Previously, no golfer really had bowed up to Tiger Woods before Sergio Garcia’s public disdain of Woods. It made for an intriguing duel except that Garcia has never beaten Tiger head to head (don’t count the lame battle at Bighorn).
Sadly, the smack talk has come to an unfortunate end due to Garcia’s “fried chicken” comment.
The aftershocks have been swift and plentiful ranging from outrage to pity.
Jason Whitlock of FoxSports.com thinks both Sergio and Tiger blew this one.
Garcia’s mishap is a reminder for me to be on guard to avoid making a similar mistake. It’s also a reminder to avoid the fallacy that the key to promoting racial harmony is the avoidance of discussing race. It’s the equivalent of believing the key to beating cancer is ignoring any sign of it in hopes that it will just go away.
Tiger Woods is quite adept at sidestepping the subject of race. And perhaps that’s why golf pretty much looks and sounds the same as it did when he won the 1997 Masters.
SI.com's Michael Rosenberg thinks this doesn't mean Garcia is a racist, but does confirm he's the consummate whiner.
He is a whiner (he just admitted this to Golf.com), and he is petty, and he thinks every dark cloud in the sky is staring at him. He loses his poise because he worries about the wrong things. And evidently he needs to improve his joke repertoire. But that doesn't necessarily make him racist.
Tom English of the Scottsman believes that Garcia's comment made the unthinkable possible.
By the time he had finished his mea culpa you almost started to feel some pity for him. Woods is not only trouncing him on the golf course but he’s also trouncing him off it. Woods has the career that Garcia always wanted. At one time, many years ago now, these two looked like they were going to form the rivalry of
the age but Garcia has been a profound disappointment on that score.
The only thing the Spaniard has achieved in the last 24 hours was to make a sympathetic character out of Woods – a hell of a feat beyond the ken of so many who are paid to do it, but now achieved, ironically, by the man who dislikes him more than most.
By the way, for the many who enjoy their fried chicken (or watermelon for that matter), here's a decent explanation via Wikipedia how the term came to be as a racial epithet.
Since the American Civil War, traditional slave foods like fried chicken, watermelon, and chitterlings have suffered a strong association with African American stereotypes and blackface minstrelsy. This was commercialized for the first half of the 20th century by restaurants like Sambo's and Coon Chicken Inn, which selected exaggerated depictions of blacks as mascots, implying quality by their association with the stereotype. Although also being acknowledged positively as "soul food" today, the affinity that African American culture has for fried chicken has been considered a delicate, often pejorative issue. While the perception of fried chicken as an ethnic dish has been fading for several decades, with the ubiquity of fried chicken dishes in the US, it persists as a racial stereotype.
Bottom line is in this age of immediate social networking, everyone (not just celebrities) need to be extremely careful when uttering a dicey "joke" no matter the venue (as caddie Stevie Williams found out).
Also, wondering if the PR folks at TaylorMade/Adidas would've liked Garcia to go logo-less during the apology presser...