beaten with a flagstick. Neither were members of the club and, according to reports, neither had children at the school that was benefiting from the fundraiser. “Never in the 15 years that I’ve been here have I seen anything so barbaric taking place on the course,” Leon Kruger, the course’s general manager at the time, said after the incident. “Our club definitely does not condone such behaviour.” The most one-sided fight we’ve seen took place in May 2023 at Bailey Ranch in Oklahoma. The story has two versions, but both end the same way: with a group of dads getting dominated. Remember what we said about regular guys fighting? Well, these weren’t regular guys. Some golfers were upset about some kids coming onto the course. Some of their dads came out to defend the children, but the golfers were former mixed- martial arts fighters. What took place next looked like a scene out of an action movie with the MMA guys destroying the dads. One guy takes out three dads by himself in a matter of seconds. “You want to go down, too?” he can be heard saying in the video. “Stay down, you’re going to get f---ed up!” Fortunately, they stayed down, but talk about walking into a buzzsaw. It’s an important reminder to be careful who you mess with anywhere. Odds are those people won’t be highly trained fighters, but you never know. ‘ Call me uncle!’ Fighting isn’t only for weekend hackers. There’s a history of it happening at the game’s highest levels, from in-your-face standoffs like Keegan Bradley and Miguel Angel Jimenez at the 2015 WGC-Match Play to Dave Hill and JC Snead throwing punches and wrestling each other to the ground on the range at the 1991 Transamerica Senior Championship. Imagine if cellphones and social media had been around for that? At a Korn Ferry Tour Monday qualifier in 2021, college golfer Luke Smith and pro Austen Dailey ended up on the ground. Smith and his dad, Oliver, caddieing for him, had become frustrated looking for Dailey’s errant shots. Dailey became upset that the father-son duo wasn’t helping more. Dailey says he and Oliver exchanged words, which led to Smith tackling Dailey from behind. Dailey says he didn’t fight back. Smith declined our request for an interview but last year told a radio show that he’s a Brazilian jiu-jitsu blue belt and that he put a “hostile” Dailey into a “body triangle in a seat-belt grip” to restrain him without hurting him. Smith says he told Dailey, “If you want to get up, you’re going to have to call me ‘uncle,’ ” which Dailey did. After the cops arrived, Dailey decided to press charges, and Smith was led away in handcuffs. Dailey says the incident still follows him, but he can imagine how much worse the ordeal would have been if someone recorded it to share with the world. Fortunately, he also had the sense to think about the potential consequences if he had fought back harder. While on the ground, “I was thinking how ridiculous the situation was and about all the bad things that could happen,” Dailey says. “I told him, ‘Dude, what are you doing? You’re ending your pro career before it even starts. The last thing I wanted to do was be in a fight on a golf course, at a Monday qualifier no less.” Within 48 hours Smith received a devastating call from the University of Tennessee. “Scholarship gone. Everything was gone. No more college golf.” Smith was charged with a Class B misdemeanour, but
eventually that charge was dismissed. He transferred to the University of Memphis and majored in public relations, living out a tough period in which he didn’t want to Google his name. One good thing came out of this: Smith started the Broken Arrow Foundation to help people through “random acts of kindness.” Another round that wasn’t finished because of a fight happened during the final of the 2018 Florida Mid-Am. The alleged assault took place in the car park at Coral Creek during a weather delay in a match between Marc Dull and Jeff Golden. The trouble started on the front nine. Golden didn’t like how Dull’s caddie, Brandon Hibbs, was so chatty. On the ninth, he called a penalty on his opponent because of something Hibbs said. ‘People aren’t feeling physically threatened,’ a social psychologist says. ‘They’re feeling sort of ego threatened.’ •••
While lining up a putt, Golden asked Dull about the condition of the cup and some loose debris near it. Hibbs replied, “Don’t worry about it. If you’re going to make it, you’re going around it.” Golden interpreted that as Hibbs giving advice, a no-no in match play, and he informed a rules official who agreed. The loss-of-hole penalty gave Golden a 2-up lead and led to Hibbs removing himself from the match, but he remained on property. Dull battled back to all-square. During the weather delay, Golden went to his car to wait. “I didn’t even get my bag out of my car when the caddie reappeared and said he’d like to apologise,” Golden said at the time. “I was ready to put the past behind us, and he punched me in the face. I was knocked to the ground, and by the time I looked up, he was walking away, to my surprise, towards the clubhouse.” Golden said he also injured his hand trying to brace the fall. After reporting the incident to the golf shop, the police were called, but Hibbs denied punching him, and Golden didn’t press charges. He also didn’t feel like continuing despite being so close to winning the tournament. Shaken, Golden asked Dull to concede the match. When Dull, who claimed to not know about the incident, didn’t, Golden wound up conceding the match and the championship to Dull. ‘People aren’t feeling physically threatened,’ a social psychologist says. ‘They’re feeling sort of ego threatened.’
If you happen to witness an incident that’s about to escalate – and don’t feel like you’re in imminent danger – Pollack advises trying to get in the middle, putting your hands up and reminding the parties involved that fighting isn’t worth it. If that doesn’t work, Pollack suggests something simpler. “Just yell, ‘Security’s coming! Security’s coming!’ ” Fortunately, it usually doesn’t come to that because these situations rarely result in physical violence. As Pollack points out, most people don’t want to be involved in an actual fight no matter how tough they act. Judging by these videos, that’s certainly true of golfers – well, most golfers. ‘Stay down, you’re going to get f---ed up!’ Two of the wilder fight videos we’ve seen in recent years didn’t involve slow play or gambling. But at least one, which occurred in April 2021 at Maccauvlei Golf Club in Vereeniging during an outing for a local school, involved alcohol. A man accidentally left his cellphone on a hole, called it by borrowing a phone from someone else in his group, and when a golfer on another hole picked it up, he was accused of stealing. This led to a confrontation between two big dudes that wound up with one guy having his shirt ripped off and the other being briefly
78 GOLF DIGEST SOUTH AFRICA
GOLF DIGEST SOUTH AFRICA 79
NOVEMBER 2023
NOVEMBER 2023
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