Kelly Tilghman & Tiger Woods are STILL friends… January 9, 2008
Posted by John C in Golf, Kelly Tilghman, The Golf Channel, Tiger Woods.trackback
… just in case you missed it or were told otherwise. And Fuzzy Zoeller is still a good friend of Tiger’s as well.
Another day, another instance of the sports media being overly sensitive and not doing their research before going off on someone. This past weekend, the PGA Tour held it’s first event of the season (the Mercedes-Benz Championship) in Hawaii. During the third round coverage of the tournament the Golf Channel’s Kelly Tilghman and Nick Faldo were talking about Tiger Woods (who was not present at the event) and the chances of someone beating him. I was watching coverage of the tournament and listening to the bantor when Kelly jokingly said that the only way to test him would be to “lynch him in a back alley.” Clearly, no harm was intended, but someone went off and ran a story on the non-story, causing a media uproar.
The media circus around the non-story grew to such a level that Tiger’s agent Mark Steinberg had to issue a statement today. Steinberg stated “this story is a non-issue. Tiger and Kelly are friends and Tiger has a great deal of respect for Kelly. Regardless of the choice of words used we know unequivocally that there was no ill-intent in her comments. This story is a non-issue in our eyes. Case closed.”
It’s interesting that a golfer like Rory Sabbatini can berate a fan with an expletive-filled tirade and not even get a fine out of it (he actually got the fan ejected), yet a non-story like this can garner headlines. One can only hope that the people covering the golf world in the future would be more focused on those who are actually doing wrong (and continuing to set a bad example) like Sabbatini and doing something about it, and less focused on the politcal correctness of an innocent comment by one of the tour’s most-liked and qualified commentators.
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Yep. The media does a good job of ’shaking the bush’, so to speak. But I would argue that given today’s immediate information availability they are provided an incentive to plow into someone’s poor choice of words. I am black and have taken her words at face value: just words. But, I had to go through some mental gymnastics to get there. You see, my parents lived through the Jim Crow days of the South and were conditioned to be highly aware of their surroundings – “you can’t eat here, you can’t use the bathroom there, don’t look a white person in the eye” – and so on; If you broke the “law”, at that time, the consequences could be dire. More often than not, lynching was not even committed, it was the THREAT of lynching which caused much concern. So, now that the cat is out of the bag – she said what she said – it is for individuals to determine, not only what she meant, but also how her words have elicited certain feelings and thoughts that reach back into Americas not so distant past. Things that are not readily taught in history class.
Thank you for your comments and insight, Gary. I understand where you’re coming from, however, you would think the media would have learned it’s lesson with how awful they treated Fuzzy Zoeller with the whole “collared greens” comment after Tiger won his first Masters. Fuzzy’s never been the same since that incident – he used to be one of the tour’s biggest jokesters and funniest guys. Even Tiger said of Fuzzy’s comment “”I’m sure Fuz didn’t mean anything derogatory; as a matter of fact, I thought it was funny.” It’s sad when the media can bring someone down for something that was meant playfully and innocently. I hope and pray what happened to Fuzzy doesn’t happen to Kelly.
More than anything, what bothers me about this non-event is that the media didn’t look into things and research this before they went off and judged Kelly. One article I saw didn’t even bother to watch the piece of videotape in question, going off on a wild tirade – it’s on Yahoo and there are over 10,000 responses to it! Kelly’s been friends with Tiger for like a dozen years. I’ve never met her, but she seems to be about as genuine and friendly as anyone covering golf today. I highly doubt there’s a racist bone in her body.