NBC has been slammed by its viewers for showing footage from a different Tiger Woods car crash when reporting on his arrest on Friday.
During their coverage of the PGA Tour’s Houston Open on Saturday afternoon, NBC briefly cut away from the action on the course to give viewers the latest news on Woods.
The 50-year-old golf icon was arrested Friday afternoon after he tried to overtake a truck and trailer at high speed on a residential Jupiter Island road, clipping the back of the vehicle and tipping his own SUV onto its side.
But as the NBC anchor started speaking about the incident in Florida, footage of Woods’ 2021 crash in California started to play over the top instead.
That crash left Woods with a shattered right leg after he was trapped under the vehicle. He needed multiple surgeries in order to recover from his injuries.
Viewers quickly took to social media to blast NBC over the mistake, with one calling the mistake ‘despicable’.
NBC moved away from their coverage of the PGA Tour to provide an update on Tiger Woods
However, the used footage from his 2021 car crash in California rather than Friday’s in Florida
Viewers quickly took to social media to blast NBC for the error, which one called ‘despicable’
They wrote: ‘NBC you’re terrible. I just watched an update about Tiger Woods’ car wreck yesterday. All you did was show damage from his wreck six (five) years ago. Nothing about the minor wreck yesterday. Despicable.’
Another commented: ‘NBC just did a sports break talking about Tiger Woods’ rollover yesterday and while talking about it showed a video of a previous rollover where the car was totally destroyed… not once did it say it was not the one from yesterday… shame on NBC for lying again!’
A third added: ‘@NBCSports how is this a thing. You spend so much time focusing on ads that you can’t even do this right. Pathetic.’
A fourth called it a ‘stupid mistake’ while another unhappy viewer described NBC as ‘amateurville’.
‘Tiger Woods has now been in enough car accidents that NBC had difficulty selecting the correct photo to show earlier today,’ another posted.
Somebody else added: ‘@NBC you’re showing the old Tiger crash footage you morons’.
When coverage returned to the golf, commentator Dan Hicks issued a correction and said: ‘We want to take this time to make a correction. Before we came on the air today with our regular PGA Tour coverage of this Texas Children’s Houston Open our studio show inadvertently showed the incorrect picture of a car crash Tiger Woods was in. It was another previous car crash. It was not the correct one, the latest one that was yesterday. So we apologize for that and wanted to straighten that out before we go any further.’
Later in the broadcast, Woods’ TGL teammate and friend Kevin Kisner was asked for his thoughts on Woods’ crash by Hicks.
Woods is driven away from Martin County Jail after being bonded out on Friday night
Woods stares down the lens in his police mugshot after being arrest for DUI on Friday afternoon
Woods stands alongside his Range Rover SUV after clambering out of the passenger side
He said: ‘Very disturbing. He was really working hard on his game, trying to practice and get back in shape. He signed up for the U.S. Senior Open yesterday.
‘He was trying to do anything he could to come back and try and help our TGL team, get ready, hopefully try and play the Masters.
‘Just a really unfortunate incident. I guess the only positive is that nobody was injured in the incident and we can all move forward and hopefully help him get better.’
After managing to climb out of the passenger side window of his vehicle, Woods refused to give a urine sample to cops and was arrested for DUI, property damage and refusal to submit to a lawful test.
Cops released Woods’ remarkable mugshot to the public shortly after 10pm, with his eyes puffy and bloodshot in the image. An hour later, he was bonded out and driven away from the jail, as fans and reporters swarmed the car for a glimpse of him.
In photos taken by a Daily Mail photographer, he could be seen looking stony-faced with his lips pursed, before momentarily glancing out of the passenger side window at the gathered masses and disappearing into the night.
At the scene of Friday’s accident, Woods passed a breathalyzer test after showing ‘triple zeros’, but then refused to give a urine sample twice, once on the roadside and then again at the jail.
‘He is cooperative, but he was not trying to incriminate himself, so he was careful in what he said and didn’t say,’ Sheriff John Budensiek explained. ‘When it came time again for the test, the urine test at the jail, he stopped that.
‘On scene, we had [Drug Recognition] experts evaluating him and they believed from on scene that he was not impaired with alcohol, but they believe it was some type of medication or drug. And again, at the jail he cooperated with the breathalyzer, and then the urine [test] he wanted no part in.
‘He has a right to refuse that test. There is a statute that he will be charged with for refusing to take that test, but we will never get definitive results as to what he was impaired on at the time of the crash.’
