THE NEXT ONE’S GOOD
Fuzzy Zoeller Deserves a Better Score BY JERRY TARDE
Y ou would have liked Fuzzy Zoeller. He was a Louisville slugger kind of pro, one of the long drivers on the PGA Tour who fought a bad back his whole career after getting submarined in a high school basketball game. It wasn’t the last time he got undercut. I remember Dan Jenkins telling me Fuzzy laughed his way out of trouble. “It’s only my career, folks,” he quipped.
pro-am once, and he made it more fun than any pro I’ve been around. He was a family guy who loved his Hoosiers and every day took care of his wife Diane, long past the time she could remember his name. After her death in 2021, he’d get a golf cart and a Diet Coke and go fishing alone at the club he built, Covered Bridge. There’s a bromide in journalism that when you make a giant misstep, you
recalling the 1997 Masters: “Speaking to reporters in the shadow of (Tiger) Woods’ record-breaking win, Zoeller ended his interview by remarking, ‘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 to serve fried chicken next year. Got it?’ As Zoeller walked away he added, ‘Or collard greens or whatever the hell they serve.’” Sponsors left him, death threats were made and apologies followed. He was ahead of his time: one of the first victims of cancel culture – publicly shamed and professionally punished for an offensive statement. More than a decade later, Zoeller told Guy Yocom in Golf Digest: “If people wanted me to feel the same hurt I projected on oth- ers, I’m here to tell you they got their way. I’ve cried many times. I’ve apolo- gised 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 colour, who will attest to that. Still, I’ve come to terms with the fact that this incident will never, ever go away.” Guy told me, “There was this sadness about him. He’d chirp happily when people came by our table but immedi- ately resume looking very sad. I think that Augusta episode broke him, and
He had a throwback style – whistling when he wasn’t smoking, vodka in hand, always with a ready wise- crack, sliding down the fire pole of life. He was golf’s Dean Martin and just as talented. Zoeller won the first sudden-death playoff for the Masters in 1979, but his greatest moment ap- peared to be in defeat. Watching Greg Norman hole a 40-foot putt on the 72nd green at Winged Foot in the 1984 US Open that he mistook for a birdie (but actually was for an improbable par) Fuzzy took the towel off his bag and waved a “white flag” of surrender. It was a noble gesture that contributed to his winning the Bob Jones Award the next year. The club wanted to put a plaque in the fairway but settled for a photo- graph in the locker room. He’d win a total of 10
he was never the same. He cried dur- ing that interview, real tears streaming down his face.” The full measure of a man is revealed when you consider
R.I.P. Two-time major champ Zoeller passed away November 2025 at age 74.
spend the rest of your days trying to bury it deeper into your obituary. Every good deed or accomplishment pushes it another paragraph lower. When Zoeller died at 74 in November, his worst mo- ment didn’t surface until the seventh paragraph of his obit. Writing on GolfDigest.com, Joel Beall put his career in perspective before
him at his best and at his worst and judge the balance of days in between. Not many in golf knew higher highs than ol’ Fuzzy – a Masters and a US Open, by gosh – and the lowest low caused by a lapse of 10 seconds. Zoeller wrote a cover story for us back in 1984 with the head- line, “Enjoy This Rude Game.” In the end, he deserved a better score.
PGA Tour events – a record that’s bor- derline hall-of-fame, but not for Fuzzy. He won a couple more times on the senior tour, did a lot of hunting and fishing, but mostly retired to his home- town of New Albany, Indiana, and for 16 years hosted a tournament called the Wolf Challenge raising millions for local charities. I played with him in a
14 GOLF DIGEST SOUTH AFRICA
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2026
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