Friends of golfing great Tiger Woods say he must face the consequences after he was arrested for drunk driving in Florida following a rollover crash.
“I feel bad for him, (but) I don’t like sugar-coating it,” former PGA golfer Mark Rye said Saturday on “Fox & Friends Weekend.”
“And the way I see it, there needs to be some kind of punishment, some sort of ejection, some type of suspension from the game.”
The former professional golfer called the five-time Masters champion a “gift to golf” and said he has to “take some responsibility.”
“You wonder where that discipline he learned to impart on the golf course will take hold in his personal life,” he added. “He is possessed by an evil spirit.”
During his appearance, Lai also said when he thinks “enough is enough” when it comes to indiscretions like Woods’ recent arrest.
He also noted that golf and professional athletes’ contracts often have “morality clauses” and worried that the problem could get worse “if it doesn’t fall on me.”
“Twenty-five years of great golf can disappear in an instant,” Lai said, expressing gratitude that Woods was not injured in Friday’s rollover accident.
According to FOX News, PGA Tour announcer Doug Bell also spoke and expressed his gratitude to Mr. Rye, saying the accident could not have been worse.
“It’s tiring to look at what happened yesterday,” Bell said, according to the newspaper, noting that it was a “pattern that developed” for Woods.
“I hope this leads to something positive for one of the great athletes and people in this world that we’ve seen in a long time,” he continued.
Bell also expressed sympathy for Woods’ physical pain following injuries sustained in a 2021 roller crash in Palos Verdes, Los Angeles.
“He’s dealing with something that we don’t know what’s going on in his head, which is the pain from all the surgeries,” he noted. Bell said stepping away from golf “might be the best thing” for Woods.
Woods’ representatives did not immediately respond to Page Six’s request for comment on Saturday.
Woods, 50, was arrested Friday and charged with driving under the influence with criminal damage to property and refusing to submit to a lawful inspection following a crash in his Land Rover on Jupiter Island, Florida, shortly after 2 p.m.
Sheriff John Budensiek said Woods was attempting to pass a pressure washer when he became wedged in the vehicle’s trailer, causing the vehicle to skid and roll.
After showing “signs of impairment” at the scene, Woods refused to submit to a urine test, although a breathalyzer test showed a negative result.
Authorities say the man crawled out of the car after the crash and was later seen talking on the phone next to the Land Rover. Woods was arrested but later released overnight.
Friday’s incident wasn’t Woods’ first run-in with the law, nor his first car crash.
Woods suffered multiple serious injuries after a rollover in 2021 and has since undergone surgery on his knee, leg and back.
In November 2009, amid an infamous cheating scandal that led to his divorce from Elin Nordegren, with whom he has two children, he crashed his Cadillac SUV into a neighbor’s tree in Florida.
He lost consciousness and then Nordegren helped him out of the car. Woods was found to have been under the influence of sleeping pills.
Back in May 2017, the golf legend was arrested on suspicion of drunk driving in Jupiter, Florida.
According to the incident report, Woods fell asleep at the wheel of the Mercedes-Benz at the time and “had to be woken up.”
Subsequent tests revealed that he had multiple drugs in his system, including Dilaudid, Xanax, Vicodin, THC, and Ambien. He pleaded guilty to reckless driving and received $250 and one year of probation.
