Is this Woods' respect for the military, inculcated in him by his father? Is this him deciding on his own that the things Navy SEALs do can help him with his swing? Is this him trying to become RoboTiger? Is this nobody around him with the fearlessness to say, "Uhh, this is a bad idea, and you really should stop doing it?"

I mean, it's definitely the last one for sure. He never told himself no, so why the hell would we think anyone else could do it? And that's only a partial crack about his off-the-course hobby -- he was trying to break every known template for the modern golfer, going so far as to rebuild his game from scratch twice, and would never have acceded to someone else's ideas for him.

He was a tinkerer, and this was a hell of a tink.

But it was clearly nuts, because in addition to everything else, it assumed that all forms of training reach the same end. So as a way to become a better golfer, it was at best value-neutral, and at worst a contribution to the wear and tear of a body already showing the physical strain of playing golf the Tiger way.

How much of a contribution, we have no idea. Let's say it contributed relatively little, so we won't be distracted by the larger nugget here.

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And that is that Woods was trying to become the invulnerable golfer, a Transformer with 14 clubs. Navy SEALs are among the best-trained humans in the world. Logic, right?

Wrong. Tiger Woods could play Pebble Beach. A SEAL could take it. These are dramatically different skills, requiring dramatically different methods. And it saddens me to think I have to explain this to rational thinking people.

But nobody explained it to Woods. At least not in a way that it actually sunk in. Hank Haney, from whose upcoming book this gem has emerged, couldn't do it, and he had better access to Woods' golf mind than anyone. At least for awhile.

Of course, Woods' agent, Mark Steinberg, has ripped Haney's book yet again, accusing it of (gasp!) being a vehicle to make money. And though he cannot fathom why anyone would assail a client of his (which is Steinberg's vehicle to make money), he did not question the facts as Haney presented them.

And that's all that matters here. Woods was trying to take golf to a place it has never been, sure that he was the only one who could. And whether he became obsessed with Jack Nicklaus or not, he lost his power of judgment with the SEAL stuff.

Unless, of course, he really did want to join the military, which frankly we doubt. One does not make a billion dollars as a SEAL. Rich folks pay plenty for a personally designed golf course. They pay almost nothing for a personally designed obstacle course.

In sum, what we have here was another way that Tiger Woods sought out physical perfection, by crossing a bridge too far (no military pun intended, honest) in search of the place nobody could ever reach. He wasn't trying to take the hill, he was trying to take K2, perhaps in hope that nobody would catch him the way he intended to catch Nicklaus.

And there's the story, or one of them -- Woods in search of whatever comes after golf, while still playing golf. Woods dabbling in the most strenuous training there is in hopes of achieving untouchability on a golf course. Or Woods bored with golf and looking for the next way to push himself physically, while the current way was plenty difficult.

It was Tiger Woods looking for something he didn't yet have, and that nobody else could conceive, let alone achieve. It was a thirst that could not be slaked, by a man who could not conceive of limits.

Does this Navy SEAL detour define him? No. It helps explain a part of him, but it isn't the moment of truth in Woods' life. I'm not sure anyone knows that one yet, maybe not even him.

But I know this. If you want a golf course played in 64 strokes, you call Tiger Woods. If you want a well-guarded bridge taken or demolished in 64 minutes, you call a SEAL. There is nobody who can do both, and I think we should all be comforted by that fact.