Boorish golf fans ruined the Open

After he had won the Open Championship, Brian Harman was asked where his extraordinary resolve came from. The answer was surprising. It stemmed in part, he said, from something a spectator had shouted at him. He had just bogeyed a hole early in his final round, and as he was walking towards the next tee, someone had yelled in his face: “You haven’t the stones for this.” It was a comment that really raised his hackles. And it had the absolute opposite effect from the one intended: it inspired him to show the know-all heckler wrong.

Unpleasant and misguided as it might have been, at least it was a verbal intervention that was memorable. The overwhelming majority of comments shouted out around the fairways and greens of the Royal Liverpool during the Open were instantly forgettable. Bovine, futile, unoriginal, they appeared to have been scripted by the wannabe Jimmy Carrs on Centre Court who believe they are treading the very frontline of comedic invention by shouting “c’mon Tim!” after a tense rally. Take the moment on the sixth green when Harman landed yet another of his magnificently precise birdies. Waiting for the appreciative applause to die down, one spectator watching from the sand dune grandstand bawled out at the top of his voice: “Cook us one of your pasties, Brian lad.”

If this was intended to bring the house down, it failed. The shout was greeted with silent, head-scratching bemusement. But the shouter was not alone in believing he was channelling the spirit of Ken Dodd. All round the course, all through the competition, there was a small minority of spectators who seemed convinced that a golf tournament serves as an extended try-out for Live at the Apollo. And the trouble was, the overwhelming majority failed the audition the moment they opened their mouths.

This is not to disparage shouts of encouragement. “C’mon Tommy lad,” when the local favourite Tommy Fleetwood hit a fine shot was an entirely appropriate reaction, part of the swell of appreciation that followed him round the course, although Harman did receive “unrepeatable” heckles when paired with the Englishman in the third round. It was the self-appointed funny guys who set the teeth on edge. Seizing the opportunity of a sizable number of people gathering in respectful silence, they didn’t hold back. And how you wished they had.

It is a phenomenon imported from America, where tournaments have long been sound-tracked by asinine frat boy yelling. “In the hole”, “mashed potato”, “to infinity and beyond”: the list is long, undistinguished and increasingly wearisome. More and more it is happening here too. Not just when the Ryder Cup is staged on British soil, when the partisan nature of the competition ups the vocal ante. But at the oldest tournament in the game, the Open. 

For sure, the huge majority of those watching from the sidelines at Hoylake were respectful, knowledgeable and appropriate. They were quiet when players addressed the ball, waiting until they had seen the shot to respond with generous, appreciative applause. The trouble was, for every few hundred behaving like that, there was a gobby interloper who laboured under the woeful misapprehension that they were funny.

And in truth the organisers are not discouraging it. For all the marshals stationed round the course holding up signs saying ‘Quiet’, much of the profit from staging tournaments like the Open comes from the sale of booze. There were bars everywhere, set up to deliver drink as quickly as possible. Queues were deliberately minimal. It meant as the day progressed, inhibitions were more and more relaxed. 

Sure, it was at holes closest to the bars that the noise and atmosphere was at its most intense. But the pay-off was that was also where the would-be Jimmy Tarbucks gathered, determined to demonstrate their comedy prowess

In September, the Ryder Cup is staged in Rome. A word of advice for anyone heading there: pack your ear plugs.