Bigger Augusta Gaffe: Tiger’s Hogan Comparison or Jenkins’ Off-Color Joke?

Ah, Augusta National, where saying things that are absurdly illogical and casually racist is just par for the course. Tiger Woods’ ill-advised comparison of his troubles to those of Ben Hogan falls into the former category.

⇥⇥“It’s very similar to what Hogan went through coming off the accident,” Woods said in his press conference yesterday. “He couldn’t play that much, and when you can’t play, you have to concentrate on your practice.“See, the similarity is that Woods and Hogan both had car accidents! I’m not sure how Woods getting in an accident for still-unexplained reasons, laying low as mistress after mistress told tales of his infidelity, and eventually entering rehab for one reason or another is equal to Hogan throwing himself across his wife’s lap during a head-on collision with a Greyhound bus, fracturing his pelvis and collar bone, and returning to golf after spending 59 days in the hospital, but I’ll take Tiger at his word. When has he ever spoken anything but precisely-worded, wisdom-soaked truths?That means legendary golf scribe Dan Jenkins is the one having a tad of trouble with racism. Jenkins tweeted about last year’s PGA Championship winner with a joke the 2010 version of Adam Sandler might consider beneath him.

⇥⇥Y.E. Yang is only three shots off the lead. I think we got takeout from him last night.We don’t look to Woods for precision of language, but expect it routinely from Jenkins, whose bon mots from the majors have been the best golf-related thoughts on Twitter since last year. Stooping to something as silly as equating an Asian player to takeout is well off of Jenkins at his peak, but considering the outrage tweeted about his comment, I suspect it’s a mistake he won’t make again. He’s already apologized -- well, sort of -- and I think we probably won’t see any more off-color tweets from Jenkins this weekend.Meanwhile, Tiger has already teed off, and considering the patrons at Augusta have already warmly received him for returning to golf at all, I doubt anyone will care about his indelicate comparison to Hogan if he continues swinging as well as he has been. He birdied the first hole to move within a stroke of the lead.

Words matter. But deeds still matter more.

(HT: Deadspin.)↵