Is Fighting Increasing On Golf Courses... Or Is Social Media Skewing The Reality?

One of the imperfections of golf is that it doesn't really translate to anything other than golf. You might think it's perfectly acceptable to stride across a garage forecourt with your golf glove still peeping out of your back trouser pocket, but the reality is that it really isn't.

You might still be in that sweetspot of the afterglow of having just played 18 holes, but you are now back in the outside world and you need to start behaving normally. Similarly it is not acceptable to stand in front of a public mirror while trying to iron out any swing kinks.

Golf can make you look very silly but, if you can keep it within the environs of the course, then pretty much anything goes. Wear what you like, hit it all over the place, shank it, have an air shot, double-hit it, knife it, dunch it and do it all to the backdrop of some profane language, and most people will cut you some slack. Golf is hard and frustrating and it can bring out the worst in us.

Where you cross the line is when a) you cheat or b) you get in a fight. Even the more open-minded members of the golfing parish would struggle to defend you in either instance and both will quite rightly see you blackballed from your friendship groups.

Videos of anyone cheating are very few and far between, generally because people can be quite good at it and the chances of doing it when someone is waving a phone about is minimal.

An on-course fight is far easier to see coming and looks equally as ridiculous as someone dropping a golf ball down their trouser leg.

Ziregolf has a following of over two million on Instagram and seem to get the most traction on these types of videos and they seem to be posting more videos of altercations that appear genuine, but these incidents remain few and far between.

There are various examples that we've seen over the years on our social media channels which will pop up with with annoying regularity. One well-known spat came at Cranbourne GC in Australia where, over the space of three minutes, very little happens other than two men shout endlessly at one another during their club championships.

There is an early suggestion that the younger player might throw in a headbutt but it comes to nothing and finishes limply when the elder gentleman fats/almost misses his iron shot before carrying out an even more ludicrous attack on his golf bag.

On-course altercations, as in any walk of life, will of course take place but to suggest they are commonplace makes no sense at all. Most of us struggle to be separated from our phones for more than a few minutes but still there is so little footage of much golfing fisticuffs. Instead the same old squabbles pop up on our feeds and so we're fooled into thinking these are regular occurrences.

On one hand golf is the least likely of sports to encourage a bit of afters. It is generally played on your own, as in not part of a team, you are in the outdoors nowhere near anyone else other than your playing partners, the traditions suggest it is a sport to be respected and it should be regarded as a stress buster.

Golf Will Test Your Patience

On the other hand some see it about as far removed as anything to alleviate any type of stress; you are keeping score, possibly losing, probably playing badly and there is the chance that you are being held up.

Ask any golfer, playing or watching, what really gets on their nerves and slow play will generally figure at the top of any list. The easiest way to overcome this is to let other groups through or just play quicker. Another option is to smash a ball into the group ahead as a warning shot to get a move on or to roll up your sleeves for the imminent confrontation.

To think that the game is slowly falling apart because of a few viral flare-ups is rubbish. We asked three golf club managers if they'd like to comment and the general response was that a) this very rarely, if at all, happens and b) anything would be dealt privately and in house.

The stronger likelihood of such videos appearing online is that they are staged to get a few cheap likes. One of the most watched videos in 2024, not a fight, proved to be made up for effect and to promote the individual. This is now more the way of the world, rather than golfers turning on one another because the group in front isn't playing quickly enough.