Getty Image
Brooks Koepka is one of the few people of the PGA Tour who can get away with publicly chastising another player. Back-to-back U.S. Open victories combined with his 2018 PGA Championship win has given him some serious clout on Tour. And he’s not afraid to use it.
So when Sergio Garcia was disqualified this past weekend at the Saudi International for intentionally damaging at least five greens and throwing a tantrum befitting a toddler, Koepka was left unimpressed.
Just been out to sixth green @RoyalGreens_KSA and this was the only sign of damage on an otherwise pristine green. This probably did look quite nasty immediately after Sergio Garcia apparently left this divot mark yesterday @ScotsmanSport @edinburghsport pic.twitter.com/1aYFHCwIWx
— Martin Dempster (@DempsterMartin) February 3, 2019
Appearing on the “Playing Through” podcast (where he also talked about that now infamous thong picture), Golf Digest reported what Koepka had to say…
“Ugh, it’s frustrating as a player to see, to act like that, to disrespect everybody,” said Koepka, who was playing two groups in front of the former Masters champion but didn’t know what happened until afterward. “To act like a child out there is not cool. It’s not setting a good example and it’s not cool to us, showing us no respect or anybody else.”
One of Garcia’s complaints was that he wasn’t happy with the conditions of the course. However, Koepka and his BFF Dustin Johnson (who won the event) said there wasn’t anything wrong with it.
“That’s just Sergio acting like a child,” Koepka continued. “It’s unfortunate that he’s got to do that and complain. Everybody’s got to play the same golf course. I didn’t play very good, but you didn’t really see anybody else doing that. You’re 40 years old so you gotta grow up eventually.”
Garcia did not receive any sort of suspension from the European Tour for his actions. Perhaps instead they could just take away his recess privileges for a few days.