We're Not Proud
Golfers shared their worst anger outbursts, and well, some of us have issues
Paul Aresu
Golfers get angry. If this doesn’t apply to you, you are either A) not a golfer, or B) lying. Golf Digest has written about hurled clubs, kicked bags, and shafts snapped in two for decades, but a recent story by our Shane Ryan about his tips for corralling your rage led to this question: What was your most regrettable blow-up on the course?
We posted the question on Twitter, waited for the responses to roll in, and let's just say if this type of confessional was at all therapeutic, you’re welcome.
Granted, some people took blow-up to just mean your typical late-round Van de Veldian meltdown—balls in the water, 10s on the scorecard, that type of thing—but we mostly were after something darker. Rather than hear about the time you played like a buffoon, we were more interested in the times you acted like one. And in the spirit of honesty, I figured I should start with my own regrettable story, sadly one of several options from this summer alone (do as I say, kids, not . . . ).
Not great, I know, but I was heartened to see I wasn’t alone even within our own staff. Here’s Golf Digest’s otherwise mild-mannered social media guru Nicole Rae.
And of course, we had plenty of company.
Lots of stories of club destruction . . .
And even one that might have qualified as (unintentional) assault.
Plus, plenty of other stories in which one impulsive reaction led to lasting humiliation.
You get the point. If there’s a moral to this story it’s that golf course anger rarely helps, and very often leads to awkward conversations with people you just met. Then again, it’s heartening to see we’re not alone in this struggle. To love golf is to frequently fight the urge to take a $500 piece of hardware and throw it into the nearest body of water. To think some people are missing out.