Golf
Tiger's coach swings at critics
2012-04-19 20:11
Florida - Tiger Woods is a "wonderful person"
and criticism of the 14-time major champion is "out of hand," the
golfer's swing coach Sean Foley told a radio interviewer.
"It has
just gotten to the point where the tearing down of Tiger as a person and
a golfer has become just too much," Foley said this week on XM Sirius
Radio's "Fairways of Life" programme hosted by Matt Adams.
"I think it is just out of hand."
Foley,
who has worked with Woods since the 2010 PGA Championship, said
constant carping about Woods was damaging to golf as a whole.
"I
realize it is 2012 and we have dotcoms, and you have to write five
articles a day, and you run out of things to write about," said Foley,
who brought up the subject unprompted at the end of a 20-minute
interview.
"But we should be in a position where we are trying to
help and lift up and support a player like Tiger Woods instead of
tearing him down, because everyone in the golf industry is better off
because of his existence."
Woods has come in for intense scrutiny
ever since he turned pro. A global superstar and marketing juggernaut,
Woods saw his image tarnished by a 2009 sex scandal that ruined his
marriage.
Although he ended a tour-level victory drought of more
than two years with his triumph at Bay Hill in March, Woods displayed
some well publicised bursts of temper en route to a tie for 40th at the
Masters.
Although Woods later apologized for kicking a golf club
after a botched tee shot in the second round, former US Ryder Cup
captain Paul Azinger was among the many who sharply criticized Woods's
actions.
"I thought he acted like the south end of a northbound mule," Azinger said.
Foley said the "daily referendums" on Woods, his game and his behavior, were unfair.
"That is basically one thing I want to get out," Foley said.
"Tiger
is a wonderful person, and he is a good dude, and he lives a complex
life. I think things have got to slow down, and it has got to stop, the
daily referendums and the criticism."