Tiger Woods Livid Over Being Called Out For Repeated Cheating

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AAAintheBeltway

http://www.usatoday.com/story/sport...andel-chamblee-cheating-golf-channel/3285421/


My take:


Golf is different from other sports in one crucial aspect: competitors are expected to call penalties on themselves, even in circumstances where no one else sees the infraction. That standard was set decades ago by the legendary Bobby Jones, founder of Augusta National, who famously emerged from the woods and announced that he was penalizing himself for moving the ball accidentally. An amazed sportswriter asked him why he would do that since no one could possibly have seen the ball move. Jones replied in words that every golfer knows "That would be like saying it is acceptable to rob a bank if no one is around."

Tiger Woods employs a somehwat different standard, one that seems to involve using his stature to bully rules authorities and now the media.

Golf Channel analyst and former player Brandel Chamblee wrote an article for Golf.com in which he pointed out Tiger's rules infractions this past year (apparently there were at least four incidents) and observed that tiger seemed to have a "cavalier attitude" about the rules.

Tiger was livid. His agent even tossed out the absurd idea of a legal action. Chamblee, no doubt seeing his future in doubt, tweeted some sort of semi-apology to the effect he was sorry to have started something unseemly. Tiger appears unmollified and has now announced that it is up to The Gofl Channel to handle the matter, in effect a crude demand that they fire Chamblee.

It seems only yesterday that tiger's public reputation was in shreds and his fans distraught, all because of a different sort of cheating. I guess time heals old wounds. He now is back to his old self, cursing loudly on national TV, snarling at fans when he even acknowledges them and now going after a guy's job for expressing an opinion that virtually every golfer and golf fan holds.

The record books may call Tiger a winner, but he's no Bobby Jones.
 
This past weekend English pro Simon Dyson had an infraction at the BMW Masters tourney in Shanghai. After a putt that went a few feet long he marked his ball, then used the ball to quickly tamp down what looked like a spike mark in his line. Finished his round, signed his card. A fan called in the infraction (you cannot tamper with your putting line) and he was assessed a 2-stroke penalty which led to a disqualification for signing a false card. This has happened from time to time with many pros over the years, if you sign a false card you are DQ'd, simple as that.

Unless, of course, your name is Tiger Woods. Then you can sign a false card (as he did at the Masters) and the rules officials will jump thru endless hoops to find a reason not to disqualify you. I don't remember another player who ever signed a false card and got a pass. Anyway, if Woods had the class of Bobby Jones or the sportsmanship of Jack Nicklaus he would have done the right thing and disqualified himself, refusing to play on (at a Major tournament no less) under cloudy circumstances. But we, and obviously Brandel Chamblee, know better about Eldrick.
 
Between his ex wife and the rules of the game, Tiger sure does a lot of cheating.

Though never a spectator sports fan, I did marvel at his talent when he was an amateur.
I've disliked him personally almost as long as he's been a professional.
 
I have lost interest in him over time.
But, I think, that was mostly because his game became less interesting. He was a different player with his Harmon game.

Now just about all interest is gone.

The cheating, these rules infractions and the revelation about his plane trips to the PED chiropractor in Canada are too much.
 
If you follow the comments sections on all of the repeatedly questionable behavior by T.W., it becomes readily apparent that the very same group of people that will rush to his defense are almost exactly the same group that will defend Hopey...

The usual race baiting garbage is employed to call out his detractors; i.e. no matter how much he shames the rules of the game (which are the real point); it's imagined that his critics are just southern racists who can't stand a black man setting all the records.

It's ridiculous.
 
Quote from Magna:

This past weekend English pro Simon Dyson had an infraction at the BMW Masters tourney in Shanghai. After a putt that went a few feet long he marked his ball, then used the ball to quickly tamp down what looked like a spike mark in his line. Finished his round, signed his card. A fan called in the infraction (you cannot tamper with your putting line) and he was assessed a 2-stroke penalty which led to a disqualification for signing a false card. This has happened from time to time with many pros over the years, if you sign a false card you are DQ'd, simple as that.

Unless, of course, your name is Tiger Woods. Then you can sign a false card (as he did at the Masters) and the rules officials will jump thru endless hoops to find a reason not to disqualify you. I don't remember another player who ever signed a false card and got a pass. Anyway, if Woods had the class of Bobby Jones or the sportsmanship of Jack Nicklaus he would have done the right thing and disqualified himself, refusing to play on (at a Major tournament no less) under cloudy circumstances. But we, and obviously Brandel Chamblee, know better about Eldrick.
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That incident in Augusta was stark evidence of the old maxim that golf doesn't teach character, it reveals it. The fact that it happened at Augusta, the temple of all that is held dear about the game, only underlined the point.

Tiger connived with gutless officials to stay in the tournament, rather than see yet another opportunity slip from his grasp in his increasingly futile quest to break Jack's majors record. The irony was that he not only didn't win, but he blew an opportunity to make up for all his prior unseemly behavior, both on and off the course. Had he withdrawn voluntarily, he would immediately have been placed on the same moral plane as Bobby Jones. Part of me is glad he didn't, because he obviously doesn't belong there.
 
Quote from AAAintheBeltway:

That incident in Augusta was stark evidence of the old maxim that golf doesn't teach character, it reveals it. The fact that it happened at Augusta, the temple of all that is held dear about the game, only underlined the point.

Tiger connived with gutless officials to stay in the tournament, rather than see yet another opportunity slip from his grasp in his increasingly futile quest to break Jack's majors record. The irony was that he not only didn't win, but he blew an opportunity to make up for all his prior unseemly behavior, both on and off the course. Had he withdrawn voluntarily, he would immediately have been placed on the same moral plane as Bobby Jones. Part of me is glad he didn't, because he obviously doesn't belong there.
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The Masters story is even more intriguing since it involved some bad blood between Ridley (the idiot who ignored the infraction at first) and David Eger (the former rules official) who called in to report the infraction. The back story is that Ridley and Eger hate each other and it more than likely played a very big part in Ridley's initial decision to gloss over the whole event and hope it would just disappear.

Eger, in a recent article, also notes that Ridley has a very superficial understanding of the Rules of Golf as evidenced by an earlier episode at a Walker Cup match some years ago. IOW, Ridley was probably just as clueless as Tiger about the illegal drop and didn't want to be one-upped by his arch nemesis David Eger (calling in from his living room couch), lol.
 
He clearly misapplied the rule. Why is open to question. It's not like it was the Lumber Liquidators Open, where they would lose the TV audience if Tiger was out.

The rule that signing an incorrect card is an automatic DQ had been altered to account for situations where an infraction was called after the player had signed. The point of that however was to alleviate the unfairness of DQing a player who was not aware of his infraction. For example, he might dislodge a dead stick on his backswing and not be aware of it. A viewer notices it and calls in and the officials review the tape and call an infraction. A DQ seems harsh because the player had no way of knowing he had violated a rule.

Tiger's Masters' infraction was far different. It was charitably a case of not knowing the applicable rule. He made an improper drop and actually volunteered during the press conference, before the infraction was called, that he had moved back to drop at a certain yardage. The rule of course required him to drop as close as possible to the original spot.

This may seem trivial to non-golfers, but strict adherence to the rules is regarded as non-negotiable by most pros as well as golf fans. For example, a guy a year or so ago lost the Heritage Tournament at Hilton Head when he accidentally dislodged a dead stick chipping out of a greenside hazard. He immediately called a penalty on himself, even though no one else saw it and it was almost imperceptible on TV replays. He knew and in his mind, that was all that mattered.

You have to wonder how Tiger would have handled that situation.
 
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