Tiger Woods is set to speak publicly for the first time in more than three months on Friday and at least one of his golfing competitors isn’t pleased with the appearance’s timing.
From ESPN.com:
“It’s selfish,” former U.S. Open and British Open champion Ernie Els told Golfweek magazine. “You can write that. I feel sorry for the sponsor. Mondays are a good day to make statements, not Friday. This takes a lot away from the golf tournament.”
The timing is peculiar at best. Woods’ appearance will take place during the third round of the Arizona tournament, sure to steal attention away from the first big event of the year. The tournament is sponsored by Accenture — coincidentally, the first sponsor to drop Woods when the scandal broke.
Woods’ agent, Mark Steinberg, said there was no intention to upstage Accenture’s sponsorship of the Match Play tournament. In fact, Steinberg said that Accenture “couldn’t have been more supportive.”
You can draw your own conclusions about whether or not Tiger is trying to stick it to Accenture, but at this point, why would he want to rock the boat? He’s still very much entrenched in a sex scandal that has flipped his life upside down and the last thing he would want to do is draw more negative attention to himself or the world of golf. The timing of his appearance is bad, but that doesn’t mean he wants to upstage Accenture.
That said, I don’t blame golfers like Els for being pissed. Tiger has obviously had the spotlight on him for a long time and even when he’s not playing, the spotlight is still on him and I’m sure that guys like Els is sick of it.
Photo from fOTOGLIF
