A security guard sliding into Tiger Woods at the Masters.

There’s obviously a huge amount of interest in Tiger Woods at the Masters, especially when he’s not far from the lead; as writer Melanie Hauser noted in our oral history of Masters media coverage, “Nobody drives the ratings like Tiger. He doesn’t move the needle, he is the needle.” That’s true on the course too, where there are a lot of people following Woods, and that perhaps led to an almost-calamitous result after one of his shots Friday.

Woods hit a great second shot from a tough position on the 14th hole. But then, as he was walking up to the green, a security guard came flying in trying to keep the gallery from getting too close to him. The guard then slipped on the wet grass and crashed right into Woods’ ankle, causing him to limp for a bit. Here’s a look at the live footage of this:

And the replay:

As many noted, if this was soccer, that guard probably would have been sent off for such a bad sliding tackle:

Fortunately, Woods seemed to recover afterwards, and he drained the putt for birdie. That gave him his second remarkable birdie in two days on that hole. Hopefully, there won’t be any further ongoing effects from this, and hopefully security will be a little more careful going forward. “Tiger Woods withdraws from Masters after security guard runs into him” would be a horrible headline.

[Clippit]

About Andrew Bucholtz

Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.