ATLANTA – If you’re in the gallery at a PGA Tour event, you might want to think twice about calling Bryson DeChambeau “Brooksie.”
In his annual meeting with the media at this week’s Tour Championship at East Lake Golf Club, PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan addressed unruly fan behavior that has ticked up recently on the PGA Tour, some of it dealing with the rift on social media between DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka, which has led to DeChambeau being heckled by fans who refer to him as “Brooksie.”
One such instance occurred after DeChambeau lost a six-hole playoff to Patrick Cantlay on Sunday in the BMW Championship at Caves Valley Golf Club in Maryland. ESPN reported that DeChambeau has a brief exchange with a fan who had called him Brooksie and said, “You know what? Get the (expletive) out,” before motioning for a police officer. DeChambeau quickly walked away.
Monahan said that type of fan behavior could result in an ejection from the course.
“When you hear “Brooksie” yelled or you hear any expression yelled, the question is, is that respectful or disrespectful?” he said. “At this point, it’s disrespectful, and that’s the kind of behavior that we’re not going to tolerate going forward.”
Monahan said the PGA Tour was updating its fan code of conduct program in 2020 but stopped last summer when the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the world and fans weren’t allowed at tournaments. Once fans were allowed to return to events, the PGA Tour re-started work on the fan code update “to reinforce an environment at PGA Tour events that allows for everyone to enjoy in a safe environment, and that is spectators players, volunteers, literally everybody.”
“By coming to a PGA Tour event, you’re expected to contribute to a welcoming and safe environment by refraining from and reporting any unsafe, disruptive, or harassing behavior,” Monahan said. “Comments or gestures that undermine the inclusive and welcoming nature of the game will not be tolerated, nor will any harassment of players, caddies, volunteers, officials, staff, or other spectators.
“Fans who breach our code of conduct are subject to expulsion from the tournament and loss of their credential or ticket.”
Monahan said he has talked to DeChambeau and Koepka. The two have been going at each other for more than two years – think the eyeroll of Koepka at the PGA Championship, the fans being ejected at the Memorial. Both, however, have vowed that their rift won’t cause problems at the Ryder Cup.
“I’ve been at a lot of our tournaments this year, particularly since our return to play, and this issue isn’t specific to one or two players,” Monahan said. “I think it’s an opportunity to reassess overall civility at our tournament and fan behavior and reset the expectation through our fan code of conduct.
“That’s something that we have identified. It’s something that I’ve talked to not only those two players, but a lot of our players about. It’s something I’ve talked to our partners in the industry about, and we have all agreed that together we have got to come together and demonstrate what is truly exceptional about our game. And if you go back to the history of the game, the values of honor, integrity, respect that have been central fabric to the game since the point in time, our expectation is that that’s what we’re going to experience at our tournaments.
“And I made the point earlier about families and kids, and we have volunteers that are giving so much of their time, and the game has never had more people coming into enjoy the game and experience it than we have had really over these last several months, and we want more people to come in. We just want to make certain that everybody can have a safe, healthy, and enjoyable experience, whether you’re inside the ropes or outside the ropes and that’s what we’re intending to do.”
Stewart Cink, a two-time winner this season, said he doesn’t hear a lot of bad stuff directed at him, but he has heard some harsh things said to Patrick Reed and DeChambeau this year.
“It’s a little different hearing the two personalities of the fan group with those two guys, but I did hear some pretty astonishing things when I played with Patrick, and I love playing with Patrick Reed,” Cink said. “He and I just laugh about it when we hear it and I can’t believe that there hasn’t been a murder yet in the crowd.
“But it’s pretty intense. I think in the end the fans sometimes just like to hear themselves and they like to be able to yell out something and then poke their buddy and say, ‘Did you hear me?’ I think the players out here don’t get too wrinkled by it necessarily because it’s not really a personal thing. I think in a one-on-one situation those fans that yell probably wouldn’t be quick to say those same things in a one-on-one situation.
“So it’s more about just getting the laugh out of your buddies and it comes at the expense, to a certain extent, of the player that it’s directed to. But we have got to be big boys if you want to play in this game and that’s just the way it is.”
Disagree with Stewart here. It’s about respect. We are all big boys on Tour, but the Tour needs to protect their players. Name any other sport where spectators can walk within 10 feet of a player and possibly affect the outcome of a match.
— James Hahn (@JamesHahnPGA) August 31, 2021
World No. 1 has heard his share of derogatory things aimed at him.
“Many things in Spanish that I don’t want to translate so somebody learns something bad,” he said. “Bad things about my mom, bad things about my wife. Nobody said anything about my son yet, but I can imagine that’s coming in the Ryder Cup. I can’t in good conscience say what some people have said. I don’t know what goes through somebody’s mind to say something like that, but I don’t know. Some bad things.
“But I got to say, that is 1 percent of all the public out there. Everybody else is great. They create a great atmosphere. There’s just going to be the usual people that, whether they had a few too many drinks or they’re getting influenced by their friends or they’re just simply trying to be funny, they’re going to say some things that are just maybe not nice to hear.
“But at the same time, as athletes, we’re not the only ones that deal with it. Every other athlete in every other sport has to deal with it. In team sports, every time you have an away game, you have a whole stadium full of people yelling things at you. So I’m sure other sports have heard way worse things than I have on the golf course so far.”
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