The latest Tiger Woods DUI arrest in Florida sent shockwaves through the golf world and even directly involved the President of the United States.
While there has been a reckoning with how the golfing media has reacted to the sad and disturbing sight of Woods being involved in another serious car crash and being found to be under the influence of medication, one golfing legend thinks that the PGA Tour itself needs a similar reckoning.
Former CBS lead golf analyst and six-time major winner Nick Faldo blasted the PGA Tour as “predictably weak” in their response to the latest Woods fiasco. In speaking to The Times, Faldo pleaded with the tour to show more of a backbone and deliver more accountability.
“This is a serious thing he’s done, you know. The PGA Tour statement was so predictably weak, how they showed that the Tour will look after him, as they always have done, and then you’ve got Jack [Nicklaus] saying it’s tarnished the entire sport. You’ve got your opposites but there has to be some accountability,” Faldo said.
After his arrest, Woods announced that he would step away from the public eye to enter treatment. The statements from both the PGA Tour itself and commissioner Brian Rolapp were heavy on appreciation for Woods’ contributions to golf and wishes for his well-being as a person. However, they did not make any mention of the seriousness of his personal issues, the seriousness of his DUI arrest, or the seriousness of his behavior that has consistently put others at risk.
Those responses didn’t cut it for Nick Faldo.
“The bottom line is I really think that something should be done a little bit more serious than waving him off to a tropical island and saying ‘Welcome back’ in three or four months,” he added.
Faldo and Woods have had a complex and competitive relationship over the years. However, the British golfing legend told the Times that he did speak with Woods a few years ago about the 24/7 pain that he lives with after an uncountable number of surgeries and physical issues. But when it comes to his behavior and decision making, Faldo also sees the potential impact on the PGA Tour itself where Woods has taken power broker status for the future of professional golf as a member of their board of directors.
Again though, Faldo assumes that Woods is immune to any sort of consequences from his behavior from a PGA Tour that has been dependent on him both on and off the course for more than a generation. Woods has been instrumental in reshaping the tour’s response to the rise of LIV Golf and charting a new path forward where players are not only better compensated, but the schedule is better constructed to break through an increasingly crowded and fractured sports landscape.
But much like the criticism of Stephen A. Smith, Nick Faldo says that Tiger Woods is escaping any kind of accountability that would come for almost anyone else in his position.
“He’s finished nine tournaments in the last five years, and yet they think that he’s the future on the golf course and the future in the decision making. I don’t know what I’d ask the official bodies to decide, but you would have thought in a normal walk of life there is some accountability for doing that, isn’t there? I guess he’s always been a special case, because of who he is and what he’s done, so I suppose he’s avoided that accountability,” Faldo remarked.
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