It would be hard to have missed the story, but Sergio Garcia is likely to be fined by the Tour for an incident on Saturday at Doral in which he spit into the cup on the par 3 thirteenth. He apparently was upset after three putting.
I’d be upset by the three-putt, too, but the idea of spitting would never have occurred to me.
PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem—as usual—had no comment on the prospects of a fine, but did say that Sergio’s record has been “blemish-free” up to this time.
Maybe that’s true on the PGA Tour, but Sergio was fined in 2003 for throwing clubs during a tournament in South Africa. He also was fined in 2005 for kicking a sign at the European Masters.
I’ve got to wonder what got into him. He had to know that the cameras were going to catch it—that at the very least, the spectators would see it. And there’s no way that can be viewed as acceptable behavior. If I were one of Sergio’s sponsors, I’d send him a very stern note of disappointment.
I can honestly say that I’ve never thrown a club in anger, or kicked an object—and most definitely have never spit at anything. Where I was raised, spitters were viewed as being among the lower forms of scum.
But I do have a colleague who tells of a round of golf in which his foursome was constantly being hit into by the group immediately behind. Finally, by the sixteenth hole, one of my colleague’s foursome had enough. On a blind dogleg, he urinated into the hole, leaving a disgusting puddle for the offending trailing group.
Yes. There was alcohol involved.
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Maybe Sergio finally decided to try a taste of Michelob ULTRA…
@mediaguru
Ow.
You’re in Coors territory, aren’t you?
I’m in a dry territory…Utah. Close to coors though (denver)
Ok, well this raises a question for me. What exactly is “throwing a club”. I do from time to time drop a club, and sometimes will drop a club with some velocity over a drive or another shot (never on a green). Is this bad etiquette?
The last time was when I was playing with a man and his daughter and was frustrated by a shot and could not use my normal expletive “crap”. So I dropped my club instead. A few shots later, the father both dropped his club and let out an extended “sssshhhhhh” before completing the word “shoot” which is exactly what I think he was trying to say all along.
I probably need to go to a golf ediquette class afterall.
Oh, and the leaking golfer leaving a puddle in the hole is pretty disgusting—even given the trailing foursome’s behavior. If he had peed on the tires of the foursome, that would have been just fine—but that hole would of course be used by many others in that day. That probably deserves banning from the course.
I was with a somewhat drunk bastard, maybe the only time I picked up someone on #1 which I regretted. Anyhow, even drunk, his response to being hit into was actually somewhat controlled by did leave a statement—he drove the cart over the balls hit into us. Being a slighly damp course from sprinklers a little while earlier, it plugged both balls. My partner and I thought poorly of our drunkard pickup, since we were in a blind dip, and the carts were off in the rough down a hill, and, at best, they might have spied the top of my head from 250 yards off at the tee box. ( I was the only one of the 3 in the fairway). But had it been a repetitive hitting into violation, I think that might have been an ok response. ** As we finished the 18th, our drunkard companion was greatly offended that my friend and I would not accept his warm Miller Lites and attempted to start a fight, and stone cold sober, I almost ended up in the first fight since 3rd grade. Luckily, the drunkard tried to “up the ante” by insulting my golf game which just made me laugh (I had been playing maybe 4 months at that point) and walk away with the hope that he didn’t hit my car on the way out of the parking lot (my friend and I departed another way so he wouldn’t know which cars were ours).