Mood swings and hot tempers

Hopping mad: A look at golf's angry menFootballers aren't the only sportsmen prone to throwing temper tantrums. Caddie Colin Byrne writes from experience

In a week of well documented outbursts due to professional frustration or sheer egotistical self-obsession in the soccer world, it seems appropriate to take a look at some of the incidents that golfers are driven to by their trade.

Golf, by its nature, has always produced emotional reactions from the seemingly calmest of individuals. The Swedish golfers have two forms of expression: silence and rage.

This is not a trait unique to the Scandinavians. A well known television commentator who was a successful golfer for many years finally gave up due to the extremely angry person he became as soon as he put on his spikes. He was known in his latter days on tour as "The Beast" for reasons that many of his long list of ex-caddies could best diplomatically describe as unsociably aggressive behaviour. A more genial man you could not meet in his street shoes.

Just as soccer players are given to dangerous tackles and the odd expletive at whoever is in a position of authority, the professional golfer is prone to an odd club-chuck or nearest-obstacle assault. One of the fiery Swedes on tour was known as "Spear-chucker" due to the amount of clubs he threw on an average day.

Englishman Andrew Sherbourne's putting round could always be assessed by the condition of his head when he returned to the locker room. If he had red vertical indentations on his forehead it meant he had missed plenty. He used to whack himself with the putter on bad putting days. If blood was drawn it obviously signified a flat-stick disaster.

His American counterpart Woody Austin managed to break his putter over his forehead in a similar expression of disgust at his lack of touch .

The first rule of caddying for the emotional Australian golfer Mike Clayton was to never have your hands near the bag after he hit a bad shot, as the offending club was likely to be fired back into the bag at high velocity, and accuracy was not always guaranteed.

Clayton also insisted any clubs thrown in anger must never be retrieved by the bag toter. I once made the mistake of retrieving his putter from deep in the bush after a particularly bad day in Switzerland. I figured he would have calmed down after signing his scorecard that day. I must have misjudged the cooling-off time because when he returned to the locker room and noticed the errant putter back in its slot he gave it a double take, snatched it out of the bag, charged out of the locker room mumbling something about unfaithfulness and no more chances, and hurled it 50 yards into the middle of a sizable lake.

I was not going to retrieve it from there. Caddies have done well in filling their own bags over the years on the post-Clayton bad round trail.

Danny Goodman, one of the more idiosyncratic of the early 1980s American golfers in Europe, gave his clubs the ultimate sentence in Germany after a second-round disaster: death by decapitation. He delicately placed the entire bag a few paces behind his car in front of the clubhouse, calmly got in behind the steering wheel, turned on the ignition, shifted into reverse and backed over the offending clubs. He pulled forward and reversed one more time just in case any were left squirming, and drove off somewhat satisfied that justice had been administered.

I have jumped perimeter fencing in Japan searching for a lost driver. The Australian Brian Jones had the misfortune of releasing his driver just a little too late which resulted in it catapulting hard left into an adjoining rice field. The green-shafted club was unfortunately well camouflaged in that particular location.

Unlike for a lost ball, there seems to be nothing in the Rules of Golf to determine how long you can spend looking for a lost club.

The most recent incident involving an irate professional golfer on the European Tour happened just a couple of weeks ago. Jarrod Moseley was having a particularly bad day with his game and especially with his putter. He missed yet another putt and decided to go to the side of the green and vent his anger at the nearest large object, which happened to be his bag. His playing partner had still got to finish out the hole, but Moseley thought he could sneak in a quick bag bash before David Lynn hit his putt.

So he took to his bag mercilessly with his putter , whack after furious whack he went at the bag as if beating dust from a rug. This was obviously disturbing for his playing partner and Lynn strode across the green to Moseley and asked him if he was finished demolishing his bag. To which the Australian, with a raged look, replied that he had not and started up for a second assault. Lynn interrupted Moseley just before he became uncontrollable and pointed out that he didn't mind him losing his temper but that what he did object to was that he was losing it with his bag.

They both had the same Taylor Made bags and Moseley had erroneously demolished his playing partner's bag in a fit a golf rage.