Sports

Fuzzy: Furor over Sergio will blow over

The only guy in golf who has had a more trying week than Sergio Garcia is Fuzzy Zoeller.

Garcia’s lame attempt at banquet humor during Tuesday night’s European Tour awards dinner in England, when he joked about inviting Tiger Woods to dinner at next month’s U.S. Open and serving him “fried chicken,’’ stirred memories of a similar gaffe by Zoeller.

Zoeller, in an interview with the Associated Press, said he has “paid his dues” over his ill-advised remark about Woods at the 1997 Masters.

Zoeller, too, said he believes the furor over Garcia’s comments will blow over.

“I don’t know. They’ve had feuds before. It’s just the way it is. That’s sports,” Zoeller said at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, where his spirits company — Fuzzy’s Ultra Premium Vodka — is sponsoring the pole-winning car that will be driven by Ed Carpenter in Sunday’s race. “There’s going to be feuds here this week sometime [at Indianapolis]. Someone will get in [a spat] out here. Some you’ll hear about, some you won’t.”

After Woods’ record-setting Masters win 1997, Zoeller said: “You pat him on the back, say congratulations, enjoy it. And tell him not serve fried chicken next year [at the annual champion’s dinner]. Got it? … Or collard greens or whatever the hell they serve.”

Zoeller, who has always maintained his comments were “misconstrued,” said of his attempt at humor “mine was a joke that went bad.”

Zoeller was skewered so severely after making those off-handed comments that his career was never the same again and, more importantly, he was dropped by sponsors, including his primary backer, K-Mart, because of the incident.