Sean Foley: Enough with the criticism of Tiger Woods
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Tiger Woods is back! Tiger Woods is finished! Tiger Woods rules! Tiger Woods sucks!
You know the drill. If you've spent even three minutes around the world of golf in the last, oh, 15 years, you've gotten a full-on dose of Tiger Woods info, news and opinion. And while said dose was mostly positive prior to The Hydrant Incident, it's been markedly less so since then. And Woods' current swing coach, Sean Foley, has had enough.
"Tiger is a wonderful person, and he is a good dude, and he lives a complex life," Foley said while talking to Sirius/XM's PGA Tour channel. "I think things have got to slow down, it has got to stop, the daily referendums and the criticism."
Foley threw the blame on that handy devil, the media: "I realize it is 2012, and we have dotcoms, and you have to write five articles a day, and you run out of things to write about [um...guilty as charged -JB], but we should be in a position where we are trying to help and lift up and support a player like Tiger Woods, instead of tearing him down, because everyone in the golf industry is better off because of his existence."
Hmmm. Where to begin with this? Yes, without a doubt, everyone involved with the game of golf is better off because of Tiger Woods. There's no athlete anywhere that has as much of an outsized influence over his or her sport than Woods over golf.
However, there's a big difference between the mouth-breathing, borderline-racist yammering about Woods (see: the comments below this and any other Tiger Woods article) and legitimate criticism about his game and his behavior on the course. Woods became rich beyond compare thanks to the PGA Tour, sponsors, and fans, and with that comes higher scrutiny and expectation than the rest of his compatriots receive. You pay somebody that much money, you have the right to expect they don't go "transgress," kick clubs or whatever.
As with everything else, Woods can shut down about 80 percent of the criticism with victory. And the other 20 percent? Sorry, Sean, the haters will always be with us.
[Via Golf Talk Central]
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