This week, the golf world will once again descend on Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Ga., for the 90th installment of the Masters, arguably the greatest of professional golf’s four major championships (after the US Open and the British Open).
It’s a tournament where tradition and stomach-churning sycophancy is everything and where a word or a gesture out of turn can see players, caddies and fans — sorry, “patrons” — banned sine die.
Don’t run. Don’t shout. Don’t even think about bringing a chair with armrests.
Yes, the Masters stands alone in its super strict enforcement of rules, but their ruthless policy is indicative of a game that can’t escape a past where politeness and propriety were always prerequisites to playing.
The trouble today is that golf doesn’t need civility and silence—it needs noise.
And in an era where every sport is battling for attention, fan energy is currency.
You got a hint of it at the recent Players’ Championship at Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra, Fla., when England’s Matt Fitzpatrick was booed in the final round as he lost out to American Cameron Young.
At the Ryder Cup at Bethpage on Long Island last September, meanwhile, the European team were taunted remorselessly by the home fans.
Not only did his wife, Erica, have beer thrown at her, but the Irishman was repeatedly abused with fans questioning the state of his marriage and one calling him a “midget leprechaun.”
Even the first tee MC, Heather McMahon, led a chant of “F–K OFF, RORY!” over the public address system.
Indeed, Fitzpatrick, who also played at the Ryder Cup, said the booing he received at Sawgrass recently “was child’s play compared to Bethpage.”
While throwing beer is not acceptable (especially when it’s $18), it has to be said that a little bit of atmosphere goes a long way, especially in a sport as staid as golf.
And I’m not alone in wanting a little life injected into proceedings.
Why else (apart from the nothing-to-see-here issue of sportswashing) did Saudi-backed breakaway tour LIV Golf launch in 2022, with its tag “GOLF, BUT LOUDER?”
Why did Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy team up to bring us the new Tomorrow’s Golf League, the indoor golf competition with its gargantuan simulators, mic’d up players and bells and whistles aplenty?
Contrast these new formats to the game where world number one Scottie Scheffler doesn’t even get that excited about winning tournament after tournament.
“This is not a fulfilling life,” he shrugged at the British Open in 2025. “If I win, it’s going to be awesome . . . for two minutes.”
Scheffler might be one of the game’s greats, but his success is soul-suckingly dull.
Remember Tiger Woods’s miraculous comeback win at the 2018 Tour Championship when he was followed down the final fairway by thousands of jubilant fans chanting “U-S-A” and “Tiger! Tiger!”
Golf, and especially the Masters, is often guilty of regarding itself as better than other sports, that it’s above the hullabaloo of the NFL and NHL.
But it needs to ask why fewer people are taking up the game while also struggling to retain those who do show an interest as other sports grab their attention.
My message to golf and the men of the Masters, then, is to loosen up a little.
Maybe ditch some of those pointless rules and allow fans — not patrons — to let their hair down a bit. I don’t mean lobbing beer around (although, famously, it is only $6 at Augusta so you could hurl three times as much as at the Ryder Cup) or screaming expletives at players.
I just mean more edge, more atmosphere and more noise: that’s how golf stops whispering and starts mattering again.
