By Christopher Powers

Tom Brady is no stranger to having his every move dissected on the internet. Whether it be a 3rd-and-4 incompletion, or a video of him stumbling around while celebrating another Super Bowl, he understands people are going to break it down frame-by-frame.

So it came as no surprise when a video of Brady making a “hole-in-one” began making the rounds, social media pounced on it. “Fake!” they cried. “This looks edited to me,” they yelled. “Just retire already!!!” they screamed (that last one might be made up, although we’re all thinking it).

Upon first viewing, it does seem like the criticisms have merit, however:

The first thing to note is that the reaction seems very genuine, which means A: He did hole this shot out, which wouldn’t be out of the question considering he’s done something similar on live TV before, or B: He and everyone in the video are really good actors, which is also not out of the question given TB12’s blossoming social media presence.

The second thing to note is that Brady does not refer to this as a hole-in-one, as many others did online. During a Zoom call for The Match, Brady also confirmed that this was no ace.

“It’s not a hole-in-one, because it wasn’t really a par 3,” Brady said. “We were in the middle of the fairway on a par 4, and I would have had to play the whole round for it to be a real hole-in-one. It was a once-in-a-lifetime shot, that’s for sure, but it wasn’t a hole-in-one unfortunately. I can’t claim that.”

Honest man, though he did not confirm nor deny if the video is real in anyway at all. Based off the 26-27-second mark of the video, it sure seems deceptively edited, which seems to be the case with many of Brady’s made-for-Instagram clips. Like this one, for example:

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Tom Brady (@tombrady)

Or this one, which he posted ahead of the last iteration of The Match he was a part of:

 

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A post shared by Tom Brady (@tombrady)

What we do know for sure is that Brady has an excellent team of social media people that knows how to rack up the views, although it’s pretty easy to rack up views when you’re Tom Brady. It doesn’t help the “this is a real video” case when he’s hawking merch underneath the video, which just so happened to have over 1.5 million views:

Cha ching. Not even trying to hide it. You almost have to respect it. Good news for the haters is that next Wednesday, when the lights go on and Brady and Aaron Rodgers take on Josh Allen and Patrick Mahomes, there will be no deceptive editing of any sort to hide behind. Knowing Brady, he’ll show up and show out, and everyone on the internet will have their eye on his every move, as always.

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