Live Gambling Opens Door for Fans to Disrupt Players As Tour Adjusts to New Normal

An incident last week between fans and Max Homa illustrated the challenges the Tour faces now that it’s embraced gambling.

Max Homa was the subject of heckling related to gambling last week at the BMW Championship, and his plight led others to share concerns that fans who have money riding on the outcome of a particular shot, putt or score might be tempted to interfere.

Given their close proximity to players, fans can say things or be disruptive enough at the wrong moment to be cause for concern.

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It happened to Homa during the third round at Olympia Fields, where Homa said the heckling began after Chris Kirk had left a birdie putt short.

“There was a probably drunk—I hope, for his case, or else he’s just the biggest loser there is—but he was cheering and yelling at Chris for missing his putt short,” Homa said. And he kept yelling. One of them had $3 for me to make mine—and I got to the back of my backstroke and he yelled, “Pull it!” pretty loud.

“I made it right in the middle and then I just started yelling at him.”

Golf and the PGA Tour have embraced gambling. LIV Golf has recently started as well. It’s a potential revenue stream to tap into rather than ignore, but not without issues.

“I feel like we hear it every single round,” said Jon Rahm. “That happens way more often than you guys may hear. I mean, it’s very, very present. 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.

“So it happens more often than you think. But not only that, on the tee and down the fairway. I mean, 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.”

Rahm, however, believes the situation needs some scrutiny.

“I think the Tour maybe should look into it, because you don’t want it to get out of hand, right?” he said. “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.”

PGA Tour executive Tyler Dennis said the spectators involved with Homa were ejected immediately and that would continue to be the case when such incidents arise.

“To zoom out on a wider context to that, we’ve long faced the balance of—what is most special in golf is that every fan can have a front row seat. It’s unique among sports. And the environment we put out at a PGA Tour event, we believe, is best in class, so you balance that with the fun,” Dennis said.

“And that’s long been an issue out here, really, since the beginning of the PGA Tour. We have a robust and comprehensive fan code of conduct, we have an extensive security apparatus and plan each week, and we feel really confident about all the aspects of that. We spend a good deal of time monitoring it each and every day and we take it very seriously.”