From a 77-year-old posing in the nude to players firing caddies mid-round to the viral phenomenon of ‘Dufnering,’ 2013 was full of bizarre moments. We count down the top 10.
From a 77-year-old posing in the nude to players firing caddies mid-round to the viral phenomenon of ‘Dufnering,’ 2013 was full of bizarre moments. We count down the top 10.
In a Sports Illustrated interview in January, Vijay Singh admitted to using deer-antler spray, which included IGF-1, a substance that was thought to be banned by the PGA Tour. After a 12-week investigation, the Tour decided to drop their case against the 50-year-old Fijian after new information from the World Anti-Doping Agency claimed that deer-antler spray was no longer considered illegal because it contained just minimal amounts of IGF-1. After being let off the hook, Singh decided to sue the PGA Tour for exposing him to “public humiliation and ridicule.” The case is ongoing.
After a week of back and forth between Sergio Garcia and Tiger Woods at The Players, things escalated quickly when Garcia made a racially charged joke at the European Tour’s gala players’ awards dinner. When asked whether he would have Tiger over for dinner at the U.S. Open, Sergio responded, “We will have him round every night … we will serve fried chicken.” Despite making public and private apologies to Woods, Garcia has faced severe public backlash ever since.
After a highly publicized switch to Nike in the offseason, Rory McIlroy got off to a rocky start in 2013. Nowhere was that more evident than at the Honda Classic. In the second round, McIlroy walked off the course, withdrawing in the middle of his ninth hole. He was 7 over for the day. Initially he told reporters: “I’m not in a great place mentally,” but later apologized, blaming his premature departure on a toothache.
When Jason Dufner visited a third grade class in Irving, Texas, as part of the duties as Byron Nelson defending champion, he had no idea he was about to spark the viral Internet hit of 2013. Like #Tebowing before it, this photo was snapped of Dufner “enjoying” his time at the elementary school and took off like wildfire on social media, with everyone from Bubba Watson and Rickie Fowler to the “Duck Dynasty” guys taking pictures of themselves #Dufnering.
While it was quickly overshadowed by another high-profile rules infraction by the No. 1 player in the game, the youngest-ever Masters competitor was also hit with a second-round penalty at Augusta National. Guan Tianlang, 14, was assessed a one-shot penalty for slow play, only the fourth such penalty handed out in the last 16 years at a major. While Guan scrambled to make the cut on the number, the decision to penalize the teen got its fair share of criticism, including from Jack Nickalus, who said, “The eighth grade and he’s playing in the Masters! And he gets a penalty? You imagine giving a 14-year-old kid a penalty for slow play?”
The U.S. may have won the Presidents Cup pretty easily this year, but the real star of the show was their adopted, unofficial mascot – Sammy the Squirrel. On Day 1, U.S. assistant captain Davis Love III started feeding a stray squirrel he found on the second hole at Muirfield, and the squirrel rode around with Love, in his pocket and on his lap, for the rest of the day. Steve Stricker’s wife nicknamed him, “Sammy.” Toward the end of the day, Sammy made his way around to the rest of the team, including a short stop on Tiger Woods’ shoulder.
After carding a 40 and apparently having some disagreements with her caddie on the front nine in the third round of the U.S. Women’s Open, Jessica Korda decided to make a change. She fired her caddie, replacing Jason Gilroyed, with her boyfriend Johnny DelPrete, and went on to shoot a 36 on the back nine. While the move may have seemed cold-blooded, Korda didn’t take the decision lightly, saying, “I care about Jason a lot. He is a great guy … It was very hard for me to do. I’m not that type of person to take these things really easily.”
After months of speculation, Tiger Woods and Lindsey Vonn officially announced their relationship with a series of posts and photos on Facebook. After the announcement, Woods and Vonn we’re spotted everywhere from Augusta National to a Denver Broncos game together, with Lindsey even watching Tiger’s kids in the gallery while he was competing. Woods later said the reasoning behind the public announcement was to “limit the stalkarazzi” and that they “basically devalued the first photos.”
After shooting what he believed to be a 1-under 70 during the second round of the BMW Championship, Tiger Woods was assessed a two-shot penalty when a high-definition camera picked up his ball moving while he was rearranging some brush behind the green on the first hole. Woods said he believed his ball simply oscillated, but it was just the latest in a string of rules infractions for Tiger in 2013, this one leading to a public spat with Brandel Chamblee after the analyst wrote that Woods was “cavalier with the rules.”
There’s no denying Gary Player’s work-out regimen has paid off. The 77-year-old Hall of Famer posed nude in this year’s ESPN The Magazine’s “Body Issue,” becoming the oldest athlete to bare all in the annual spread. Player took to Twitter to share the news. “After a lifetime dedicated to health & fitness I’m chuffed to be in @ESPNmag’s Body Issue to hopefully inspire others to workout & live well.”