Tiger Woods was arrested for DUI last week and the PGA Tour’s reaction to the incident has been heavily criticized by Sir Nick Faldo.
Faldo is well known for his no-nonsense punditry style, so perhaps it should be no surprise that his stance on Woods’ current situation was certainly not a sympathetic one.
The 15-time major champion’s future in the game has been thrown into doubt yet again after he received his second DUI in five years after flipping over his car in Jupiter, Florida.
Tiger Woods‘ issues with high strength pain medication have been well documented over the past few years.
It’s vitally important that Woods gets professional help after his latest DUI arrest.
It has been claimed that Woods was practicing as normal despite his recent DUI arrest, but since then he has apparently sought out professional help for his prescription painkiller addiction.
Some things are more important than golf, and the 15-time major champion needs to focus on getting clean and being a good father now more than anything else.
However, Sir Nick Faldo doesn’t want Woods’ actions to be brushed under the carpet yet again and has urged the PGA Tour to take action.
Sir Nick Faldo comments on PGA Tour’s response to Tiger Woods incident
After Woods was arrested last week, the PGA Tour released a statement.
“Tiger Woods is a legend of our sports whose impact extends far beyond his achievements on the course,“ the statement began.
“But above all else, Tiger is a person, and our focus is on his health and well-being. Tiger continues to have our full support as he takes this important step.“
And when speaking exclusively to The Telegraph, Faldo criticized the PGA Tour for their stance on the matter.
“This is a serious thing that he has done. I look at the PGA Tour statement, it was so predictably weak,“ Faldo insisted.
“The Tour will look after him, as they always have done. But then you’ve got Jack [Nicklaus] saying it has tarnished the entire sport. There has to be some accountability. Forget about golf. We are not meant to be on the streets with two pills in our pocket.
“The bottom line is that I really think that this is a serious issue and something should be done that is a little bit more serious than waving him off to a tropical island and saying ‘welcome back’ in three or four months or whatever it might be.
“You compare it to other sports or business. If you were done for DUI a couple of times in your business, what happens? I’ve got a feeling that if he disappears and comes back in a couple of months, everything will carry on as normal. I’m not sure if that is right. It’s not a good message to the kids of today.“
Nick Faldo on why the PGA Tour should be angry with Tiger Woods
Faldo also suggested that the PGA Tour hierarchy will not actually be happy at all with Woods’ actions.
“Our sport is based on discipline. You rule yourself, you police yourself,“ the six-time major champion said.
“I would have thought the PGA Tour – behind closed doors – must be very disappointed that they pay Tiger tens of millions to be on the course and off the course with this business role he has got [as chairman of the player-driven Future Competitions Committee].
“He has only finished nine tournaments in the last five years, yet they feel he is the future on the golf course and the future in the decision-making and they must say… ‘oh boy, what do we get out of that?’ In the normal walk of life, there would be some accountability.”
That is a totally fair stance to take from the Englishman.
Of course, the PGA Tour will be keen to help Tiger Woods as much as they can, but as Nick Faldo rightly said, there comes a point when a bit of tough love is needed.
And now seems to be one of those times.
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