Chicago Sun Times columnist and everyone’s favorite bigmouth Jay Mariotti called out Tiger Woods for not backing up his words at this year’s Masters, won by Trevor Immelman on Sunday.
In one disjointed sense, this truly was a piece of history we should tell the grandkids about. Never before has Tiger Woods been so fantastically presumptuous — and so gloriously wrong. Without prompting from any source but his own inner voices, he had the temerity to suggest that a calendar-year Grand Slam was “easily within reason” for him.
While we applaud him for manufacturing drama that otherwise wouldn’t have existed in April, do note that unkept promises usually aren’t part of a sports legend’s resume. What does it say when Plaxico Burress nails a Super Bowl prediction but the extraordinary Woods, never known for outlandish boasts of any sort, instantly blows the forecast and loses the Masters by three strokes to the worthy but previously obscure Trevor Immelman?
It tells us that Tiger, who made the comments on his personal Web site as the season began, might want to withhold such bold opinions if he can’t take the heat. As dusk fell over Augusta National, he clearly wasn’t happy that his self-fueled Slam talk had become such a hot-button topic — and a major letdown Sunday. What, when Eldrick Woods interjects “Grand Slam” into the discussion, people aren’t going to listen and react? Um, aren’t we talking about the world’s biggest sportsman, the first billion-dollar athlete?
Tiger can’t take the heat? After one bold comment on his personal website that wasn’t even that bad to begin with? Stop stirring the pot Mariotti – Tiger has nothing to prove and he’s always been a class act. And the comparison to Plaxico Burress was a reach to say the least.
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