Tiger and Kelly Are Cool...BUT

Golf Channel has suspended Tilghman. A day after they decided to do nothing to Kelly for her lynch remark and Mark Steinberg said it was a non-story, the Golf Channel changed their mind.

The GOLF CHANNEL regrets the poorly chosen remarks made by Kelly Tilghman on a recent broadcast and, again, extends our apologies to anyone who was offended.

There is simply no place on our network for offensive language like this.

While we believe that Kelly's choice of words were inadvertent and that she did not intend them in an offensive manner, the words were hurtful and grossly inappropriate.

Consequently, we have decided to suspend Kelly for two weeks, effective immediately.

Translation: People starting making a bigger deal of this and we had to react somehow. That means Tilghman will be off the air for the final two events that TGC has full coverage of - the Sony Open in Hawaii and the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic.

It's a staggering development, especially since it seemed like TGC was standing behind her statement that she meant no harm and was using Mark Steinberg's release as a way of telling everyone to back down some.

Then Al Sharpton got involved saying she should be fired for what she said. And that meant it was time to do something about it before it got worse - unlike what happened with Don Imus, where it took over a month for the eventual punishment (firing) to be made.

This is just all an unfortunate situation. Geoff Shackelford has a clip of the video from YouTube, so just go to him for it. Kelly has really put herself in a difficult position here and I'm not too sure now that she will return in 2009 as lead anchor, even if she can put this past her.

It'll be really awkward at Torrey Pines when she signs on again.