One of my all-time favorite PGA Tour stars is gone, and I’m a lot sadder about it than I expected.
Frank Urban Zoeller – Fuzzy to everyone who knew him – has passed at 74. To most golf fans, he was the smiling Masters champion with the quick one-liners and a homemade swing. To me, he was something more personal: the guy who remembered me inside the ropes and always took a minute to BS with “the nobody” working the Phoenix Open.
I worked the Phoenix Open at the TPC of Scottsdale for five years back in the 90’s as a spotter for ESPN. That meant I was walking inside the ropes, close enough to hear the chatter, see the body language, and occasionally catch a quick word with the players.
In the early years of the tournament since moving to the TPC of Scottsdale in 1987 before the actual tournament got underway, 10 contestants would get together for a single elimination, 9- hole, fun competition. A player with the highest score on a hole would be eliminated. With TV credentials I was allowed inside the ropes and would follow along with the players as they all played the same hole. In the fairways I gravitated to Fuzzy’s chatter because of all the laughter around him. One year he noticed me watching him and he asked jokingly what club I would hit in that situation. He must have liked my answer because he put his arm around me all buddy buddy like and said, “kid, you’re all right!”
Some pros barely noticed I existed. Fuzzy noticed. Every year.
He’d say hello, ask me how things were going, and let me hit him with questions about:
- life on his farm back in Indiana
- tour travel
- his thoughts on football, baseball, and other sports
Nothing earth-shattering – just a star player treating a grunt like a human being. That meant something then, and it means even more now that he’s gone.
The joke that wouldn’t die
For a lot of people, Fuzzy’s story got boiled down to one ugly headline:
“The guy who made a racist joke about Tiger Woods at the Masters.”
Here’s what really happened, as best as I remember it.
Back when Tiger was running away with the Masters by a dozen shots and was being declared the winner before the final round was even played, Fuzzy tried to crack a joke about what Tiger might serve at the Champions Dinner. Half in the bag, being “Fuzzy the entertainer,” he tossed out the fried chicken/collard greens line and then finished with the phrase that lit the fuse:
“…or whatever them people eat.”
That “them people” was the trigger. Once it hit the press, it was over. It didn’t matter that he apologized. It didn’t matter that he meant it as a (bad) joke, not a political speech. The media and the outrage machine came down on him like he’d called for something far worse.
He lost his Walmart deal. Sponsors ran for cover. His name got permanently tied to that one drunken moment. The man paid in millions of dollars and in years of depression.
Was the joke clumsy and offensive?
Yeah, absolutely.
Was the punishment proportionate to the crime?
In my view: Hell no.
And we were all thinking, that little prick Tiger wouldn’t let him off the hook when he could have defused the whole situation by saying something like, “hey, Fuzzy is a friend of mine, he was just joking around, didn’t mean anything negative, he was just being Fuzzy” but oh no that would have been too much for the great man to say. Meanwhile, Mr. Perfect goes out and cheats on his wife.
Meanwhile, others skated
What still burns me is the double standard.
Years later, a TV host on the Golf Channel, Kelly Tilghman by name, was asked what – or who – could stop Tiger Woods from becoming the GOAT. On live TV, the answer came out:
“Take him out back and lynch him.”
You want to talk about a loaded word with a brutal history? That’s it.
Yet the consequences for that line didn’t seem anywhere close to what Fuzzy went through. No loss of job, No sponsor meltdown. No years-long exile. No financial earthquake. The careers and reputations involved were treated very differently.
Same target, same player, same racial landmines – but Fuzzy was a much bigger, easier target, with a whole lot more to lose.
Tiger’s greatness vs. Tiger the man
Now let’s talk about the man at the center of both of those controversies: Tiger Woods.
Before Tiger blew up into the global superstar, he wasn’t exactly Mr. Popular among everyone who followed golf. A lot of us saw a whiny Stanford nerd with a chip on his shoulder who couldn’t get a date and carried himself like he was destined for greatness long before he actually got there.
As the trophies and sponsorships piled up, so did the arrogance. And then the personal life meltdown with Elin exploded. The cheating, the serial affairs, the ridiculous “sex addiction rehab” tour – the fake apology, it was hard to watch and even harder to respect.
Most of us who loved golf weren’t rooting for him to pass Jack’s 18 majors. We admired the shots, we respected the scores, but we didn’t much care for the man.
And even now, when we’re forced by reality to admit he’s one of the greatest players ever, I still don’t put him in the same category as Nicklaus or Palmer in terms of character.
There’s more to being the GOAT than how many trophies you stack up.
You have to be a good man, not just a great golfer.
On that scorecard, Tiger comes up short.
How I’ll remember Fuzzy
So yeah, Fuzzy told a bad joke. A racially loaded one. He paid dearly for it.
But that is not the sum total of who he was.
I’ll remember:
- the guy who remembered me
- the guy who stopped to chat inside the ropes
- the guy with the farm stories, the sports takes, and the easy laugh
- the player who could win the Masters and still act like a regular human being
The world doesn’t make many like that anymore.
So here’s to Frank Urban “Fuzzy” Zoeller – flawed, funny, talented, and human.
Raise a glass at the 19th hole and remember him as more than one bad joke.
Bunker #69 Field Brief
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