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ESPN Radio’s Mike and Mike have landed an interview with Tiger Woods for Thursday morning. I’ve long made clear my professional dislike for Mike Greenberg (I don’t know him personally). This stems from Greenberg, a Jewish person, making an on-air joke about Jewish people to Sean Salisbury some years ago. Such pandering.
The joke was about Jewish people not being mechanical. I must have missed that joke when I was growing up, probably because I was too busy watching my Jewish father finish our basement completely on his own, and my Jewish older brother disassemble and reassemble his own cars. (Disclosure: Sadly, I inherited none of that ability.)
So, yes, I’m biased. There’s the joke thing. There Greenberg’s penchant for hyperbole. There’s his ass kissing.
I don’t mind Mike Golic, even though most of his questions are softballs and/or they go on and on and on and on and on. In fact, I gained a lot of respect for him during Super Bowl week when he appeared on Dan Patrick’s radio show, ESPN proclamations be damned.
But there is one stink Golic can’t get off him: the stink of Greenberg.
So below is a list of 10 questions I imagine are on Mike and Mike’s list of things to ask Tiger:
1. How are you? (Greenberg)
2. What are you up to these days? (Golic)
3. Can I get you anything? (Greenberg)
4. How are you spending the PGA’s off-season? I guess there really isn’t an off-season anymore with all of your other obligations. (Greenberg)
5. Tiger, given all of the things you’ve gone through and all of the things you went through the past year, and all the stuff in the media that we all know about – and certainly I don’t want to ask about personal details because those details belong only to you – there’s a thing called perspective, and it’s something that someone can only get after going through life’s challenges, and you learn from them and you grow stronger as a person, and really, it’s what makes us human. (Golic)
6. Tiger, tell us what you’re working on now. (Greenberg)
7. You must be excited about that Stanford football team, your alma mater, right? (Golic)
8. Aren’t yarmulkes hilarious? (Greenberg)
9. Tiger, now that you’ve had a couple of months to sit back and think about it, and the experience you had at the Ryder Cup, and would you play or not play, and would you be a captain’s pick or not, and that controversy with Corey Pavin and all of that — and of course you struggled some early on and totally dominated on the final day — and the weather conditions were horrible, but even then the Americans were right in it until the final day before the Europeans pulled away, what are or what were your thoughts on the Ryder Cup, and is it a special event to you? Because there are some, not me, but some, who say that you don’t really care about the Ryder Cup. (Golic)
10. Well, Tiger Woods, one of the greatest golfers of all time, we can’t wait to watch you in 2011 and we hope you come back and join us again real soon. (Greenberg)
UPDATE
As expected, Mike and Mike lobbed softballs at Tiger, despite being told by Woods’ brain trust that no topic was off limits.
The New York Daily News had a helpful writeup.
And Dan Patrick, on his radio show, pretty much said, What do you expect?, comparing Mike and Mike to Larry King, the CNN talk-show host celebrities use to rehabilitate to their image because they can control the messenger.
Find Dave Schwartz on Twitter @daveschwartz.
