{"id":89570,"date":"2025-11-27T14:09:18","date_gmt":"2025-11-27T18:09:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/sin-categoria\/fuzzy-zoeller-golf-champion-and-controversial-figure-for-joke-to-tiger-woods-passes-away\/"},"modified":"2025-11-27T14:09:18","modified_gmt":"2025-11-27T18:09:18","slug":"fuzzy-zoeller-golf-champion-and-controversial-figure-for-joke-to-tiger-woods-passes-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/golf\/fuzzy-zoeller-golf-champion-and-controversial-figure-for-joke-to-tiger-woods-passes-away\/","title":{"rendered":"Fuzzy Zoeller, golf champion and controversial figure for joke to Tiger Woods, passes away"},"content":{"rendered":"Fuzzy Zoeller, a renowned two-time major champion and a charismatic figure in golf, has passed away at the age of 74. The news was confirmed by a close colleague.\n\n<p>The causes of death are unknown at this time. Brian Naugle, director of the Insperity Invitational tournament in Houston, was informed by Zoeller&#8217;s daughter on Thursday.<\/p>\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/a1.espncdn.com\/combiner\/i?img=%2Fphoto%2F2015%2F1215%2Fr36335_1296x729_16%2D9.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"\"><figcaption>Zoeller, campe\u00f3n del Masters y del Abierto de EE. UU., fue un personaje destacado del golf. Su carrera se vio empa\u00f1ada por un comentario racialmente insensible sobre Tiger Woods en el Masters de 1997.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\nZoeller achieved a historic victory at the 1979 Masters, being the last player to win the tournament in his first participation, after a three-way tie. He is also remembered for a moment in 1984 at Winged Foot, where, believing he had lost to Greg Norman, he waved a white towel, only to win in a playoff the next day.\n\nHowever, the 1997 Masters marked a turning point in his career.\n\nWoods was on the verge of achieving a dominant victory at Augusta National. During an interview on CNN, Zoeller made a comment that generated controversy:\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>So, do you know what they do when he gets here? They pat him on the back and tell him congratulations and enjoy it and don&#8217;t serve fried chicken next year. Understood?<\/p><cite>Fuzzy Zoeller<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\nThis comment haunted him for the rest of his career. In 2008, Zoeller wrote in a post:\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>I have cried many times. I have apologized countless times for words said in jest that do not reflect who I am. I have hundreds of friends, including people of color, who can attest to that. Even so, I have accepted the fact that this incident will never disappear.<\/p><cite>Fuzzy Zoeller<\/cite><\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fuzzy Zoeller, a renowned two-time major champion and a charismatic figure in golf, has passed away at the age of 74. The news was confirmed by a close colleague. The causes of death are unknown at this time. Brian Naugle, director of the Insperity Invitational tournament in Houston, was informed by Zoeller&#8217;s daughter on Thursday. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":89571,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[708,10773,163,1401],"class_list":{"0":"post-89570","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-death","9":"tag-fuzzy-zoeller","10":"tag-golf","11":"tag-tiger-woods"},"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89570\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}