[ad_1]
Will Zalatoris won his first PGA Tour event in wild, dramatic fashion Sunday at FedEx St. Jude Championship at TPC Southwind. Three days later, Zalatoris was still reeling from his epic end-of-stretch performance and three-hole playoff win against Sepp Straka, but he also tried to quell one major distraction.
A series of tweets by Scott Fawcett, who helped Zalatoris during his younger golf days and coached him to his 2014 U.S. Junior Amateur victory, specifically targeted NBC Sports commentator Dan Hicks and former pro at tour and eight-time winner Brad Faxon.
The tweets were later deleted, but Justin Thomas had screenshots of the original messages and posted them back on Twitter, saying: “Hi Scott. Twitter saw your incredibly rude and aggressive tweets. Congratulations on your “win”, but show some class and respect if you are as professional as you claim to be. Looking at other coaches and golfers really bad. Nobody likes a sick winner.
The original tweets from Fawcett and the response from Thomas you can read here, but a warning, be careful when you click. (Fawcett joined The Loop podcast earlier this week, and his comments can be heard below.)
Zalatoris was enjoying his first PGA Tour win – which came with a bogey on the third playoff hole – but before the BMW Championship began Thursday at Wilmington Country Club in Delaware, he ended talk of the incident by releasing a statement to the Golf Channel .
“Scott Fawcett is not a paid member of my team. I am in no way endorsing or endorsing anything said in these tweets. I personally contacted Dan Hicks and Brad Faxon and reiterated my disapproval of what they said. All the interviews he gave were unauthorized.
“He tried to contact me but I haven’t spoken to him. I am grateful to him for all he has helped me through the ups and downs of junior golf, but these statements are not a reflection of my values or myself.”
Fawcett is the creator of the DECADE Course Management System, which is a formula based on Distance, Anticipation, Correct Aim, Analysis, Discipline and Execution. He was a guest on The Loop podcast earlier this week and was asked about his social media tirade. Fawcett said multiple times that the tweets were meant to be jokes, but also maintained that he was simply standing up for Zalatoris, someone he knows extremely well and knows is a better player than people assume.
“Find me one tour player who has met me in person who says I’m not a good person and goes out of his way to help them,” Fawcett said on The Loop. “Go find me one, I’ll give you $1 million.”
[ad_2]
Source link