[TV orNotTV] Paul Azinger is an Idiot

[PGage]

I am willing to overlook a lot of the sh*t that comes out of ESPN's main golf analyst Paul Azinger. He is a cancer survivor, and like most I have lots of respect for that. In a sport that prizes bland conformity over almost everything else, he is willing to speak his mind and make sharp comments, and I respect that even when I disagree with him. He is a fundamentalist Christian and a fundamentalist Republican, but that's okay too - viva la differerance and all that, and I can even over look it when his political and theological extremism bleeds over occasionally into his public work. He is all to human.

But he is an idiot, and it is getting out of control. By idiot I mean specifically that he is allowing his fixed ideas to predetermine his commentary to the point that he is unable to incorporate actual facts.

Today he gave full vent to one of his favorite fixed ideas, which is that Tiger Woods should never have changed his golf swing, and that he is unable to drive the ball now and will never again win a major championship.

Now, maybe Tiger will never again win another Major - it is one of the most interesting questions in golf (indeed, it may well be the last interesting question in golf for a long time, something "Zinger" should be giving some thought to). If so, it will be because he is now 38, has been fighting one serious, then nagging, injury after another for six years now, and has begun to show some fraying around the edges of his legendary concentration. It won't be because Tiger (winner of 14 Major tournaments and 79 regular PGA tournaments) failed to take swing advice from the likes of Paul Azinger (winner of 1 Major and 12 regular PGA events).

Tiger Woods, with his revamped swing, was the best golfer on the planet - not 10 years ago, not 6 years ago, but last year. He was #1 in the World Rankings, #1 on the Money List, and won pretty much all of the season-based awards. True he did not win a major last year, but he did finish 4th and 6th in two of them. Azinger did not mention any of this today, but that just makes him obnoxious, not an idiot. 

What makes Azinger and idiot is that he was commenting on a Tiger Woods who was playing only his 4th competitive round of golf in three and a half months after back surgery that at least one expert orthopedic surgeon said could potentially end his career. In context, to tell viewers that the reason Tiger Woods will never win another Major tournament is that he is a "victim of his own search for perfection" and that instead of searching to get better he should have been working on fundamentals is almost diagnostically psychotic.

Paul Azinger is from a generation of golfers that was intensely resentful and jealous of Tiger Woods when he first turned pro, and his religious and political conservativism have led him to severe moral criticism of Tiger's sexual behavior. Azinger is committed to a narrative in which Tiger must fail, indeed is being punished, because of his immoral and weak character. It is that fixed idea that leads Azinger to ignore the basic facts of the sport he is covering and instead give vent to his own biases and predetermined conclusions.

[Bob Jersey]

Was most of Zinger's griping before or after Woods' round ended?  He battled back to 2 over, barely surviving the cut.  B

[PGage]

On Fri, Jul 18, 2014 at 8:33 PM, Bob Jersey <bob.in...@juno.com> wrote:

Was most of Zinger's griping before or after Woods' round ended?  He battled back to 2 over, barely surviving the cut.  

He peppered it throughout, but was most focused over the last few holes (but before he birdied 18 to make the cut on the number). But even after he pressed his point, which was not really predicated on his making the cut or not, but on his winning the championship, which he pretty clearly is not going to do this year.