Kelly Tilghman & Tiger Woods are STILL friends...

... just in case you missed it or were told otherwise. And Fuzzy Zoeller is still a good friend of Tiger's as well.

Another day, another instance of the sports media being overly sensitive and not doing their research before going off on someone. This past weekend, the PGA Tour held it's first event of the season (the Mercedes-Benz Championship) in Hawaii. During the third round coverage of the tournament the Golf Channel's Kelly Tilghman and Nick Faldo were talking about Tiger Woods (who was not present at the event) and the chances of someone beating him. I was watching coverage of the tournament and listening to the bantor when Kelly jokingly said that the only way to test him would be to "lynch him in a back alley." Clearly, no harm was intended, but someone went off and ran a story on the non-story, causing a media uproar.

The media circus around the non-story grew to such a level that Tiger's agent Mark Steinberg had to issue a statement today. Steinberg stated "this story is a non-issue. Tiger and Kelly are friends and Tiger has a great deal of respect for Kelly. Regardless of the choice of words used we know unequivocally that there was no ill-intent in her comments. This story is a non-issue in our eyes. Case closed."

It's interesting that a golfer like Rory Sabbatini can berate a fan with an expletive-filled tirade and not even get a fine out of it (he actually got the fan ejected), yet a non-story like this can garner headlines. One can only hope that the people covering the golf world in the future would be more focused on those who are actually doing wrong (and continuing to set a bad example) like Sabbatini and doing something about it, and less focused on the politcal correctness of an innocent comment by one of the tour's most-liked and qualified commentators.

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