Pro golfers Tyrrell Hatton and Shane Lowry have broken their silence after they each lashed out during the PGA Championship amid their respective subpar swings.
Hatton was heard uttering the words “s***” and “c***” at his club on Thursday, May 15, when the ball landed in the creek instead of on the green or in the hole.
“It wasn’t my finest moment on the course, but I mean, yeah, running hot in the moment,” Hatton, 33, told reporters afterward, per the BBC. “I’m pretty good at sometimes saying the wrong thing. So yeah, I’ll leave it at that.”
Long before his outburst at Quail Hollow, the British golf star had been known for his fiery temper when tournaments didn’t go as planned.
“I think you’d actually be shocked,” Hatton quipped to Golf Digest in June 2024 of the fines he’s accrued for his tantrums on the fairway. “You’re thinking it’s ridiculous amounts. Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s a lot of money, but it is nowhere near [$100,000]. … I reckon I haven’t reached double digits. It’s still quite a bit of money.”
Thursday also proved to be a difficult day for Lowry, 38, who was seen flashing his middle finger at the hole on Thursday, May 15, after missing a shot.
“You hit a lovely tee shot, you’re not expecting that,” the Irish golfer told reporters later that day. “I was obviously very annoyed with that because I felt like I had quite a bit of momentum going in the round, and standing there with 40 or 50 yards to the pin off the fairway it’s an easy pitch shot for me — and I walk away making bogey.”
Lowry also alleged that an on-course reporter had gotten “a bit too involved” in the tournament.
“That’s what annoyed me a lot,” Lowry claimed, without naming the journalist in question. “He came straight over and said, ‘That’s not your pitch mark.’ That’s not for you to talk about, it’s for me to call a rules official and decide what happens.”
He added, “I wasn’t arguing that it was my pitch mark, I was trying to be 100% sure because imagine if I come in [after the round] and all of a sudden somebody told me that was my pitch mark. They told Brooks [Koepka] his ball was OK yesterday and it was on the driving range, so you need to be careful about what you’re doing because there’s so much at stake.”