Thirty-seven-year-old Andres Gonzales has had a long and colorful career on the Korn Ferry and PGA Tours since making his professional debut in 2006. The Washington native quickly made a name for himself with his fun-loving personality and signature horseshoe mustache.
Gonzales was also an early Twitter enthusiast, though he admits he was skeptical about the platform at first. In this week’s episode of Subpar, Gonzales told hosts Colt Knost and Drew Stoltz that a childhood friend convinced him that, as a PGA Tour cardholder, his day-to-day musings and activities would likely be interesting to other users. Then, his friend delivered the clincher: “You should just think of something funny to do. You should tweet Tiger Woods.”
For Gonzales, that was an appealing proposition. Thus began a longtime, hilariously one-sided attempt at conversing with Woods on social media. Gonzales’ first tweet to the Big Cat?
“‘Hi Tiger, my name is Andres Gonzales. I’m a rookie on the PGA Tour. My favorite color is green and I love elephants,” Gonzales recalled to Knost and Stoltz.
“How did he not respond to that?” Knost asked incredulously.
“He never responded to any of them!” Gonzales responded.
Twitter: @Andres_Gonzales
Gonzales estimates that he sent around 60 unanswered tweets to Woods over the years, none of which ever received a response.
“When [Woods] was working with Sean Foley, Sean came up to me and was like, he knows about it, he thinks it’s funny, but he thinks if he responds …” Gonzales said. “I’m like, he doesn’t think!”
As fate would have it, Gonzales and Woods ended up in the same room together when they were both playing the 2011 Frys.com Open.
“He came in, and I looked at him, and I could feel every eye look over to me,” Gonzales said. “I froze like a little b—-. I just sat there, I put my head down. I ate. He left the room, and everybody looked at me and was just like, what are you doing?!”
Gonzales has since given Woods a break on Twitter, but a lot has changed for both Woods and Gonzales over the last decade. Would Gonzales consider trying again?
“We’ll see what happens,” Gonzales said. “Once I get my [PGA Tour] card back, we’ll talk. But I’m telling you, I’m not the guy that’s getting up at 6, 6:30 to play a practice round whenever he’s playing. I like to sleep, man.”
For more from Gonzales, including how breaking his neck as a kid led to his career in golf, check out his full Subpar interview below.
As a four-year member of Columbia’s inaugural class of female varsity golfers, Jessica can out-birdie everyone on the masthead. She can out-hustle them in the office, too, where she’s primarily responsible for producing both print and online features, and overseeing major special projects, such as GOLF’s inaugural Style Issue, which debuted in February 2018. Her original interview series, “A Round With,” debuted in November of 2015, and appeared in both in the magazine and in video form on GOLF.com.
