Fuzzy Zoeller wants to talk to Tiger Woods
- it could happen on Tuesday
By Larry Guest
The Orlando Sentinel
(KRT)
For the first time since being enveloped by controversy ignited
by his racially insensitive remarks at the Masters, golfer Fuzzy
Zoeller granted an in-depth interview to Sentinel columnist Larry
Guest for an exclusive discussion of the fallout that has dominated
his life the past three weeks. This is the conclusion of a two-part
column from the lengthy interview.
In a little more than 22 years on the PGA Tour, Fuzzy Zoeller
has accumulated more than $5.3 million in official earnings and
at least that many friends. Only a portion of the money remains,
but just about all of the friends have stuck with him through
an ugly ordeal that he set in motion on Masters Sunday with thoughtless,
racially charged quips about multiethnic Tiger Woods' historic
victory that day.
The prediction here is that Tiger will join the ranks of true
Fuzzy friends after the two sit down - likely Tuesday at the Colonial
Invitational in Fort Worth, Texas - and discuss Zoeller's mistake,
man to man. Tiger might already be chummy with Zoeller if he had
returned any one of the dozens of phone messages Zoeller and his
managers put out to Woods as Fuzzy painfully attempted to reach
out to the young phenom in the wake of Zoeller's gaffe.
In the three days after CNN aired the taped interview containing
Zoeller's jocular, but incendiary remarks about Tiger's victory,
Fuzzy and his manager attempted to relay more than a dozen phone
messages through Woods' agents, International Management Group,
and his prime sponsor, Nike. Curiously, to this day, Woods has
never called Fuzzy - despite urging from at least two mutual friends
on the tour - explaining to the media last week that he hadn't
ignited this issue and, thus, felt no obligation to call.
That stance saddens Zoeller, who accepts that Tiger is certainly
free to handle this awkward situation in whatever way he feels
best. However ...
"I've been out there 22 years and, if for some reason
I'd been on the other side of the ledger, I'd have picked up the
phone in five minutes and called the guy. That's just because
of my respect for the tour and the players. There are lot of other
guys out there who would have done the same thing. That's just
part of the family aura on the PGA Tour," Zoeller told The
Orlando Sentinel over the past weekend in his first in-depth interview
on the fallout since his withdrawal from the tour April 23 for
a 4 four-week hiatus.
"Even the commissioner (Tim Finchem) was trying to reach
Tiger about this," added Zoeller, who has publicly apologized
for his joking reference to the possibility that Woods might select
"fried chicken" and "collards" for the traditional
champions' dinner on the even of next year's Masters. The defending
champion is accorded the opportunity to select the main course
for the dinner, as was Zoeller after he became the first Masters
rookie to win at Augusta National in 1979.
"I wanted to serve White Castle hamburgers," Fuzzy
recalls with a chuckle, "because that's me. I love White
Castle hamburgers. But I just opened up the menu and told them
to order anything they wanted. That was fine with me. I wanted
everybody in that room to be happy."
But life around the Zoeller home on Floyd's Nobs, just across
the river from Louisville, Ky., became anything but happy. The
strongest support Fuzzy has received throughout this ordeal, he
says, was from his wife, Diane, who often screened calls and counseled
their four children on the troubling things they were hearing
at school about daddy.
"She's a trooper. She has to be to live with me for 21
years," he said.
The Zoellers' oldest daughter took the worst of it. A white
male teacher at her school "ripped into her outside the classroom
and then took it inside the classroom, making very, very vocal
points which didn't sit well with the other families. It wasn't
my family that complained - it was other families. But all I can
tell you is that teacher is no longer there."
Officials at the school confirmed the story.
Asked about becoming topical fodder for stand-up comics, Zoeller
laughed heartily, saying he was not offended by the late-night
gags at his expense - like Jay Leno's later spoof of holding up
a mock Golf Digest depicting Zoeller in a chef hat and containing
a "cover story" about Fuzzy's "favorite soul-food
recipes."
"I heard about Jay the first night having a skit with
me practice putting with a Ku Klux Klan outfit on," he said,
laughing more. "That's funny. I meant no harm, and I think
it's healthy that people can joke and laugh about it. Hey, listen,
those guys are very, very good at what they do. There's nothing
wrong with laughing. They can make jokes out of anything. And
that's great."
The most stinging one liner came from Kmart: "You're fired."
Almost instantly, Kmart cut its ties with Zoeller, voiding a six-figure
annual contract due to expire at the end of this year. "I
was on the seventh hole of a practice round at Greensboro when
I got the call they had dropped me. I was shocked they acted so
quickly without a phone call or any discussion."
Zoeller declined invitations to appear on David Letterman and
Oprah Winfrey. He calls those "no-win situations." Even
without Fuzzy, Winfrey had a show on the subject, and mostly black
speakers from her audience that day turned the show into a snarling
Zoeller roast.
Indeed, much of the media depicted Zoeller as the devil incarnate
during the first week of the flap. Then came an enough-is-enough
backlash, including the highly respected voices of two Pulitzer
Prize-winning columnists in New York. The New York Times' Dave
Anderson decried the double standard, noting that Fuzzy had erred,
apologized and paid dearly, but questioned why Tiger has not apologized
for his own repugnant jokes about lesbians and blacks in GQ. Tiger
essentially intoned last week the difference was that his remarks
had been made in front of a magazine reporter while Fuzzy's were
before a minicam - a rather fuzzy distinction, no pun intended.
E.R. Shipp of New York's Daily News called the public fury over
Zoeller's remarks "wildly disproportionate to the offense."
Shipp charged that the news media had turned "Zoeller's lame
attempt at humor into what it never was: yet another example of
racism in America."
What is humbly hoped from Ol' Non Pulitzer Here is that the
whole affair won't turn Zoeller into what he never was: another
boring golf clone. "I am going to be very, very careful,"
Zoeller said, the italics his. "But you know me. I've gotta
talk. I gotta go out and b.s. That's the way I relax. I can't
see myself as a computerized golfer.
"I've lost some respect and trust for the press, and I
have because I've been hurt. If an article (incorrectly) says
I said this and said that, then I'll look like the idiot again.
"Besides, I've got a Mexican caddie, so what am I going
to do?" Fuzzy says the caddie, Cacey Kerr, is of Mexican
and Irish descent. "He's a hard-working little individual.
Oops, I can't say 'little.' There I go again, see?"
(Larry Guest is a sports columnist for the Orlando Sentinel.
Write to him at: Orlando Sentinel, 633 North Orange Avenue, Orlando,
Fla. 32801)
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