Rogue Announcer Accuses Tiger Woods Of Being On “A Lot Of Painkillers” To Start The Open Championship

This might be the most out-of-pocket utterance ever knowingly delivered by a sports announcer on the air. It's one thing to drop an F-bomb or be unprofessional if your mic's hot and you don't know it. Another thing entirely to accuse the GOAT Tiger Woods of popping a zillion pills for The Open Championship on the basis of nothing but what his eyes look like through a video monitor. https://twitter.com/NUCLRGOLF/status/1813949327221657681 No idea who this dude is. Sounds like he's from across the pond, so it's not like jet lag or time zones are presumably throwing his brain for a loop. Tiger is in the later afternoon wave. Can't cite early hours and/or an absence of adequate caffeine as an excuse. Just an all-time immediate, "Damn, I wish I had that one back!" moment from the broadcaster. Like yeah obviously Tiger has been through a lot of injuries. However, looking past how ridiculous it is to hurtle around around literal baseless accusations like this, Tiger has battled demons specifically related to an over-reliance on pain meds. He spent time in rehab for prescription painkiller addiction. What sucks is that Tiger might get asked about this after a brutal round at Royal Troon, where Mother Nature's severe elements are only making scoring more difficult as Thursday's first round wears on. Just to get himself in competitive shape for a major championship is such a grind for Tiger these days. The last thing he needs is some idiotic announcer speculating on his use of painkillers, or how he's managing his routine to get physically ready for the rigors of The Open. It might help to just, you know, ask him questions about that at a press conference. But nah, why get anything straight from the source when you can just take your best shot at degrading their character on live TV/stream? Good stuff. Sadly, Tiger has slipped back to 2-over on the day through five holes as of this writing, but he did have a sick birdie putt on the par-4 third hole: https://twitter.com/TheOpen/status/1813942962620965269 Hopefully he can manufacture something around even par the rest of the way to put himself in position to make the weekend cut. Tiger hasn't broken par in any of his competitive rounds in 2024. Looks like that'll hold true, barring a miraculous tapping into that old Tiger magic. Regardless of how he plays, though, sorry — this injustice will not stand. We cannot have media folk slinging mud and speculation about Tiger's painkiller usage. Just eff right off with all that nonsensical cacophonous jazz.