Hank Gola of the New York Daily News writes that Augusta National is being a tad hypocritical when it comes to Tiger Woods and allowing him to play at this year’s Masters.
As a past Masters champion and honorary Augusta member, Woods can play each April until his golf game grows cobwebs. Unlike with the PGA Tour, there is no precedent for the Masters to rescind an invite of any participant because of behavior off the course and the tournament does not have a “conduct unbecoming” clause.
In reality, however, Augusta National can do anything it wants to do with the Masters and while we’re not suggesting it pull the welcome mat out from under Woods, the club does look hypocritical.
After all, these are the same high-minded people who banned Gary McCord from the CBS broadcast booth because he dared to suggest the slick greens were “bikini-waxed.” By comparison, Woods’ alleged texts make McCord’s wisecrack suitable for a kindergarten class. They were, in short, pornographic.
McCord was a quasi-representative of the tournament and whatever Woods sent on his cell phone was meant to stay private. There is a difference there, but the hypocrisy remains.
I’m a little confused by the direction Gola took to get his point across. In the article, he specifically mentions porn star Josyln James’ decision to recently post alleged X-rated text messages between her and Woods. Then, Gola insinuates that Augusta National should ban Tiger the same way they did McCord because of said text messages.
But Gola could have cited the entire sex scandal to get his point across that Augusta National is being a tad hypocritical here. Why just mention the text messages when they’re just a small part of everything that happened? It’s like Gola just wanted to share the details of the text messages, had an axe to grind about Augusta National and just decided to combine the two things into one semi-meaningless article.
But I digress. I get Gola’s overall point but whether it’s fair or not, Tiger holds more clout than McCord when it comes to marketing the Masters to viewers. So of course Augusta National is going to allow Woods to play and not worry about being hypocritical when it comes to their ban on McCord. Millions of people don’t tune in to the Masters to listen to what McCord has to say. They mainly watch to see how Woods performs – whether he’s in the midst of scandal or not. That’s just the reality of the situation.
Photo from fOTOGLIF
