David Feherty: 'These you can mark your ball with an elephant turd'

Once upon a time David Feherty played golf for a living rather than talking about it. The 61-year-old played it so well that he won five times on the European Tour, made it on to the 1991 Ryder Cup team and spent a couple of seasons on the PGA Tour where he’s worked behind the mic since 1997.

He’s now coming up for the start of his 10th series of Feherty, an idea that began in his own head as a reality sitcom – “that would have been catastrophic” – before finding its feet as a sit-down with the biggest names in the game and beyond.

He’s now up to nearly 150 guests and, when he does sign off, he’d like to do it with Tiger.

Feherty has now branched out into a stand-up show, Feherty Off Tour, and in the build-up to this he shared a brilliant story of his playing days on the PGA Tour when he picked up a one-shot penalty.

David Feherty

We’re not sure of the year but it was definitely the Houston Open.

“Vaughn Moise gave me the penalty,” Feherty racalls. “When I teed off that morning I was a little unprepared, to say the least, and confused, maybe slightly hungover.

“I didn’t have a marker with me. It was actually when they gave you a hotel key rather than the damn cards that we get now, and that’s all I had in my pocket. And I used it to mark my ball.

“Vaughn Moise sort of became aware of this and he came over and said, ‘You can’t do that.’ It’s got to be a disk, it’s got to be whatever it was at the time. Now you can mark your ball with an elephant turd. It doesn’t make any difference. But back then it was a penalty.”

For the aficionados Feherty fell foul of a tour rule rather than anything in any rule book.

“I didn’t protest it. I was too disillusioned at the time. It wasn’t the high point of my playing career.”

Ever been given, or had to give yourself, a strange penalty? Let us know in the comments below or you can tweet us.