Former world number one golfer Tiger Woods reportedly fired back at an 84-year-old journalist Dan Jenkins, calling the fake interview written by him as a nasty attack and character assassination.
The fictional story by veteran Jenkins is entitled 'My (Fake) Interview with Tiger' with an asterisk and the sub-heading 'Or how it plays out in my mind' and includes a fake question and answer session between the 84-year-old and Woods.
Among the barbs written by Jenkins, as if uttered by Woods, is why Woods has not fired agent Mark Steinberg, stating that he would probably get around to it. The answer states that Woods likes to fire people as it gives him something to do when he is not shaping his shots, and also calling Sergio Garcia 'low Crybaby in every tournament', Stuff.co.nz reported.
Woods tweeted a link to his story with the comment that most things in the media one lets slide, but sometimes one can't and shouldn't.
Woods' article began with a question asking him if he read Jenkins' interview in the latest Golf Digest, to which the American replies that he hoped not because it wasn't him, stating that it was some jerk the journalist created to pretend he was talking to him.
Woods stated that that's right, Jenkins faked an interview, which fails as parody and is really more like a grudge-fuelled piece of character assassination. He questioned if one could sink any lower journalistically and ethically.
The words Jenkins put in Woods' mouth, while clearly marked as fictional, hit close to home in Woods' personal life, poking at the sex scandal that led to his divorce, and his ego.
Woods wrote in his story that he believes he has a good sense of humor and that he is more than willing to laugh at himself, adding that in this game one has to.
Woods said that he has given lots of interviews to journalists in all that time, more than he could count, and some have been good and some not so much. He added that all athletes know that they would be under scrutiny from the media, but claimed that this concocted article was below the belt.
Woods claims that good-natured satire is one thing, but no fair-minded writer would put someone in the position of having to publicly deny that he mistreats his friends, takes pleasure in firing people, and stiffs on tips and a lot of other slurs, too.
Woods said that whether it's misreported information or opinions he thinks are way off base, he let plenty of things slide. But added that this time he couldn't do that, as the sheer nastiness of this attack, the photos and how it put false words in his mouth just had to be confronted.
