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Fellow PGA Pros Speak Out On Tiger Woods: 'A Phony And A Fake'
Yahoo Sports ^ | December 10, 2009

Posted on 12/10/2009 3:37:05 PM PST by Steelfish

Dec 10, 2009

Fellow PGA Pros Speak Out On Tiger Woods: 'A Phony And A Fake'

Jay Busbee

This is how bad it's getting for Tiger Woods: even his fellow pros are now starting to speak out against him.

First it was Jesper Parnevik expressing his frustration and disappointment, saying he "probably thought [Woods] was a better guy than he is." But Parnevik's outrage is understandable, given that he was the one who initially introduced Elin Nordegren to Tiger Woods.

Now, however, two players with no apparent direct connection to the scandal are taking their shots at Tiger. Ben Crane, an eight-year pro with two wins on the PGA Tour, and Charles Warren, a six-year veteran of the PGA Tour, each sharply criticized Woods, on the record, in the current issue of Life & Style magazine. (Visor tip: Sports By Brooks)

"This is no surprise to anyone who knows Tiger," said Crane, pictured above. "He's a phony and a fake and he can't retain that squeaky-clean endorsement deal any longer."

Crane also hinted that Elin Woods could have known all about Woods' alleged extramarital activities. "She's no fool," he said, and speculated that she possibly "turned a blind eye because of the money and the kids and the lifestyle he provides."

Warren also had a bit of advice for Elin, with uncompromising words for Woods. "She was very young when Jesper introduced them," Warren said. "She had stars in her eyes and maybe dollar signs too. But no, she should not stay with him.

What kind of message would that send to her sister and mother and all the women out there? prominence and, in turn, their paychecks. But Crane's comments indicate that Tiger's alleged proclivities were an open secret among Tour players.

(Excerpt) Read more at sports.yahoo.com ...


TOPICS: Chit/Chat; Sports
KEYWORDS: bloggersandpersonal; golf; pga; tigerwoods
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To: Always Right

Leave Tiger ALONE! *Sob*


21 posted on 12/10/2009 3:54:25 PM PST by behzinlea
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To: max americana

Wow. Really sad to see people on FR defending a slime who violated his wife’s trust dozens of times, probably gave her STDs, lied to his fans and is a major phony.

Toger fan boys are worse kool aid drinkers than Obama voters.

I remember losers defending Martha Stew-RAT after she was nailed and had violated a law that others would go to prison for then lied about it. She was knowingly engaged in insider trading. Yet some conservatives took her side because she was a celeb. To make matters worse she is a nasty women, penny stock broker in he past who harmed people and a nasty lib who recently attacked Sarah.

Maybe someday the PGA will have real steroids testing and rules they enforce on ALL golfers.


22 posted on 12/10/2009 3:55:20 PM PST by Frantzie (Judge David Carter - democrat & dishonorable Marine like John Murtha.)
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To: max americana

I agree this will blow over and Tiger will not forget who these guys are. Tiger is great golfer even though I do not agree with what he did. We have all sin and come short of the glory of God. God forgives and forget but I don’t think Tiger will forget this one.


23 posted on 12/10/2009 3:57:03 PM PST by Tamatoa (Fight for our America, Fight for our Country I fought to defend!!!)
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To: cajungirl

These guys didn’t say anything while Tiger was bringing golf to new heights in terms of TV ratings and money. It’s only when they realize that the gravy train may be over they now say anything.


24 posted on 12/10/2009 3:59:32 PM PST by dfwgator
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To: cajungirl

According to Rush, Tiger’s escapades were well-known among the players and the media. Rush said he knew about a lot this for over two years. Tiger outed himself. I have no problem with his fellow pros telling the truth.


25 posted on 12/10/2009 4:00:28 PM PST by kabar
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To: newfreep
Cheating on his wife makes cheating on the course easy.

Actually, I look at cheating on the course as cheating oneself.

Of course we Buckeyes can be pretty cruel to the people who have let us down. We plow forward and remain civil, but in our hearts and minds, we just turn the fellow off.

Look at Nicklaus' behavior. Not one word about the records or golf. Just statements about Tiger's talent, his need to get better and his family.

26 posted on 12/10/2009 4:02:57 PM PST by Zuben Elgenubi
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To: Steelfish
There was an article at Huffington Post (I caught it via google news search) essentially questioning how someone who is very good at the sport of golf can become some sort of god-like figure. I think it's ridiculous.

I give these guys credit for speaking out rather than giving some BS PC answer. Also I think it will be impossible for Woods to come back on tour with the same ego he had before.

27 posted on 12/10/2009 4:03:11 PM PST by ejdrapes (Just like Obama, Palin is not the 2nd coming)
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To: Always Right
I gather you are cheering for Bill Clinton to turn his life around as well and be a good husband and father.

If Tiger's wife has any self-respect, she will leave this serial adulterer. If she stays with him, then she is no better than the others.

28 posted on 12/10/2009 4:04:08 PM PST by kabar
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To: Steelfish

These guys sound like little old women gossiping over the fence - what wusses. No wonder they don’t get ‘it’s none of your business’.


29 posted on 12/10/2009 4:05:59 PM PST by presently no screen name
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To: Tamatoa
Well then that makes him even more a POS. The way some here are talking all players should be scared of Tiger and shouldn't dare speak out cuz 'Tiger won't forget'. So we all should forgive Tiger for what he did but it's OK for him hold a grude against those who dared to speak out? What a crock.
30 posted on 12/10/2009 4:06:49 PM PST by ejdrapes (Just like Obama, Palin is not the 2nd coming)
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To: chippewaman
Speaking of Øbozo...

From American Thinker Magazine
December 08, 2009

Tiger, Barack, and the Law of Transitivity
By Lisa Schiffren

As a rule, the revelation that a married athlete (or actor, or rock star, or politician) has conducted extramarital affairs with bevy of "party girls" may titillate, but rarely has the power to shock. In those realms, these things happen. Entitled men. Willing women. Deceived wives. What's new?

So what is it about Tiger Woods that makes his cheating so different from the usual that ten days on, the nation is still discussing revelations of conquests, trysts, payoffs, and physical injuries inflicted by a golf club?

Sure, there's normal prurience at work. But mostly, we are interested because Tiger Woods, who may legitimately be the best golfer ever, had been turned into an all-purpose icon: a man of personal rectitude, a lovely smile, apparent openness; a family man, with a lovely wife and two adorable babies. And of course, he was our first living embodiment of the collective hope for racial reconciliation. Who knew that the early reports of his betrayed wife Elin swinging at him with a golf club constituted literal icon-smashing?

We are staring because we've been had. Betrayed. We see now that the image was all a fraud. The talent was real. But the things that made the public like Tiger personally -- the low-key demeanor, manners, and sweet smile of countless sports-page photos, magazine covers, political analogies, and most important, product endorsements, was an act. That would be betrayal enough. But it wasn't just Woods' act. The larger lesson here is about how much artifice -- sustained, deliberate deception -- goes into the construction of a public persona when there is profit to be made or power to be had.

Jack Shafer, the Slate media columnist, spells out how this transpired. In the beginning, Shafer notes, Woods was your normal young, single, randy, skirt-chasing, heterosexual athlete. Then, almost overnight, he became a golf phenom, and...for business reasons -- Buick, Nike, Gatorade, Gillette, EA Sports, and Accenture being among them -- Woods decided to exfoliate from his public image all things base, carnal, and even personal.

The Tiger Woods that was constructed for corporate consumption was spotless and smooth, an edgeless brand easily peddled to sheikhs and shakers.

Given how desperately we want to believe in a human god, it didn't take much peddling from Team Tiger for us to accept Woods as a modern deity. With every new tournament victory, every new product endorsement, his divinity grew. His marketers made him a symbol of tolerance and brotherhood, and his father, Earl Woods, spoke gibberish about his son being a creature of destiny. Getting married and having children only added to Woods' marketability. I'm divine and monogamous and the center of a happy nuclear family. And we ate it up. So now that the "real" Woods has been revealed...we're embarrassed by the gap between who we believed Woods to be and who he really is.

The unusually sleazy reality, however true to our darker knowledge of human nature, is especially disappointing because of the wholesome image we've been sold for so long. "Modern deity" isn't much of an overstatement. Even now, the same huge corporate effort that went into creating the billion-dollar nice-guy persona is hard at work trying to keep it alive -- because if it dies, too many people stand to lose too much money.

Think about the heroic efforts to "save" Woods' marriage. In addition to her prenup -- which only "vests" after a certain amount of time, apparently the much-wronged wife will receive a huge payment -- $55 million, according to some reports -- to stay with him for another two years. That would explain why she hasn't exited stage right. And the millions reportedly paid to many among the text-message-wielding, semi-pro women involved suggests the magnitude of everyone's stake in reconstructing an image able to hawk corporate goods.

Nor was Woods' behavior unknown -- except to the public. In one instance reporters had photos of a "transgression"...committed in a church parking lot, no less. These journalists agreed to keep it secret -- if Tiger posed for a cover story at Men's Fitness Magazine -- a cover that would sell huge numbers. Normally Woods wouldn't have been available, since he had an exclusive contract with Conde Nast's Golf Digest. With full understanding of the situation, Conde Nast allowed the rival cover because he too profited from having Tiger remain an icon.

Note that this industry-wide coverup of Woods' cheating (and apparently his personal nastiness, arrogance, and general non-cuddly nature) is not a small, secret plot by dedicated fanatics. Rather, it is a set of interlocking self-interests manifested in sustaining the pristine image of this one sports icon to keep cash coming in.

But enough about Tiger the man, who is, after all, only a golfer. Let's move on to Tiger the metaphor. Because anyone with four functioning brain cells gets that if this comprehensive a charade can be sustained for a decade as Woods and those around him amassed billions, it can happen elsewhere. It can happen right in front of our eyes.

If I were watching the public's disgust with the newly revealed Tiger Woods from an office in the West Wing, I'd be concerned. Because Barack Obama is about as completely manufactured a political character as this nation has seen. His meteoric rise, without the inconvenience of a public record or accomplishments, and the public's willing suspension of critical evaluation of his résumé allowed his handlers and the media to project whatever they wanted to on his unfurrowed brow.

Ironically, the parallels have nothing to do with race. The Obama campaign did explicitly attempt to borrow the from the then-universal Tiger Woods appeal to allay any discomfort voters might have had with a mixed-race politician. They constructed a persona that would make the American electorate comfortable with a barely-known, first-term senator with a left wing voting record, a deliberately obscured personal and professional past, and no traditional qualifications for high office.

After a year in the spotlight, Barack Obama, hailed as a brilliant man and a creature of destiny who would heal us all, is himself falling rapidly to earth. (Thankfully, his family life remains above suspicion.) The flaws that were airbrushed out of the candidate photos are becoming glaringly obvious under day-to-day scrutiny of his public performance in the White House.

And while it doesn't matter if another athlete is an adulterer, it matters a lot if the president is revealed to be an inexperienced, excessively ideological, and weak man who is naïve about the world and uncomfortable exercising American power during a time of war. It matters if nothing in his training would have equipped the president to understand what it takes to stimulate job growth, or ameliorate a recession, or to end an overseas conflict successfully. It matters that he is uninterested in the science behind global warming -- and wishes to use the issue to amass power and reorder society. It matters that he has no interest in the construction of policy.

Ultimately, Woods is an exceptional golfer with a character problem. Barack Obama, by contrast, is not an exceptional, or even particularly competent, leader. But because so many politicians, interest groups and factions have an interest in his continued presence, no one is ready to reveal the man behind the curtain just yet.

But many voters from both the center and the far left who believed in the Obama magic are increasingly dismayed by watching the human god fall to earth. This is a major problem because, as Shafer notes, the impulse of the betrayed is to tear their fallen deities to shreds.

31 posted on 12/10/2009 4:07:21 PM PST by harpu ( "...it's better to be hated for who you are than loved for someone you're not!")
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To: dfwgator
I don't feel a bit sorry for Tiger. He did a pratfall on his face without anyone's help. To complain about other golfers who are now talking openly about his idiotic selfish behavior misses the point.

He may keep his skill intact and go on to win a thousand more titles. But his formerly pristine public image will be stained forever. As well it should.

32 posted on 12/10/2009 4:08:58 PM PST by behzinlea
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To: Frantzie

Read closely, I wasnt defending Tiger..

My post was about these so-called Pro golfers who couldnt STFU about someone who will come back eventually to the tour and have reiterated that Tiger NEVER FORGETS A SLIGHT.

I never said anything about him being a superhero etc.


33 posted on 12/10/2009 4:09:20 PM PST by max americana (i)
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To: ejdrapes
I give these guys credit for speaking out rather than giving some BS PC answer.

Credit for speaking out? Why do you think they felt the 'need' to speak out and say anything? A non PC answer would be 'it's none of my business' and that would be the truth.
34 posted on 12/10/2009 4:09:23 PM PST by presently no screen name
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To: dfwgator
Gravy train may be over? LOL All I keep hearing is how Tiger will be bigger than ever.
35 posted on 12/10/2009 4:09:27 PM PST by ejdrapes (Just like Obama, Palin is not the 2nd coming)
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To: newfreep

If someone chats on their wife dozens times, lies and violates people’s trust then they are filth. Slimy steroid boy probably gave his wife multiple STDs to boot.

These idiots saying “wait til tiger gets back and beats some a*s” are idiots. Kool aid drinkers liek Obama voters. If they do not understand honor, ethics and fidelity to one’s wife then they have a problem.


36 posted on 12/10/2009 4:11:14 PM PST by Frantzie (Judge David Carter - democrat & dishonorable Marine like John Murtha.)
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To: kabar

Well, it seemed a bit redundant and piling on to me.

I don’t think Tiger is going to live thru this.

And why are they trashing his wife at the same time?


37 posted on 12/10/2009 4:13:06 PM PST by cajungirl
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To: presently no screen name
Perhaps some of these guys have strong moral/religious beliefs and do have an opinion. I'm not saying players should be speaking but if they're asked and they do comment I see nothing wrong with it.
38 posted on 12/10/2009 4:13:55 PM PST by ejdrapes (Just like Obama, Palin is not the 2nd coming)
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To: Zuben Elgenubi

Nicklaus did the right thing.


39 posted on 12/10/2009 4:14:42 PM PST by cajungirl
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To: max americana
Tiger NEVER FORGETS A SLIGHT.

Big frickin' deal.

40 posted on 12/10/2009 4:15:02 PM PST by behzinlea
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