the pages turning.

You'll discover that Woods is a roller-coaster junkie, why it is he wears red on the last day of a tournament and that his given name Eldrick was created by his mother so that it featured the first initials of each of his parents' names, Earl and Kultida.

The name didn't stick, replaced as it was from very early days by Tiger in honour of an old army colleague of Earl Woods.

Indeed, the opening part of the book is devoted to Callahan's search for the original Tiger, a Vietnamese soldier called Vuong Dang Phong who, it emerges, died in a camp after the fall of Saigon. However, Callahan does manage to get the soldier's family to travel to California for a meeting with Earl and Tiger.

Callahan's search for what he calls "Tiger Two" doesn't have as definitive a conclusion.

Perhaps this is because Tiger's story is still an ongoing one, still evolving as he chases Jack Nicklaus's record number of major championships.

There's no doubt Woods and his late father had a special relationship. Yet, there are times in the book that Callahan seems to be stretching to tie too many knots together in making comparisons with the relationships that existed between Jack Nicklaus and his father and Arnold Palmer and his father and Butch Harmon and his father . . . the list goes on and on, to the extent that the book is in danger at times of being about others more than about Woods. Interesting? Certainly. Relevant? The jury is out on that one.

Callahan's attempts to weave so many different strands of Woods's life and the lives of other golfers - past and present - together works on one level but you're left with the feeling that the appetiser is better than the main course. This is not Callahan's fault.

The reason is that Tiger Woods is on a mission of his own - just as he put yellowed newspaper cuttings about Nickalus on his wall - to be the greatest golfer, possibly sportsman, ever.

His task is unfinished; and there is a sense that this book - which already has been overtaken by the player's deeds since it was first published in 2003 - has come too early.

Woods's story continues to evolve.

QUESTIONS FOR READERS

- Do you believe that Callahan manages to reveal the mystique behind Tiger Woods?

- Is the author justified in devoting so much space to the relationships that existed between other golfers and their fathers?

- Do you get the impression that all of the other players featured in the book truly know the real Tiger Woods?

- The issue of racism in golf is touched on . . . could the author have delved deeper into this topic?

- How do you rate this book out of a possible top mark of 10?