Paige Spiranac calls out golf fans for 'downright nasty' behavior that is ruining the sport for everyone
The 2026 US Open at Shinnecock Hills ended with Wyndham Clark lifting the trophy, but the conversation that followed had very little to do with his victory. Spectators directed repeated unkind remarks at Clark throughout the tournament, with some fans even ejected from the grounds. Golf Channel anal
By Prantik Prabal Roy
The 2026 US Open at Shinnecock Hills ended with Wyndham Clark lifting the trophy, but the conversation that followed had very little to do with his victory.
Spectators directed repeated unkind remarks at Clark throughout the tournament, with some fans even ejected from the grounds.
Golf Channel analyst Eamon Lynch blamed Long Island fans specifically, calling them a "stain on the game of golf." Paige Spiranac, though, isn't buying that explanation.Why does Paige Spiranac disagree with blaming Long Island fans?Lynch didn't mince words. "Long Island golf fans are a stain on the game of golf," he said Monday morning. "That's what we saw at Bethpage, it's what we see every single time we go to Long Island." He went further, suggesting the PGA of America should reconsider taking the 2033 PGA Championship back to Bethpage, arguing that repeat behaviour like this disqualifies a venue from hosting a major.Spiranac pushed back on that framing directly.
The former collegiate golfer and one of golf's most prominent online personalities argued the problem isn't geography.
It's culture. "I don't think the behaviour at the US Open has anything to do with New York or the growth of golf.
There has been a shift in recent years where people have become downright nasty," she wrote to her following.Her perspective is harder to dismiss than Lynch's because it reaches for something deeper.
Pointing fingers at a zip code explains nothing.
It doesn't account for why golf venues outside Long Island have also seen an increase in hostile crowd behaviour in recent years.Is online toxicity actually spilling into real-life Golf crowds?That's the core of what Spiranac is saying.
She connected the hostility on course to something people are marinating in every single day. "Maybe it's exhaustion from life beating us all down, or the lack of consequences of being hateful online.
But it's noticeable.
I just feel everything online is negative and when you're in that headspace 24/7 it bleeds into your real life," she wrote.It's a sharp observation.
Social media has essentially removed the social cost of being rude.
You can say almost anything from behind a screen with zero accountability.
The concern Spiranac is raising is that people are carrying that habit off their phones and into stadiums, golf courses, and public spaces.She isn't entirely wrong, and Lynch isn't entirely right.
Long Island does have a reputation for passionate, sometimes aggressive sports fandom, evident at Yankees and Knicks games alike.
But reducing the US Open's crowd problem to a regional stereotype sidesteps the bigger issue.Golf is growing.
Its audiences are younger and louder.
That energy brings eyeballs and revenue, but it also brings friction.
How the sport handles that friction in the coming years will say a lot about the direction it's heading.Get the latest Sports News and Live updates.
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