Last week, storied golf writer Dan Jenkins wrote an article in the most recent Golf Digest about an interview he had with Tiger Woods. Which sounds like a pretty run-of-the-mill article for Golf Digest, although he never did the interview. In fact Woods has declined to do an interview with Jenkins who has been writing about golf for 60 years.
In the faux-interview Jenkins asks a lot of questions that Tiger would never allow to be asked in another interview. Jenkins questions Tiger about all the things people have said about Tiger in the past, like his notorious poor tipping. Tiger responds with what he probably would have responded, “I don’t understand why you’re supposed to tip people for doing a job they’re already getting paid to do”. Jenkins also asks why he hasn’t fired Mark (Steiny) Steinberg, his long-time agent when he seems to fire everyone else around him. Tiger says he’ll, “probably get around to it”.
Tiger has been very visibly upset about the publishing of the article. He has claimed Jenkins wrote about subjects he knows nothing about, and that this is below the belt, essentially accusing him of libel. He also demanded Golf Digest to take the article down and write a formal apology.
The article is an interesting solution to the problem of stars who refuse to sit down for candid interviews and force interviewers to ask softball questions like, ‘Why do you think you’re so great?”. Dan Jenkins is a legend, many see not sitting down with him as an insult to the game of golf. Jenkins has covered over 60 Masters Tournaments, and was even inducted into the hall of fame in 2011.
Jenkins is not backing down. In fact, he has decided to fan the flames tweeting that he is going to define parody and satire for Tiger in his next article.