Tiger Woods on Twitter: A retrospective
Tiger Woods News

Tiger Woods on Twitter: A retrospective

FOLLOW: iHEART | TUNEIN


Tiger Woods has tweeted four times in the month of December. For him, lately, that's a lot.

"I'm hot, aren't I?" he joked Wednesday at the Northwestern Mutual World Challenge. Woods said girlfriend Lindsey Vonn has encouraged him to tweet more often.

"As far as her convincing me to tweet more, yes, she certainly has hinted that," he said. "But I grew up in a different era, and it's a little bit different for me. But I'll get there eventually."

Vonn is 29. Woods is almost 38. Different era? C'mon now. Nevertheless, Woods' comments on Twitter drove us to a sickness: offering a retrospective on Tiger Woods' life on Twitter.

Woods' first tweet was June 26, 2009. There were three in a string, all promotional: one for his website, one for his Facebook page and another tweeting the address to his Twitter page. OK, it didn't go so well.

Tiger came back to Twitter on Nov. 17, 2010, sending 308 tweets since. Over the course of the 1,114 days since he rejoined Twitter, Woods has averaged 0.27 tweets per day. That ain't much.

In fact, almost half of Woods' lifetime tweets (142) came in the first seven months he was back on Twitter. Since then, there have only been three months in which Woods has cracked double-digit tweets -- none since April 2012. Woods' most prolific month was a year earlier, sending 56 tweets in April 2011, including 46 in an April 29 Q&A session.

Including that Q&A, Woods has held a total of five such sessions on Twitter. (Don't forget that awkward Google Hangout on May 29, 2012.) His last was on March 15, 2012, with a pithy nine tweets answering fan questions. A couple of the tweets were likely contractual obligations, with a pair of them dedicated to questions about the soon-to-be defunct EA Sports Tiger Woods PGA Tour franchise.

So Tiger tweets sparsely. That means when he shares something, it draws a lot of attention, right? Then again, you might miss it in your timeline if it happens only once in a blue moon. It's a tweedle in a tweetstack. But Woods, like in his news conferences, has tendencies in what he shares and talk about with his 3.7 million followers.

Most often, he talks about the Tiger Woods Foundation and Tiger Woods Learning Centers. He mentioned or alluded to them in 30 tweets -- almost 10 percent of his lifetime tweets.

Second? Stanford, getting seven name drops. Then there's a big tie for third with three mentions: his niece, Cheyenne Woods, Nelson Mandela, the Oakland Raiders and gambling.

He's talked about his course design work at Diamante in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, twice -- both times with a picture of him heroically stalking the developing property.

He's mentioned his girlfriend, Lindsey Vonn, once, when they jointly told the world they were dating and shared some photography for all us of media types to use.

Woods has shared one selfie, and that was before "selfie" was a word and Instagram was a thing.

Twitter is a vehicle for Woods to talk about his loyal sponsors, mentioning EA Sports in 18 tweets (largely thanks to those two chats), Nike on 11 occasions, upstart Fuse Science 5 times and Rolex just once.

But Woods hasn't been a robot on Twitter. He's revealed some fascinating things about himself on the service.

He loves wearing shorts.

He's evasive in even answering questions about his favorite movies.

He's self-aware.

He's self-effacing.

His taste in ice cream is bland.

He supports technology, but hates anchoring. (Flip-flopper?!)

He can be a little feisty.

Woods has shared condolences on Seve's death, to welcoming caddie Joe Lacava to Team Tiger, to chastising and simultaneously downplaying Sergio's "fried chicken" remarks. He tried to explain his bad drop at this April's Masters.

However, he's tweeted less this year than any of the three full years he's been on Twitter, cutting his tweets almost by half every year:

2011: 140
2012: 78
2013: 37

So, Tiger's reached the absolute peak of Twitter indifference. Maybe Lindsey can spark a few more 140-character tidbits out of the world No. 1.

Tags

About the author

Ryan Ballengee

Ryan Ballengee is founder and editor of Golf News Net. He has been writing and broadcasting about golf for nearly 20 years. Ballengee lives in the Washington, D.C. area with his family. He is a scratch golfer...sometimes.

Ballengee can be reached by email at ryan[at]thegolfnewsnet.com

Ryan occasionally links to merchants of his choosing, and GNN may earn a commission from sales generated by those links. See more in GNN's affiliate disclosure.

Add Comment

Click here to post a comment