Golf

Tiger Woods' 2013 season flunks Brandel Chamblee’s ethics class

Tiger may have had five victories and won the votes of his peers for player of the year honors in 2013, but Woods’ many rules lapses were enough for Brandel Chamblee to flunk him for the season.

By Emily Kay Oct 18, 2013, 9:00am EDT

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Tiger Woods, as many golf fans are aware, is probably not high on Brandel Chamblee’s Christmas card list. So it was hardly a surprise to learn that, when the winner of one PGA Tour event offered his apparently annual report card (how did we miss these gems in years past?!) on a select handful of players, the outspoken president of the Eldrick Tont fan club gave the world No. 1 an "F."

Chamblee, who humbly noted that he predicted Adam Scott’s Masters victory, Phil Mickelson would earn his first British Open title, and Stacy Lewis would top the field in the Women’s Open Championship, compared his own cheating on a math quiz in fourth grade to the myriad rules snafus Woods suffered during his major-less but five-win, Player of the Year 2013 season.

Perhaps it was Woods not capturing the PGA Championship, as Chamblee claimed he prognosticated he would, that sent the Golf Channel analyst off on a rant about Tiger’s apparent unfamiliarity with the Rules of Golf (a topic we have expounded on frequently as well).

For sure, Woods -- as former LPGA star and highly respected ESPN golf broadcaster Dottie Pepper told SB Nation earlier this year -- could most definitely use a tutorial on golf’s dos and don’ts, which Chamblee’s litany of Tiger’s 2013 rules faux pas makes evident:

An illegal drop at the Abu Dhabi Championship (which, by the way, earned Woods an MC in his first global tilt of the year)
That much-investigated improper drop at the Masters that cost him two strokes (or, as Chamblee put it, "avoiding disqualification at the Masters despite signing an incorrect scorecard following an illegal drop" -- an opinion that Arnold Palmer hinted to SBNation he shared, though Jack Nicklaus did not)
The controversial drop at the Players Championship that had Johnny Miller fulminating even more than usual
The removal of a twig during the BMW Championship that caused Woods’ ball to move (which we’ll give Chamblee, considering Tiger’s head-scratching refusal to concede his Nike One Tour D did more than "oscillate," despite video evidence to the contrary)

Chamblee, however, conveniently overlooked the fact that Tiger, whose every stroke and twitch is recorded for posterity, would be a fool to break golf's edicts deliberately, and that several of his playing partners during the rules brouhahas (Martin Kaymer in Abu Dhabi, Scott Piercy at Augusta, Casey Wittenberg at TPC Sawgrass) had no problems with Woods’ actions.

For the record, among those graded by Chamblee, Jason Dufner, with his "hot" wife, major win, and ability to turn his name into a verb, was teacher’s pet with A++, while winless Rory McIlroy garnered an A+ in "Economics," "Journalism/media," and "Male/Female communication," but a C- for "Athletics."