When Tiger Woods is between the ropes, it’s tough to get his attention away from his golf, but one superfan found a way to do it during The Players Championship this past weekend.
Self-admitted Tiger Woods superfan Thomas Wesling, a senior at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, was in Jacksonville for Spring Break, which thanks to the 2018-19 PGA Tour schedule shake-up coincided with The Players Championship. While he was there, he was bound and determined to get a laugh out of his hero.
In order to do so, Wesling dropped $20 on a t-shirt that bore the image of Woods’ mug shot from his 2017 arrest.
“I bought the shirt right when Tiger won last year (at the Tour Championship,” Wesling told The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “I’m a huge Tiger fan, I love Tiger, so thinking about it I was like, ‘I need to wear it.’ I knew if I could get any reaction out of it from him, it’d be priceless.”
I had Tiger reminiscing about his glory days #THEPLAYERS pic.twitter.com/xsvJQNXBwj
— Thomas Wesling (@ThomasWesling23) March 16, 2019
Wesling found some prime real estate between the 17th and 18th holes at TPC Sawgrass, and as Tiger and playing partner Kevin Na headed towards the final hole, Wesling shouted to Woods.
Woods appears to catch a glimpse of the shirt out of the corner of his eye and attempted to stifle a smile.
Wesling, noticing the smile creep across Woods’ face, then called out, “I saw you! You saw it!”
The video, posted to Wesling’ personal Twitter page, which boasts less than 700 followers, has been viewed over 1.07 million times since it was put up.
“It’s hard to get Tiger to notice anyone because so many people yelling at him,” Wesling told the Sentinel. “I thought if he saw it he might get mad and have someone make me take it off. I thought that was possible or that he might think it was funny. If I could get a smirk out of it, that would be perfect.
“It’s the best 20 bucks I’ve ever spent.”