For the December issue of Golf Digest, writer Dan Jenkins composed a story entitled “My (Fake) Q&A with Tiger Woods”, which was, lo and behold, a fake interview of “Tiger Woods”, a character who is characterized as pompous, humorless and arrogant in Jenkins’ piece.
Here’s some snippets from the piece.
You’ve fired everybody else. Three gurus, Butch, Hank and Sean Foley. Two caddies, Fluff and Stevie. Your first agent, Hughes Norton, who made you rich before you’d won anything. Other minions.
I’ll probably get around to it.I like to fire people. It gives me something to do when I’m not shaping my shots.
…
You’ve been incredibly rich and obscenely rich. Which is better?
Does Elin get a vote?You haven’t talked about it, but after all of those New York Post front pages during the scandal, what’s the moral of your story?
That’s easy. Don’t get caught.You named your yacht Privacy. Because you’re a worldwide celebrity, do you really expect and demand privacy?
I thought about renaming it Serenity, but that pretty much went out the door when the 9-iron hit the window of the Escalade.
Of course, Tiger Woods decided to make a big deal out of it because he’s Tiger Woods. The best way to combat the notion that you’re humorless, stuffy, and tone-deaf? Write a humorless, stuffy, tone-deaf rebuttal!
So, Woods actually devoted a whole article for Derek Jeter’s The Player’s Tribune to tearing into Jenkins for daring to write such a slanderous fake article about him.
“Did you read Dan Jenkins’ interview with me in the latest Golf Digest? I hope not. Because it wasn’t me. It was some jerk he created to pretend he was talking to me. That’s right, Jenkins faked an interview, which fails as parody, and is really more like a grudge-fueled piece of character assassination.
Journalistically and ethically, can you sink any lower?…. Good-natured satire is one thing, but no fair-minded writer would put someone in the position of having to publicly deny that he mistreats his friends, takes pleasure in firing people, and stiffs on tips—and a lot of other slurs, too.”
The best part about all of this is that I highly doubt that anyone would be making a big deal out of Jenkins’ piece if Tiger didn’t freak out over it.
Jenkins has since defended his piece on Twitter.
My next column for Tiger: defining parody and satire. I thought I let him off easy: http://t.co/E7e9imSKwO
— Dan Jenkins (@danjenkinsgd) November 18, 2014
