Tiger Woods -- via his agent Mark Steinberg -- said Friday he had put his rift with Golf Channel’s Brandel Chamblee in the rear-view mirror and would go on with his life.
Tiger Woods ends feud with Brandel Chamblee
The golf world’s long national nightmare is over: Tiger Woods will have nothing further to say about his war of words with Golf Channel analyst Brandel Chamblee.
Nicky Loh
Steinberg, who commented to AFP during a clinic Woods held in Singapore for young golfers and kids with dyslexia, remarked that his client was “moving forward” following Chamblee’s televised concession Wednesday night that he had “gone too far” by suggesting that the world No. 1 was a cheater.
“We’re not going to comment any further, we’re done,” said Steinberg, who threatened to sue Chamblee over his Golf.com column in which he compared Woods’ serial penalties in 2013 to his own cheating on a fourth-grade math test. “We’re done speaking about it. I’ve got a lot of work to do ahead of me and Tiger’s got a lot to do ahead of him, so we’re just moving forward.”
Chamblee, a long-time Tiger critic, gave Woods, a five-time winner last season, an “F” on his 2013 campaign because of four specific instances in which the 14-time major champion violated the rules (and, by the way, for which he was duly penalized). Though his article sparked widespread condemnation among observers who believed the brash analyst crossed the line with his cheating analogy, Chamblee initially stood by his opinions.
Eventually, the one-time PGA Tour winner tweeted a weak apology to Tiger, which Woods dismissed, saying he was disappointed that Chamblee “didn’t really apologize” and leaving it up to Golf Channel to mete out punishment.
Despite the fact that the column appeared on another outlet, it was really only a matter of time before Chamblee issued an on-air mea culpa, and Wednesday marked his first televised attempt to halt the back-and-forth with Woods.
While saying he “went too far” in suggesting Woods deliberately broke the rules, Chamblee’s sit-down with Golf Channel’s Rich Lerner did not really result in a full-blown apology.
“Cheating involves intent,” said Chamblee, who announced his Golf.com gig had come to an end. “There’s no way that I could know with 100 percent certainty what Tiger’s intent was in any of those situations. That was my mistake.”
Woods, who did not talk with reporters during the clinic, for the second straight year ticked off organizers of this week’s WGC-HSBC Champions by skipping the Shanghai event he hasn’t played since 2010. On Friday, he gave notice (again through Steinberg) that he would likely be a no-show in 2014 as well.
“We had a number of other corporate engagements that I’ve had scheduled for quite some time, well over a year, throughout Asia,” Steinberg said about Woods’ missing this year’s tourney. “It was just a straight conflict, that was it ... We’ve had a terrific relationship with HSBC for many, many years. It’s strictly a scheduling issue.”
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