So, what is with golf commentators? Yesterday, Delaware Dem posted a story about some idiocy said by David Feherty. This isn’t the first dumb ass comment by a golf announcer and it certainly won’t be the last. It must be something in the country club water.
The first that comes to mind is the comment made by Ben Wright which was first reported by The News Journal. Wright said
Let’s face facts. Lesbians in the sport hurt women’s golf. When it gets to the corporate level that’s not going to fly. They’re going to a butch game and furthers the bad image of the game . . . Lesbianism on the tour is not reticent. It’s paraded. There’s a defiance in them in the last decade.
Ben Wright is also famous for saying that a woman’s breasts get in the way of her swing.
Richard Baoxall, a Sky Sports commentator, said the following regarding Korean-American golfer Anthony Kim at the HSBC Champions tournament in Shanghai:
With all these Chinese people around, I’m not sure if I bumped into him [Kim] in the hotel reception last night. I’m not sure it was him.
Rocco Mediate, who played a fantastic match against Tiger Woods last year, had this said about him by Johnny Miller:
Mediate looks like the guy who cleans Tiger’s swimming pool.
Miller followed up with, “Guys with the name of Rocco don’t get on the trophy, do they?”
And perhaps the most famous and most distubring was said by Kelly Tilghman when she commented that any young golfers who wanted to surpass Tiger Woods should
lynch him in a back alley.
This was followed by this magazine cover which ended with the termination of the editor’s employment.
The golf course, where racists and bigots feel at home.