Fore! Tiger Taking Agression Out on Fans
The safest place to stand when Bill is on the golf course is right down the middle of the fairway. You have no chance of getting hit then. The joke is probably as old as the game of golf and, growing up, I probably heard it hundreds of times from my mother in reference to my father. But, while he once competed against Andy North in high school, that’s expected out of normal guys like my dad. It’s not expected out of the greatest golfer the game has ever seen. But it’s becoming more and more apparent that the smartest place to be while watching Tiger Woods tee off is either on your couch in front of your TV or in the middle of the fairway. In Sunday’s final round of the Memorial, Tiger donned the red shirt poised to make a charge on Jack’s course with all the golf world watching. He grabbed a driver that if I bought would still have his name on it, took a deep breath, looked down the fairway of the dog-leg right first hole – and promptly ripped the ball (that also has his name on it) about 230 yards left and directly into the neck of a fan in the gallery.
Uh… fore! Elin should teach Tiger some lessons in hitting with accuracy (allegedly). Two other fans were hit by Tiger drives at the Memorial. He’s never really been the straightest driver (insert your own innuendo), but this was particularly bad. As much as we all believed that he would rebound physically and mentally from his time off, he may be further away than we thought/hoped. That being said, he’s still making news for what he’s doing on the course. And he definitely made the day of this guy. Jeremy May, one of the fans hit by a Tiger Woods’ errant drive, and the creator of the Tiger Hit Me Facebook page, joined the Rise Guys on KHTK in Sacramento to talk about the event, the pain, meeting Tiger, and where the drive would have gone had it not hit him.
On if he had ever come close to being hit before (going to the Memorial every year):
“No.”
On what it was like to be hit by a Tiger Woods’ drive:
“It was a dog-leg to the right and we were on the far left side. There were actually trees blocking our view of the tee. We were out about 230 yards. Most of the drives were going 20-30 yards more than that. The drive came up short. It just nailed me. It felt like sticking my finger in a light socket and just holding it there. The camera man sits on the other side of the fairway. You can sit there and watch the cameraman because he can track the ball pretty well off the tee. I was watching that, but of course it was coming right at me.”
On if he is still in pain:
“Yeah. The muscle right in the area underneath the skin is, like if you push on it, it’s like you pulled that muscle in the neck. It didn’t bruise, but it did swell up and I put ice on it right away. I did have a gold chain on. One of the guys said that the gold chain might have protected it.”
On talking with Tiger after getting hit:
“I put my hand out, shook his hand. He said, ‘Sorry about that. I can’t give you my ball, but I can give you my glove. So he took out a pen and signed his glove and took it off and handed it to me and shook my hand.”
On if he felt better knowing that Tiger had hit others:
“Well, I think it brought the value of my glove down is what I thought. He’s giving these away left and right.”
And on where the ball would have gone had it not hit him:
“It was pretty bad with all the rain we had. He would have been over there in the bog hitting out of the muddy area.”
Listen to Jeremy May recount being hit by a Tiger Woods drive on KHTK in Sacramento with the Rise Guys.
Tags: Elin Woods, Facebook, Golf, KHTK, PGA, The Memorial, Tiger Woods
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