By He pretended to be a member of the media in order to get an autograph.. From Alex Miceli at Golf World-
In one of the best cases of chutzpah in modern media centers, a fan sneaked into Tiger Woods’ news conference Sunday after The Memorial and sat amongst the ink-stained wretches, two rows from Tiger, waiting for a chance to get a Woods autograph.
After 19 questions, the guy could wait no longer.
“Jack’s going to hate me for this,” the interloper said, standing. “Tiger, congratulations for winning The Memorial. I’m a normal person that snuck in here with a patron badge. I was just wondering if I could get an autograph.”
After a lot of stunned media looked at one another, Tiger snickered before red-faced security staff escorted the man out of the interview room.
Nicklaus was classic with his response.
“If he’s got that much guts, he can get it, right?”
And then the patron’s badge was passed up to Woods, who signed it and passed it back to security to deliver to the very gutsy patron.
Since he was so successful in the media room, if I was there I would have given the person a chance to impersonate Ron Sirak or Doug Ferguson. Who knows, they may have done a better job of reporting the tournament. Cue the sarcastic laughter.
From personal experience at the two tournaments I blogged on site, the security person by the media room door was always the same. After the first day they would recognize me and not ask to see my credential. At the ADT, there were two ways of getting in the media center. The main entrance where a guard was, and a back entrance door alongside the interview room. This was next to a parking lot that was used by officials and tournament cars. All someone would have to do was walk past the signs warning not to go further(but didn’t have any guards around) and get to the interview room via the parking lot.
If the LPGA ever reads this post, they probably won’t appreciate my sharing these secrets. Well, I could have said something worse. Like what if a woman tried to impersonate….never mind. If you want to keep non media members out of the press area, all exits and entrances need to be covered.
What should be the impersonating for impersonating a member of the golf media?
Hat tip- Geoff Shackelford
11:23 am on June 8th, 2009 1
In Canada, we've got a guy who made a career of pulling stunts like that and doing what can be best described as antagonistic interviews with unsuspecting and not so unsuspecting celebrities. He once crashed a Gorbachev press conference just to tell him, "Keep on rocking in the free world." (His signature closing line).
http://www.nardwuar.com/videos/index.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbNAMStU4o0
(fastforward to 3:00. LOL)
1:56 pm on June 9th, 2009 2
I just found this delightful story. Reminds me of when I lived in Hong Kong and impersonated a sports reporter; obtaining a press pass for a tennis exhibition at Victoria Park in 1995.
The local Chinese organizers thought I looked like a journalist since my camera had a long lens, so they gave me courtside seats to watch Martina Navratilova.
Afterward I attended the post-match interview in the press room, sat in the front row, and even asked Navratilova a question. (My question was not even about tennis, instead I asked her about helicopter skiing in Canada.) I got some great action photos with high speed film. A year later I pulled the same stunt (using the same press pass from the previous year) and got courtside seats to watch Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi.
In China I wore a suit to the zoo pretending to be a foreign scientist and persuaded Guangzhou's zookeeper to let me inside the panda enclosure to photograph their eating habits. She even gave me a bundle of bamboo to feed the pandas!
Those were the good old days!