A basketball player has to deal with fans swaying back and forth while trying to shoot a free throw. A baseball player has fans heckling him unmercifully. A hockey player gets taunted in the penalty box. But heaven forbid somebody tries to take a picture of Tiger Woods — or any golfer, for that matter — while a pretty precious swing is in progress. From ESPN:

Tiger Woods is growing more frustrated with photographers snapping pictures of him during his swing. In an interview on ESPN’s First Take on Wednesday. Woods addressed an incident at last week’s WGC-CA Championship at Doral, Fla., when he reacted to the click of a camera in his backswing with an obscenity-laced threat.

Woods’ intense competitive streak is well-known, and he’s also been known to curse when his results don’t meet his high expectations. But on Sunday, in a threat punctuated with profanity, he threatened bodily harm to the next photographer who snaps during his swing.

“It’s been frustrating because that’s what been happening lately,” Woods told ESPN’s First Take. “It’s one of the things that comes with playing in the last group, one of the distractions we have to deal with.”

What’s more, Woods said, the distractions have affected his play.

“Each time it’s happened, well three out of four times, I made bogey,” Woods said. “At the time I needed to make birdie, I flinched on it. [The photographer] got me in transition on my downswing. You have no idea what’s been said on the golf course all the time, in any sport really,” Woods added. “It was the heat of the moment. That one shot took the momentum that I had built on No. 8.”

Boo. Hoo. Yes, golf takes concentration. So does every other sport. Suck it up, shut up and play through.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 26th, 2008 at 10:56 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.