At the end of his press conference after the third round of the BMW Championship last weekend Scottie Scheffler was asked about the “interaction with the fans” and “what he had heard”. The reporter and the player both knew the question referred to the abuse directed at Bob MacIntyre, his playing partner and the tournament leader, but Scheffler let that bait dangle on the hook.
Instead, he made an impromptu remark about his fan experience at The Open in Portrush. “I heard some fairly choice words when I was leading the tournament in Ireland,” he said. “I think it’s part of it. People have a tendency to say things that are dumb. I can think of a few things that were said to me in the final round in Ireland that were very far over the line.”
In his pro-forma victory speech in Portrush Scheffler thanked the fans “for all the support”. His box-ticking gratitude, though, included a critical nuance. “I know I wasn’t the fan favourite today, but I did hear a lot of ‘USA’ and ‘Dallas, Texas’ chants so I appreciate you guys coming out to support.”
Golf used to be the only sport in the world where every good shot was applauded, and nobody wished ill on anybody, at least not out loud. Nobody outside the ropes at a golf tournament rooted for everybody, but fan behaviour generally observed the advice your mother gave you when you didn’t know any better: if you can’t say something nice, say nothing at all.
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Abuses of fan decorum have been common at the Ryder Cup since the cock fight at Brookline in 1999, but it is no longer confined to that arena. In his post round press conference on Saturday at the BMW, MacIntyre was asked only eight questions, but four of them were about verbal grenades that had been hurled at him from outside the ropes. He was leading one of the biggest tournaments on the PGA Tour, and yet that was the news line.
“I mean, it started on the first tee,” said MacIntyre. “It probably started when I walked down to the range. It ain’t bothering me.”
MacIntyre’s demeanour was upbeat in the press conference after the third round, handling the questions about the heckling fans with a defiant smile. But when he appeared on the media dais a day later, having lost the tournament to Scheffler, his mood was different.
A reporter tried to ask him about “one” fan who had shouted something at him on the 12th hole and MacIntyre shot straight back with a quizzical look on his face: “How many [fans]?”
“Did you think they did a good enough job controlling that?” the reporter continued.
“I’m not going to comment,” said the Scot, and walked away from the microphone.
The culprits are always identified as a “tiny minority”, which is immaterial if the respectful silence of dozens of fans around a green or a tee box is violated by even one boozed-up buffoon. Golf is the only professional sport where spectators can stand within two club lengths of the players and reach out for low-fives as they walk from green to tee. For the fork-tongued assassins it is point-blank range.
These incidents are no longer isolated either. When Brian Harman won the Open at Royal Liverpool two years ago, he ran the gauntlet of abuse on Saturday and Sunday. His playing partner in the third round was Tommy Fleetwood, who grew up not far from the golf course and enjoyed the support of the local partisans.
On Sunday, a spectator followed Harman from the sixth hole to the 10th and every time the American stood over a shot the heckler shouted, “You are going to choke”. Harman eventually asked for him to be removed from the course.
“The heckling turned on Saturday,” Harman said on the Subpar Podcast a year later. “It turned hard. It felt like a real hostile away game in college football. On the football field you are a long way away from it. When you walk three feet from someone [on the golf course] and they say something nasty, it’s intimate. It’s hard not to stop and turn around and get back at them.”
None of this coarsening of fan behaviour is recent. At the BMW Championship four years ago, Bryson De Chambeau suffered abuse during an epic six-hole play-off against Patrick Cantlay. A week later at the Tour Championship Rory McIlroy was asked for a helicopter view.
“I think some of it crosses the line,” he said. “I think the culture of certain other sports has fed into our game and fed into the fan base and that has definitely affected it. People will make the argument that, well, it happens in every other sport. But I would say that we’re not any other sport and I think golf should hold itself to a higher standard. I mean, the players are certainly held to a higher standard than other sports, so why wouldn’t our fan base be?”
Golf’s exceptionalism is unpalatable to those who can’t stomach the game, but for golf lovers, its traditions are bound up with its identity. Why should players be abused, just because it mirrors the debased discourse on social media or the foul-mouthed guff that permeates stadium sports? Can people really say what they like just because they bought a ticket?
Alcohol-fuelled boorishness is integral to the problem. In America, many of the major sports try to discourage public drunkenness. At an NFL or NBA game alcohol can’t be purchased after the third quarter and at a Major League baseball game alcohol sales are stopped after the seventh inning. The only limiting factor at a golf tournament are the outrageous prices.
At the Ryder Cup, everything is escalated and off kilter. Apart from the raucous 16th hole at the Waste Management Open, the Ryder Cup is the only event in golf where some players will ask for noise to accompany their tee shots. Celebrations are exaggerated, emotions are pimped up and outside the ropes some punters are unhinged.
In that feverish climate, players suffer. At Brookline in 1999, Colin Montgomerie was skewered by the galleries. His father left the golf course, unable to stomach any more of the abuse, and on two occasions Payne Stewart, his opponent in the Sunday singles, asked for fans to be ejected from the grounds. John Feinstein, the great golf writer, walked every step with that match.
“The most oft-used phrase directed at Montgomerie that day rhymes with ‘fat runt’,” wrote Feinstein. “Stewart did everything in his power to protect Montgomerie while also trying to win the match, but there was only so much he could do.”
By then, Justin Leonard’s 45-foot birdie putt had triggered a buck-leppin’ invasion of the 17th green, before José María Olazábal could attempt his putt for a half.
Over the years there have been various diplomatic attempts to dial down the toxicity, but nothing has really worked. At Valhalla in 2008 Lee Westwood and his parents were abused. That was also the year when the US captain Paul Azinger attended a pep rally at Louisville on the week of the matches and encouraged the fans to cheer when European players missed. Only in golf does that feel counter-intuitive.
At Whistling Straits in 2021 the heckling of European players reached such revolting levels that Dustin Johnson, Jordan Spieth and Tony Finau all pleaded with the American crowd to relent. Shane Lowry said that his wife and father got “dog’s abuse”.
It is not all one-sided either. “I wish I could say it was one-way traffic,” said Padraig Harrington before the matches in Rome two years ago, “but it isn’t. We should realise that and look at our own backyard. It’s not just the players either. The same as in America the wives and families are being singled out by hecklers, with some pretty awful stuff going on.”
These behaviours have become so embedded it is unlikely that anything will change for next month’s matches in Bethpage, although a stronger attempt at enforcement will be made. Observers will walk with all playing groups on the course and, according to the PGA of America, transgressors in the gallery will be ejected.
The PGA of America have also published an aspirational list of 11 directives to fans under four different headings: Respect the Game; Respect Each Other; Cheer with Class; Zero Tolerance Policy.
“Celebrate great play from both teams,” reads one of the pleading directives. “Sportsmanship is not partisan; it’s universal.”
Golf used to be like that. Isn’t it crazy that it sounds so quaint now?
