Stroppy golfers could be given one shot penalty!

I decided to write this article in response to all the press Tiger has received in the last couple weeks about his Open temper tantrum. If you didn’t see The Open this year then you missed a real treat, it was fascinating watching and saw Watson nearly win and Woods collapse totally and stomp around like a two year old.

Tiger kept chucking his clubs, swearing to himself and all that jazz which was quite pathetic to watch. Of course it’s nothing I haven’t seen before. I know loads of golfers that regularly chuck an eppy when things don’t go their way but you know what? I don’t play with them anymore.

The most notable of these is my good friend Paul. He recently got so angry, he smashed his golf trolley up with his driver and broke it in two. He then spent the rest of the round whinging about his golf trolley being smashed up and punching things every time he missed a shot. In fact, he punched his putter so hard he cut his hand open and started bleeding all over his golf shirt. Great!

Honestly, it really wound me up, he was acting like such a big baby it was unreal. The outbursts completely ruined the day and the conversation completely stopped as I just didn’t know what to say to him. I couldn’t hold in my anger after a while and told him to grow-up which obviously didn’t go down well. I thought he was going to punch me at one point.

In the bar after when he had calmed down, he apologised and said he was overtired and that it was out of order. Apology accepted, we treated the whole thing as a bit of a joke and had a beer.

That is, until Tiger chucked a strop at the Open this year…

Paul instantly turned to me and said “Ha! You see…even the pros do it! If it’s OK for Tiger then what’s your problem?” I pointed out that Tiger had only chucked his club on the ground and not smashed up his caddie (Tiger’s Golf Trolley) and that it was totally different.

Can you guess what happened the next time we played? Yea you’ve got it, there were drivers and nine irons flying all over the f’ing place. Not just thrown to the ground, oh no…thrown six f’ing holes left and right, over the top of other players and perfectly kept greens. What a plonker!

When I confronted him again about it, he simply stated “If it’s okay for Tiger to do it, it’s OK for me!” It culminated in him chucking his ball in the air and trying to smash it with his putter (just like Tiger). Unfortunately, he miss hit the thing and just missed my head by a inch or so which didn’t go down well I can tell you. I shouted at the top of my voice “It might be okay for Tiger, but it’s damn well not okay with me you f’ing plonker, you nearly bloody killed me!” The rest of that round was joyous I can tell you!

As I see it, there are a number of problems with this situation. The first of which is that he’ll hurt someone seriously if he carries on like that which is just unacceptable – that’s if he doesn’t give himself a heart attack first! The second is that he’s a good mate and his behaviour was rapidly destroying our friendship as we ended up arguing on the golf course about him being a big baby. (We never argue anywhere else and have been friends for 20 years.)

The third is that it puts me in a really crappy situation. Every time he chucks a club or smashes something up I just want to cringe. If the club secretary or another member caught him doing that, he’d be chucked out of the club I’m sure and I’d probably be chucked out with him for not stopping him. Even if I didn’t I would so embarrassed, I’d have to leave and that’s not fair on me.

So, to those people who say it’s ok for Tiger to chuck his clubs, you’re wrong. There should be a rule that’s enforced to stop them doing it. A one shot penalty would do it no problem.

Tiger gets paid millions of dollars a year to play in these competitions and in return, he should have a little decorum, they all should. If we’re not careful, we’ll have generations of stroppy little tw*ts chucking their clubs all over the place and smashing things up and that’s not good for the game of golf at all. Who knows when you’ll get a nine iron wedged in your skull because some idiot was copying Tiger and chucking his clubs?

What happened to being a man about it? So you hit a bad shot? Get over it, that’s golf and we all have shots like that. When you see a pro golfer that’s achieved as much as Tiger has chucking his clubs around like a two year old, you just can’t help but think “what a tit!” He damn well owes it to golf itself and to all the kids that idolise him not to do that. It nearly cost me my head!

Phew! Glad I got that off my chest…

Category: Golf Tips
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