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apologized for surprising fellow golfer Justin Thomas with a tampon at opening round of the Genesis Invitational on Thursday. Thomas, who considers Woods
a friend and mentor, laughed off the incident. But others failed to see any humor in it, slamming Woods as “misogynistic” and “tone-deaf.” Allegedly, the gag was meant to insinuate Thomas was playing like a girl after Woods outdrove him.
“It was supposed to be all fun and games and obviously it hasn’t turned out that way,” Woods told reporters on Friday. “If I offended anybody, it was not the case, it was just friends having fun. As I said, if I offended anybody in any way, shape or form, I’m sorry. It was not intended to be that way. It was just we play pranks on one another all the time and virally I think this did not come across that way, but between us it was — it’s different.”
Two days later, Woods turned in his best performance since
his infamous 2021 car crash which almost took his life. The 15x major champion closed out the Genesis Invitational tied for 45th place. Despite the promising outcome, however, the 47-year-old Woods hinted his future on the links will be nowhere near as intense as it was before the accident.
“My body and my leg and my back just won’t allow me to play much more than that anymore,”
he told CBS on Sunday. For now, Woods is looking forward to
the Masters in April and then consider the other majors. “So that was my goal last year and I was able to play three of the four, and this year, I can hopefully play all four. That is going to be my schedule going forward because of all of the limitations I have.”
But not everyone is ready to move past Woods’ ill-received prank yet.
“Tiger’s tampon moment was not only misogynistic but also tone-deaf and straight-up disrespectful to women and girls all over the world,” Kara Sugar, CEO of Women’s Global Empowerment Fund, said per
TMZ. Tiger Woods does have defenders who think the backlash is hypocrisy and an overreaction, though.
See the mixed responses below to Woods’ tampon scandal.
