Tiger Woods Shaking Hands With A Tree

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About

Tiger Woods Shaking Hands With A Tree refers to a photo and reaction image taken of professional golfer Tiger Woods shaking hands with a person standing behind a tree during the 2024 Masters Tournament. Due to the angle of the photograph, it appears as if Woods was clasping hands with an arm extending from the tree trunk, leading to memes imagining situations in which Woods or the poster themselves might commune with nature.

Origin

On Sunday, April 14th, 2024, Woods participated in the Masters Tournament at Augusta National Golf Course in Georgia. During a break while playing the 16th hole, he shook hands with CBS announcer Verne Lundquist.^[1] Lundquist, who was announcing his 40th and final Masters, stood directly behind a tree (seen below).

The footage was aired live on television that day, and some, including X / Twitter user @ShooterMcGavin_ (seen below) posted about how they were touched by Woods' tribute to Lundquist's long career.^[2] @ShooterMcGavin_ earned over 16,000 likes in one day for the post.

Spread

Posters rapidly interpreted the photo as Tiger Woods shaking hands with a tree rather than with Verne Lundquist due to the humorous angle. For example, on April 14th, 2024, the X account @TheClemReport posted what appeared to be a photo taken of a television screen showing the moment at 1:41 p.m. (seen below), earning over 99,000 likes in a day.^[3] The image was also posted to Reddit's /r/funny on April 14th, where it earned over 23,000 upvotes in 24 hours.^[4]

Some took the route of using the meme to joke about environmentally friendly behavior, like X user @_Hornik_ on April 14th, who earned over 27,000 likes in a day for posting a meme (seen below, top).^[5] That same day, X user @TwoInchesShort earned over 16,000 likes in a day for a post discussing drug use using the meme (seen below, bottom).^[6]

Also on April 14th, X user @Deers1 referred to an incident in which Woods crashed his car into a tree in 2021, joking that the handshake with another tree counted as an accepted apology, receiving over 83,000 likes in a day (shown below).^[7]