May 19, 2025<\/a><\/p>\nThis is the summer that golf outrage became a thing. But if you ask anybody around golf the past half century, they\u2019ll tell you the only difference between now and then is that everybody is making a big deal of it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis story has been going on since the time of professional sports,\u201d says Billy Andrade, age 61 and a four-time PGA Tour winner. \u201cThis isn\u2019t anything new.\u201d<\/p>\n
Why is it so much bigger now? Cameras. Social media. Outrage culture. Pick one. The fact it used to be a luxury to get an entire tournament round on TV, but nowadays between Golf Channel, ESPN+, Peacock, NBC and CBS, you can theoretically watch every minute of a round from the first group to the last. It\u2019s all right there for us to see, and in turn it\u2019s all right there for somebody to record and post a clip online to get clicks and attention.<\/p>\n
But is any of this actually any worse than before?<\/p>\n
Tommy Bolt, a 1958 U.S. Open winner, is more famous for his on-course antics than the golf itself. They called him \u201cTerrible Tommy,\u201d constantly throwing clubs into the water or cursing up a storm. Tour officials created new rules because of his behavior. One time, he cursed so much that officials informed him of a $100 fine for each expletive. As the old story goes, Bolt pulled out his wallet, grabbed $500, and turned to each official to say, \u201cF\u2014 you, f\u2014 you, f\u2014 you, f\u2014 you and f\u2014 you\u201d while handing each of them a $100 bill.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt thrills crowds to see a guy suffer. That\u2019s why I threw clubs so often,\u201d Bolt once told Golf Digest. \u201cThey love to see golf get the better of someone, and I was only too happy to oblige them. At first I threw clubs because I was angry. After a while it became showmanship, plain and simple.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brandel Chamblee recalls playing with a golfer who once hooked his drive into the water. Chamblee and the rest of the group started walking, only to turn around when they heard a slight hissing noise. The man had unzipped his pants and begun urinating on his driver.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf any of these were nowadays, now everybody is a journalist, and these all would have gone viral and people would have thought tour pros were a bunch of babies,\u201d Chamblee said.<\/p>\n
Steve Pate and Thomas Pieters have both broken clubs around the back of their neck. Woody Austin banged his putter against his head over and over until it bent. John Huston played the final two holes of a U.S. Open qualifier with a hastily-made tourniquet, after the shaft of a tossed club ricocheted back and stabbed him in the arm.<\/p>\n
Two-time U.S. Open winner Curtis Strange was so mad during a 1982 tournament at Doral that as he walked behind his caddie Gene Kelley, he impulsively kicked the bottom of the bag Kelley was carrying. Both went flying to the ground. Kelley needed surgery to fuse two vertebrae and later sued Strange; They settled out of court.<\/p>\n
Jose Maria Olazabal punched a wall at the 1989 U.S. Open, breaking his hand and forcing himself to withdraw.<\/p>\n
Oh, and smashing tee markers?<\/p>\n
\u201cThe place you want to do it is the Hawaiian Open with actual real pineapples,\u201d Andrade said.<\/p>\n
So many golfers lay claim to smashing those pineapples at Waialae Country Club in Honolulu at the event now called the Sony Open. Corey Pavin. Brad Faxon. Craig Stadler. Calcavecchia. Imagine the sight of Stadler, known as The Walrus with his big, droopy, mustache, thinking it was plastic as he smashed the pineapple and instead covered himself in pineapple pulp. Calcavecchia remembers hitting one and spraying the poor marshal nearby.<\/p>\n
Most of these stories, if they didn\u2019t end up involving lawsuits or fines, were simply told after the fact, locker room and barroom tales passed around between golfers. Most golf writers around in those days simply didn\u2019t write about them, not because they were covering for golfers or scared to. It just wasn\u2019t news. It\u2019s something that happens on golf courses all the time.<\/p>\n
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McIlroy\u2019s frustrations boiled over during the U.S. Open. (Patrick Smith \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Chamblee has become something of golf\u2019s moral voice over his decades as a Golf Channel analyst, a smart, insightful former pro who enjoys pontificating on larger issues in the game. So, yes, he was on the broadcasts as criticism mounted this summer over McIlroy, Clark and the rest. He says he didn\u2019t want to criticize any of those actions too heavily, because he knew he had done the same things, if not worse. The difference was he wasn\u2019t the kind of star who always had cameras on him, so most went unnoticed.<\/p>\n
Chamblee does concede it is happening more often. And it definitely happens more often with the biggest stars. He has a multi-point theory for why that is.<\/p>\n
\u2022 One: More documentation. The mere fact there are so many people with phones, so many people watching at home and rushing to clip anything they can to get it online to go viral. Simply, there are more eyeballs.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Two: Easier equipment replacement. Golfers used to sometimes go their entire careers with the same driver. There was a mystique to finding the perfect shaft that worked for you. You\u2019d think twice about breaking any club, because it might take you years to ever have your equipment that dialed. Nowadays, golfers can walk over to the equipment truck and order up a new driver like it\u2019s a food truck burrito stand.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Three: Money. In both ways. A $100,000 fine for Calcavecchia was deflating. That was a fifth of his total earnings most years. Now, these stars are worth tens of millions, if not more. No fine can even put a dent in their life. But it works both ways. They are also playing for so much money that the tensions can escalate.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Four: Tiger Woods.<\/p>\n
This is perhaps the most interesting. You see, each generation of golfers looks up to one or two before them. It sets the tempo for how that generation acts. Jack Nicklaus famously never broke a club in tournament play. Tom Watson is known as golf\u2019s great gentleman. If Ben Hogan or Arnold Palmer ever lost it on a golf course, no one thought to write it down.<\/p>\n
But Woods didn\u2019t worry about any of that. He cursed, threw clubs and made scenes, all while being the most televised, closely watched golfer in history.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs much as we like to talk about the influence of Tiger Woods, I like to call a lot of the younger players today \u2018Tiger\u2019s progeny,\u2019 and they grew up watching him lose his mind,\u201d Chamblee said. \u201cHe was the greatest golfer anybody had ever seen, and it clearly didn\u2019t bother him in any meaningful way in terms of how he played. He\u2019d blow up, and he\u2019d get over it. So I felt like those outbursts were, to a large extent, normalized.\u201d<\/p>\n
Woods was criticized by golf\u2019s elder statesmen for his behavior, with Watson saying Woods \u201chas not carried the same stature\u201d of other great players before him.<\/p>\n
None of these people are coming out and saying Woods was a bad example as a whole, but they are conceding that it became even less taboo these past 30 years. Now, you look at the best players in the game, and nearly all of them lose it sometimes.<\/p>\n
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Golfers now expect everything they do on the course to be recorded, either by TV cameras or fans\u2019 phones. (Warren Little \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n
World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler is known for his ability to keep cool through 72 holes, but he throws absolute fits on the course. He slams his clubs, throws balls into the trees and rants to himself constantly. Jon Rahm underwent constant scrutiny earlier in his career for his tantrums, and still goes viral frequently for an expletive-laced outburst. Broadcasts always have a microphone on Tyrrell Hatton, hoping for a viral soundbite of him scolding himself or criticizing the course.<\/p>\n
In reality, this is all a conversation about frames, both in what images we place inside the frame and how to frame them altogether.<\/p>\n
Bolt was funny. His outbursts got covered, because most people got a kick out of them and it added to his legend. Tennis great John McEnroe was funny. Even Hatton now is funny, rarely criticized for his rants as much as highlighted to show his quirks. Most viral videos of golfers smashing tee markers are posted tongue-in-cheek with a caption like, \u201cSee, even the pros are like us.\u201d<\/p>\n
As Chamblee put it, Wyndham Clark\u2019s outbursts aren\u2019t funny to people. McIlroy is a lightning rod for discourse, and those who hate him will use it as a \u201cgotcha\u201d moment in a way they simply would not for so many others.<\/p>\n
U.S. Open winner Graeme McDowell took to social media the day of Clark\u2019s locker room rampage to say, \u201cThis is minimal regards what I\u2019ve seen other players do,\u201d adding it\u2019s often from \u201cplayers you\u2019d never expect.\u201d<\/p>\n
Because in reality, none of this is new. Players threw tantrums 100 years ago, and they\u2019ll continue to 100 years from now.<\/p>\n
The only thing that may change is how we feel about it.<\/p>\n
(Illustration: Kelsea Petersen \/ The Athletic; Andy Lyons, Simon Bruty \/ Getty)<\/p>\n