Golf

Golf greatest feuds? Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka have a long way to go.


Brooks Koepka didn’t deliver the first eye roll in golf. Turns out PGA Tour history is rich in feud-inspired ridicule and rip jobs.

Koepka’s disdain for Bryson DeChambeau is well-documented, the latest installment coming less than two weeks ago at the PGA Championship, when during a post-round Golf Channel interview Koepka rolled his eyes, lost focus and uttered obscenities as DeChambeau walked behind him.

The video, which never aired and was never meant to, was leaked and posted to Twitter, where it went viral and led to a cascade of amusing memes.

What prompted Koepka’s reaction remains unclear; theories range from him being bothered by the sound of DeChambeau’s metal spikes on the sidewalk to DeChambeau making a veiled comment about Koepka’s struggles with putting.

Sourcing revealed that neither of those hypotheses hold water. Instead, this was simply a case of Koepka kerfuffling at the sight of a player he views as a science fair nerd. Koepka, meanwhile, fancies himself the starting quarterback. If that means coming off looking like the too-cool-for-school jock from a 1980s John Hughes movie, so be it.

More than a few tour insiders think Koepka revels in his image as a James Dean without a cause, besides winning majors. He has four of them. DeChambeau has one, just enough to be a competitive nuisance to Koepka.

I contend such feuds are good for golf; anything that adds interest to a game that younger people increasingly find boring is a positive. I also point out that the Koepka-DeChambeau brouhaha, which takes a break this week with the starting quarterback not playing the Memorial Tournament, is far from being the first example of Knives Out behavior. It is not even the most vicious, despite social media fanning the flames of unrest.

Memorial host Jack Nicklaus chimed in on the Koepka-DeChambeau soap opera on Tuesday, saying most of it is driven by the media. But he did confirm that feuding on and off the fairways is nothing new.

“Did we have arguments with guys? Sure, we all had arguments,” Nicklaus said. “Arnold (Palmer) and I were the best of friends, but did Arnold and I have a feud every once in awhile? Sure.”

Nicklaus and Palmer were more rivals than enemies — think Magic Johnson-Larry Bird more than Shaquille O’Neal-Kobe Bryant — but not all rivalries are built on such mutual respect. Some are bloody messes. A look at some of the more heated:

AKRON, OH - AUGUST 01: Phil Mickelson (L) and Tiger Woods meet during a preview day of the World Golf Championships - Bridgestone Invitational at Firestone Country Club South Course at on August 1, 2018 in Akron, Ohio. (Photo by Sam Greenwood/Getty Images)

Phil Mickelson (L) and Tiger Woods meet during a preview day of the World Golf Championships – Bridgestone Invitational at Firestone Country Club South Course on August 1, 2018, in Akron, Ohio. (Photo by Sam Greenwood/Getty Images)

Similar to Koepka and DeChambeau, this feud had as much to do with opposite personalities as performance. Woods is all business, able to smile for the cameras but not really trying — at least not successfully — to win over fans who are not sufficiently impressed with his game.

Mickelson is a reverse mullet: party in front, business in back, presenting his carefully polished fun-and-fan loving side to the public while keeping the less-righteous Lefty out of view.

Clearly, opposites do not always attract. Toss in golf — Woods overwhelmed Mickelson on the course until Phil finally began catching up over the past decade — and this one had all the makings of attack dog theater. The two are friendlier now, but for more than a decade the friction between them was real.

Paul Azinger of the USA chats with Seve Ballesteros of Spain on the practice green during the Johnnie Walker World Championship at the Tryall Golf Club in Montego Bay, Jamaica. Stephen Munday /Allsport

Azinger does his best to downplay the feud, likely to respect the memory of the Spaniard, who died from brain cancer in 2011.

“We were never what Brooks and Bryson are; No. 1 and No. 2 on the list of most interesting players in today’s game,” Azinger said last week.

But Azinger also acknowledged that “everyone had a back and forth with Seve,” which is a way of saying his row with Ballesteros was real.

The vitriol began at the 1989 Ryder Cup when Ballesteros told Azinger he would be changing out his damaged ball on the green, to which the American insisted the ball was fine. Two years later, Ballesteros turned the tables by charging Azinger and teammate Chip Beck with changing the type of ball they were using. The Americans lost their focus and the match.

Ballesteros once said, “The American team has 11 nice guys and Paul Azinger.”

Any scrapping between Tom Watson, left, and Gary Player apparently began after Watson presented the Masters champion’s jacket on Player in 1978.

Gary Player receives a green jacket from Tom Watson after winning the 1978 Masters at the Augusta National Golf Course in Augusta, Ga.

U-G-L-Y, this one has no alibi. It’s ugly. The feud fuse was lit in the early 1980s when Watson accused Player of fixing a spike mark, which was against the rules. But things exploded in 1983 at the Skins Game when Watson said Player illegally moved a growing weed from behind his ball.

Player fired back by saying Watson should consider returning his Masters and British Open titles of 1977 because he won them while playing with non-conforming grooved irons, an infraction not discovered until before the start of the PGA Championship that year.

Player wrote in his 1991 book “To Be the Best” that Watson “ranted that he was tired of me pulling up rooted leaves and ‘tapping down spike marks like at the Canadian Open.’ Well, I resisted saying anything then, but I thought to myself, ‘Tom, you aren’t half the man.’ ”

Apparently, Watson had similar thoughts about Player, calling him, “the little man.”



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