Tiger Woods angered the gods of woke when he used a prop to throw shade at his golf partner. They have no sense of ha-ha; by the end, Woods was flogged into giving a ‘heartfelt apology.’
Tiger is old enough to have begun life in a world where relationships between men were forged by good-hearted teasing or mocking of each other — especially in places where men were expected to be rugged. That might mean blue-collar work that made you sweat for a living or the world of athletics.
So, when Tiger Woods showed up at a tournament for the first time in seven months with an eye on making a serious run at a title while he was still young enough to chase it, he got a little cocky about showing up the much younger Justin Thomas. The description makes it clear that it was done without malice.
It started when he ripped a 323-yard drive, some 10 yards longer than the 29-year-old Thomas. Walking off the tee, Woods discreetly put something in Thomas’ hand, which Thomas tossed to the ground when he realized what it was — a tampon, to remind Thomas that Woods hit it farther. Woods laughed and put his arm around Thomas. Social media came to life when the moment was posted. On Friday, one fan shouted, “Tampon!” at Woods after he made a rare putt.
GolfWeek managed to work up a head of steam for their accounting of the ‘outrage’ as they reported it this way:
USA Today columnist Christine Brennan summarized the problem with Woods’s sophomoric joke.
“Woods’ message to Thomas was obvious. It has been the go-to line of silly, often insecure boys for generations: You play like a girl,” she wrote.
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Woods was asked after his round on Friday about his thought process behind the tampon pranks.
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“It was supposed to be all fun and games and obviously it hasn’t turned out that way,” he said. “If I offended anybody, it was not the case, it was just friends having fun. As I said, if I offended anybody in any way, shape or form, I’m sorry. It was not intended to be that way. It was just we play pranks on one another all the time and virally I think this did not come across that way, but between us it was – it’s different.”\\\\\
They didn’t stop there. If some people had their way, Tiger Woods might even be off the circuit over this incident.
The article continued with two opposite assessments:
Woods expressed contrition but so did PGA President Ted Bishop, who was forced to resign from his volunteer role after putting out two tweets that called Ian Poulter a “L’il girl” and he sounded like a “little school girl squealing” in 2014 that denigrated women.
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Golf Channel’s Brandel Chambel offered this balanced assessment of Tampon-Gate: “Some of the predictable outrage on social media attempts to assign the worst possible intent,” he said. “Can’t we just say that it was dumb without further maligning him?”
Get a grip, people. He tried to make a joke. It wasn’t funny. Get over it!
Cross-posted with Clash Daily
