Jon Rahm laments over-zealous gamblers affecting players
- Planet Sport writer
- 23 August 2023
Jon Rahm believes the PGA Tour needs to look into protecting the players from fans in the gallery who gamble on golf tournaments.
There's always a few bad apples ready to ruin it for the rest...
Two fans were ejected from last week's BMW Championship for shouting at Max Homa as he took a putt on the 17th green during the third round of the second FedEx Cup play-off event, which boasted a first prize of £2.8million.
The bet was apparently for just three dollars between friends and Homa said afterwards: "It was nice to make it right in the middle and hopefully he had to pay his buddy that three dollars immediately on the way out of the property."
Speaking ahead of the Tour Championship in Atlanta, Rahm said such comments were more common than most people realised.
"I feel like we hear it every single round. That happens way more often than you guys may hear. I mean, it's very, very present," the Masters champion said.
"In golf, spectators are very close, and even if they're not directly talking to you, they're close enough to where if they say to their buddy, I bet you 10 bucks he's going to miss it, you hear it.
"Luckily golf fans are pretty good for the most part and you're hearing the positive, I got 20 bucks you make birdie here, things like that. But no, it's more often than you think.
"I think the tour maybe should look into it because you don't want it to get out of hand, right?
"It's very easy, very, very easy in golf if you want to affect somebody. You're so close, you can yell at the wrong time, and it's very easy for that to happen.
"So I think they could look into it, but at the same time, it would be extremely difficult for the tour to somehow control the 50,000 people scattered around the golf course, right?
"So it's a complicated subject. You don't want it to get out of control, but you also want to have the fans to have the experience they want to have."