NOW HEAR THIS: Tiger Woods has received the backing of two marshals who dispute the earlier claim of two other marshals who said Woods did not speak to them before Sergio Garcia played his errant shot Saturday at The Players Championship. (Getty Images)
Now even the marshals are turning against each other.
After two marshals had said no one had told Tiger Woods that Sergio Garcia had hit a shot on the second hole of Saturday’s third round of The Players Championship, as Woods claimed, two other marshals have now defended the world’s No. 1 player.
Brian Nedrich and Lance Paczkowski were marshals this past weekend and told the Florida Times Union they were within 10-12 yards of Woods.
“It is not true and definitely unfair to Tiger,” Nedrich told the website. “That’s because I was the one Tiger heard say that Sergio had hit.”
The dispute started when Garcia ripped Woods for grabbing his five wood out of the bag, eliciting a roar from a crowd anticipating he would go for the green in two shots on the par-5 second hole.
The Spaniard’s claim, made dubious by TV replays, is that Woods should have waited till Garcia had hit his shot. Woods claimed one of the marshals told him just that.
“It’s not surprising he was complaining about something,” Woods said on Saturday. “Obviously, he doesn’t know all the facts. The marshals told me he had already hit, so I pulled a club and was getting ready to play my shot.”
The twist came afterward when two marshals, Gary Anderson and John North, said they were on the hole with Woods and did not say anything to him on that hole or any other.
“Nothing was said to us and we certainly said nothing to him,” North said. “I was disappointed to hear him make those remarks. We’re there to help the players and enhance the experience of the fans. He was saying what was good for him. It lacked character.”
But the sequence of events according to these two new outspoken marshals is different. They claim that Garcia hit, causing the crowd behind Woods to stir. At that point Paczkowski, who was completely screened from Garcia said, “the other player [Garcia] hasn’t hit yet.”
“That’s when I yelled back at Lance, ‘No … he’s already hit,’ ” Nedrich said. “Tiger had already taken his club, but we did tell him that Sergio had hit.”
When exactly Woods reached for his club remains unclear, but in TV replays it did not appear the crowd’s roar came during Garcia’s backswing. Either way, Nedrich does not blame Woods.
“There was a lot going on, as usual, when Tiger plays,” Nedrich said. “Then, he’s trying to have the concentration he needs to win a tournament. It’s easy to get small details out of whack when things happen so fast. It was an unfortunate incident, and I don’t think either player is to blame.”
Nedrich and Paczkowski say that at worst, Woods misspoke and calling him a liar is taking it too far.