LOUISVILLE, Ky. — There have been three dominant topics here this week in the lead-up to the PGA Championship: the tortured negotiation process between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf, diapers and divorce.—are none of our business. Except this is golf, and in no sport does the general public get up into the business of the athletes as much as this one.In most sports, the common knowledge about relationship status tends to be directly proportional to the fame of an athlete’s significant other.
There are reasons why this happens more in golf than other sports. A lot of them. In a sport without teammates—no matter what LIV tries to sell us—spouses and kids and parents become the team. In a sport without uniforms and helmets, personal relationships with the human beings swinging the clubs are easier to imagine. In a sport where the fans are separated from the athletes by a mere rope, the connections seem more real.This is also a sport that average schmucks can play, for life.
Thus when the current top two players in the sport experienced significant life events this month, the snooping reflex spiked. Scheffler announced Monday that his wife had given birth to a boy named Bennett, and suddenly every golfer dad in the PGA field was being asked to give him parenting advice.“To each their own,” said Jordan Spieth. “Everyone likes to parent different ways.
But there was plenty of private chatter. The Valhalla Golf Club media tent rippled with the news when it broke on TMZ Tuesday. In other sports, divorces might not move the needle much; in golf, this unexpected development buried the needle.