ATLANTA, GEORGIA | What’s so wrong about expecting people to behave at a golf tournament?
That’s what commissioner Jay Monahan was saying last week when he revealed the PGA Tour will be more proactive policing its galleries.
It’s one of those things you’d like to think wouldn’t have to be enforced but in our ever-coarser society, it’s reached that point. Monahan got criticized by some but he’s right.
It’s a golf tournament, not midnight at a roadhouse. And it’s not just about how Bryson DeChambeau has been treated, though that’s obviously been a flashpoint.
Standing alongside a fairway at East Lake one morning last week, Monahan doubled down.
“That’s not who we are. We’re better than that,” he said of the edge that has infiltrated a small but vocal portion of the golf community.
Leave it to Rory McIlroy, the de facto conscience of professional golfers, to summarize it beautifully, suggesting that what may be acceptable in other sports doesn’t work for golf:
“I think golf should hold itself to a higher standard,” he said. “I mean, the players are certainly held to a higher standard than other sports, so why wouldn’t our fan base be?”
Does that feed the image of golf as a sport for the entitled? It shouldn’t but some may see it that way.
Golf tournaments shouldn’t feel or sound like the upper deck at a football game in Philadelphia. It’s a different game, a different environment and a different set of expectations.
That’s not to say golf shouldn’t be open to new and different. It should be and it’s getting there.
For the most part, the tournament experience inside and outside the ropes is exceptional. Go back a year and the absence of on-site fans gave tournaments an incomplete feel. It was like the tournaments themselves were diminished.
Having fans back has made a huge difference. There was a palpable joy in the salty air at Kiawah Island in May when Phil Mickelson won the PGA Championship. At their best, PGA Tour events are about the complete experience, not just the shots being hit.
Monahan’s intention is to keep it that way. It’s supposed to be fun, not mean. Pleasant, not personal.
A competitive environment doesn’t have to be confrontational, especially when the noise is coming from the outside, not the inside.
There is a part of it that’s bigger than golf. Social media has fueled some of it but there has been a general decline in civility in recent years.
Tom Friedman, a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner who writes for The New York Times, was a walking scorer in DeChambeau’s group Saturday in the BMW Championship at Caves Valley, where Friedman is a member.
Here’s how he described what he heard on Tony Kornheiser’s podcast last week:
“I saw behavior on the golf course before that I have never seen from fans. The way I described it talking to Jay Monahan, the commissioner, when I was talking to him later was it was life imitating Twitter.
“It’s all the garbage and nastiness that people say to others when they’re on Twitter and they can hide behind their Twitter handle, now saying out loud on the golf course.”
The razor’s edge in golf is where the conduct of fans bleeds into the golf itself. DeChambeau has become a target, some of it through his own actions, some of it not. It has reached the point that galleries, at least a small but noisy portion of them, have intruded on the competition. As DeChambeau told the Golf Channel last Tuesday, the heckling is "another variable that I have to take account for."
It’s like a drop of ink on a white dress. It doesn’t take much to ruin it.
“No other sport can a person with your standard ‘bleachers pass’ get right up to you where they can give you a fist bump,” Patrick Cantlay said. “In no other sport can you do that. That’s the great part about golf. You can do that. If you camp out all day, you can watch anybody in the game from 4 or 5 feet. That’s awesome.
“But if you’re one of those 2 percent or 1 percent of people that want to cause disruption and yell in your back swing or say the wrong thing and try and get under your skin, you can also do that and I think we’ve got to try our best to mitigate that.”
The arrival of legalized sports betting – the tour is partnered with some gaming companies – is changing the dynamic. Fans may now have money on the action they’re watching. Inevitably, that will spill over with something barked at a player by a frustrated fan.
This shouldn’t be about the $40 million player impact program because there is language written into the plan that doesn’t allow players to benefit through any negativity.
It’s about people and standards and expectations.
"If you’re one of those 2 percent or 1 percent of people that want to cause disruption and yell in your back swing or say the wrong thing and try and get under your skin, you can also do that and I think we’ve got to try our best to mitigate that.”
Patrick Cantlay
What possesses someone at a golf tournament to do or say something they wouldn’t do at home in front of their kids or their spouse? The answer isn’t just too much beer, though that’s part of it.
Golf is, for lack of a better description, more intimate than other spectator sports. Like Cantlay said, fans can get close enough for fist bumps during the action. That’s part of its beauty but also part of its challenge.
In the case of DeChambeau, there are times when he plays directly to the crowd. He did it on the first tee in the final round of the BMW Championship at Caves Valley where he pulled out an iron to hit his opening tee shot only to go back for his driver after some fans booed his original choice of club.
But he’s also the tour’s version of a porch light on a summer night the way he attracts the noisy knuckleheads. During his playoff against Cantlay at Caves Valley, a group of grown men stood near the tee and threw “Brooksy” chants at DeChambeau, putting their arrested development on public display.
Both McIlroy and Cantlay said they felt sympathy for DeChambeau and what he’s dealt with this summer.
But it’s not just about him.
That’s why Monahan’s goal isn’t to protect one player.
He wants to quiet the noise without dulling the roar.
Top: Bryson DeChambeau
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