Is cat fight over Tiger Woods golf game justified?

Past and present golf instructors of Tiger Woods have been taking trash talk to a whole new level with commentary, tweets and barbs aimed at character defamation and criticism over the former world number-one's golf swing.

Some say that Lee Trevino innocently started the 'battle of the golf coaches' when he suggested that Tiger Woods should "get his mindset straight and quit messing with all these instructors...then his winning ways will return."

Instead of reminding Trevino that every great golfer should have a teacher to guide and assist, and probably worried that Woods would listen and clean house, Sean Foley (Woods' current tutor) pointed the proverbial finger at former coach Hank Haney stating, "There was nothing about what he was doing in his previous swing that made any sense to me," mentioning that Haney built most of his teaching career around Woods.

Isn't making a name for himself using Tiger Woods as a springboard exactly what Foley is attempting to do?

In an effort to defend himself, Hank Haney came out swinging and, since he is getting accustomed to Twitter, answered his accuser with retweets from fans such as:

"Sean Foley=Clueless"

A vocal Butch Harmon has recently chimed into the conversation perhaps standing up for Haney (?) by pointing a finger at Foley with this barb, "it's not a good idea to completely do a redo" of someone's golf swing suggesting Tiger looked a bit like a "Nationwide Tour player trying to get his card."

The harsh roundtable criticism is childish, hateful and unnecessary. Haney was a good influence on Woods, helping him to win six majors "and 45% of the events he played grabbing a top-ten finish 85% of the time during the last three years he was his coach." Sean Foley has been instructing Woods for about a year now waiting to see his influence take effect...perhaps the reason for his war of words.

Tiger Woods is silent on the subject but should he speak up? Should he tweet, "stop the fighting already because it's not good for my game or for the game of golf?"

In my opinion, golf is supposed to be a sport of positive influence, where tipping one's hat and acknowledging good play is expected; in other words, spitting, throwing clubs and harsh words should be kept off camera and/or should be worked out in a constructive way.

With Woods making the talk show circuit on Late Night and on Morning Drive, it could be that the media will help set the record straight. Perhaps Jimmy Fallon will dig in and get answers on March 16th but it's more likely both will be content to allow the feud to propagate hamming it up instead with a few holes of mini golf.

 

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