Fuzzy Zoeller, 2-time major champion haunted by racist joke about Tiger Woods, dies at 74

Fuzzy Zoeller, a two-time major champion and one of golf’s most gregarious characters whose career was tainted by a racially insensitive joke about Tiger Woods, has died, according to a longtime colleague. He was 74.

A cause of death was not immediately available. Brian Naugle, the tournament director of the Insperity Invitational in Houston, said Zoeller’s daughter called him Thursday with the news.

Zoeller was the last player to win the Masters on his first attempt, a three-man playoff in 1979. He famously waved a white towel at Winged Foot in 1984 when he thought Greg Norman had beat him, only to defeat Norman in an 18-hole playoff the next day.

But it was the 1997 Masters that changed his popularity.

Woods was on his way to a watershed moment in golf with the most dominant victory in Augusta National history. Zoeller was praising the performance in a CNN interview when he ended it by saying: “So, you know what you guys do when he gets in here? You pat him on the back and say congratulations and enjoy it and tell him not serve fried chicken next year. Got it?”

He smiled and snapped his fingers, and as he was walking away he turned and said, “Or collard greens or whatever the hell they serve.”

That moment haunted him the rest of his career. Zoeller wrote for Golf Digest in 2008: “I’ve cried many times. I’ve apologized countless times for words said in jest that just aren’t a reflection of who I am. I have hundreds of friends, including people of color, who will attest to that. Still, I’ve come to terms with the fact that this incident will never, ever go away.”