PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. – Tiger Woods apologized for his tasteless prank on Thursday.
After he outdrove Justin Thomas, one of his fellow competitors in his group, on the ninth hole of the first round of the Genesis Invitational, Woods slipped him a female hygiene product, which a photographer captured and the image went viral on social media.
USA Today columnist Christine Brennan summed up the problem with Woods’s sophomoric joke.
“Woods’ message to Thomas was obvious. It has been the go-to line of silly, often insecure boys for generations: You play like a girl,” she wrote.
Woods was asked after his round on Friday about his thought process behind the tampon pranks.
“It was supposed to be all fun and games and obviously it hasn’t turned out that way,” he said. “If I offended anybody, it was not the case, it was just friends having fun. As I said, if I offended anybody in any way, shape or form, I’m sorry. It was not intended to be that way. It was just we play pranks on one another all the time and virally I think this did not come across that way, but between us it was – it’s different.”
Woods expressed contrition, but so did PGA President Ted Bishop, who was forced to resign from his volunteer role after putting out two tweets that called Ian Poulter a “L’il girl,” and he sounded like a “little school girl squealing” in 2014 that denigrated women.
Golf Channel’s Brandel Chambel offered this balanced assessment of Tampon-Gate: “Some of the predictable outrage on social media attempts to assign the worst possible intent,” he said. “Can’t we just say that it was dumb without further maligning him.”
For more on the story, read Brennan’s take here.