Stroke penalties are the perfect antidote to the most entitled and poorly behaved brats in professional golf

One of the most unreasonable and inconsolable versions of man is the angry golfer.

In the moments after hitting a sub-standard shot, we go to a dark place for a few seconds. The numbing tones of Morgan Freeman reciting Shakespeare’s Hamlet into your ear wouldn’t even reduce the tension.

Shamefully, I’ve been there. Because I do think golf matters, to me anyway. While any moments spent on a golf course should be relished, I want to play well, and once any fears creep in that my scorecard is ruined, I feel angry.

This has previously resulted in clubs on the floor several yards away, acts of petulance that I’m not proud of. Maybe I should’ve been given stroke penalties.

And we have all done it, too, if we were honest with ourselves. It is an inherently infuriating sport, and because of its stretched nature across a few hours, coupled with the fact that you get dressed and built up for it all day and the night before, you feel like a string of bad shots leaves you stranded in a completely futile activity.

It’s the determination to be better that grinds me, and many others. Again, not that this behaviour is justifiable, but what I see as completely unjustifiable is when the world’s best players actually go above and beyond the behaviour at club level.

A clip of Jon Rahm did the rounds on social media from the US Open at Shinnecock Hills this year. The footage shows him booting his driver across the floor, followed by a final punt after a formal run-up. It was like watching a child – myself in the mirror when I was 12.

I’ll have that free driver if you don’t want it, Jon.

There hasn’t been any visual evidence seen yet of what Joaquin Niemann did at the US Open. Gabby Herzig of the Athletic reported some eye-witness details from a volunteer, which included club throwing, but we haven’t seen what warranted a two-shot penalty.

Regardless, the penalty is welcome, and the severity is welcome. This year’s champion, Wyndham Clark, as much as he has incessantly apologised for it, smashed up the lockers at Oakmont at the 2025 US Open.

ALSO: Rory McIlroy should’ve been banned at the Ryder Cup

Rory McIlroy decimated a tee marker at Oakmont, too. At the Masters in April, Sergio Garcia broke his driver when laying into a cooler box on the 2nd tee. It was this, plus the reprimand of Bob MacIntyre at the same tournament, that gave us a taste of the treatment that was to come from the governing bodies that run the majors.

It’s worse than the club scene, far worse. There often seems to be an underlying lack of accountability on the player’s part, too, a notion of, it’s not my fault. Entitlement is the word.

A little like professional footballers, professional golfers can be entirely oblivious to how good they’ve got it. They are the most grossly overpaid athletes on the planet, with a handful displaying truly grim interpretations of self-worth during the LIV Golf saga, which might be coming to an end much earlier than even their biggest detractors could’ve hoped.

And still they hiss and moan and send their clubs into the sky. Still, they snap shafts that are given to them for free, in the knowledge that a tour rep will be running around in a state of distress, constructing a replacement for them.

They’d probably tell you that the anger isn’t about the money, it is genuine frustration at wanting to compete, and that is true. But what the last four years have told us is: literally everything is about money, therefore, they should relax.

There is such a distinct absence of perspective in each of these circumstances. Surely these stars should tee it up in comfort, knowing that if they miss the cut, then it really does not matter. Can that not provide a gateway to inhibition-free golf – the best type of golf?

They all play for a living. Each player in that US Open field, in which Rahm transfigured into Andrés Iniesta and Joaquin Niemann into Geoff Capes, was playing for a winner’s prize of $4.5 million, which had gone up from $4.3 million from the previous year.

On the PGA Tour money list, David Lipsky has earned over $1,400,00 on the course this season. No, me neither.

With the greatest of respect, if players that you’d walk past in the street are earning more in four months than most of us in a lifetime, let alone the biggest and richest stars, I definitely don’t want to see them taking chunks out of the ground.

I think we can tolerate poor behaviour to an extent – swearing is an adult thing. Tyrrell Hatton’s rants are largely fine once you’ve heard the first couple. But with more cameras and more eyes on the sport than ever, more instances are captured, and some of them are so egregious that even the most irritable golfers in your weekend medal would be taken aback.

Augusta National, the R&A, the USGA and the PGA of America have all agreed to clamp down on individual cases in the moment to say enough is enough.

It is time that these overpaid, albeit mega-talented, hotheads are told no.

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