While the 2025 golf season had plenty of highlights (Rory McIlroy’s career Grand Slam, Scottie Scheffler’s two-major triumph), it was far from begin free of controversy.
The year featured plenty of low moments in which the pressure of pro golf boiled over into heated confrontations, between players, fans, cameramen and, in one instance, historic lockers.
So before we head into the new year, we compiled a list of the nine most heated moments from this year in golf.
Unsurprisingly, the 2025 Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black appears multiple times on this list. But this first instance is the only one that involves a spat between players and caddies, rather than fans and players.
One Saturday foursomes match between Americans Bryson DeChambeau and Scottie Scheffler and Europeans Justin Rose and Tommy Fleetwood turned ugly as it arrived at its climax.
Amid a tense, back-and-forth match, Rose waved DeChambeau’s caddie Greg Bodine out of the way as Rose was waiting to putt on the 15th green. The dust-up escalated as the players walked to the 16th tee.
DeChambeau was chirping at Fleetwood, and Scheffler’s caddie, Ted Scott, was in a tense conversation with European vice-captain Edoardo Molinari.
As the jawing continued at 16, Smylie Kaufman had this to say on the TV broadcast, “No exaggeration guys — every single person on this tee is heated.”
The altercation was ultimately diffused when Scott and Molinari released a joint video the next morning settling the beef.
The second “most heated” moment on our list was not a dispute between two players, but between one former major champion and a series of lockers.
Wyndham Clark, the 2023 U.S. Open champion, unloaded in anger on Oakmont’s historic lockerroom, damaging several lockers in the process. When a photo of the damage leaked, Clark was suspended from the club. He later apologized.
But it wasn’t the first time in 2025 Clark had taken his anger out on a inanimate object at a Tour event.
At the PGA Championship at Quail Hollow, Clark chucked his driver at a sign on the 16th tee, damaging it severely. He also apologized for that one.
Rory’s first appearance on the list comes from the Players Championship in March. During a Tuesday practice round, a University of Texas junior heckled McIlroy after he hit a drive into a water hazard.
Reportedly, the heckle was related to McIlroy’s collapse at the 2011 Masters. Rory’s reaction was out of character. He confronted the heckler and his teammate, then grabbed one of their cellphones and walked away with it.
Rory didn’t face any consequences, but the heckler was ejected and later punished by his school. McIlroy won the Masters one month later to silence the hecklers forever.
The next three incidents occurred at the 2025 PGA Championship at Quail Hollow.
In the first, Shane Lowry got into it with an ESPN cameraman in a crucial moment. On the verge of missing the cut in Friday’s second round, Lowry got a horrible break when his tee shot landed in another player’s divot.
Shane Lowry calls out ‘ESPN guy’ for interfering before outburst at PGA Championship
Lowry called in an official to help with the ruling, but when he did, a TV cameraman went up to Lowry and told him his ball was not in his own pitch mark, which would have allowed Lowry to take a free drop.
Lowry didn’t like that. He confronted the cameraman in the moment and continued after his round.
“I was just asking the referee, and the ESPN guy comes straight over and he’s like, ‘That’s not your pitch mark’. And I’m like, ‘That’s not for you to talk about’. That’s for me to call a rules official and decide what happens. I just said, to the rules official, what happens to the guy at 7:10 who’s not on ESPN Live?” Lowry said after his round. “It was just that the ESPN guy was a bit too in there involved when he wasn’t asked to be and that’s what annoyed me a lot.”
Our second heated moment from this year’s PGA involved four-time major winner Brooks Koepka and a heckling fan.
On Friday, and with Koepka struggling on the course, one fan decided to taunt Koepka over his decision to join LIV. Koepka’s caddie reacted first, before Koepka took over the confrontation.
He pointed at the fan and shouted, “Want to come down here and say it? Want to come down here and say it? Tough guy now, huh?”
Fortunately, the situation didn’t escalate further.
At this year’s PGA Championship, mud caused a lot of anguish among the players in the field. Rains left the fairways at Quail Hollow soft. The result was many players getting stuck with dreaded mud balls.
At a normal PGA Tour event, organizers may have enacted a preferred lies rule, allowing players to lift, clean and place their balls in the fairway. But because it was a major, PGA officials declined to do so.
Mud-ball moaning at PGA Championship lost on this three-time major winner
Frequent mud balls caused a number a squirrelly, unpredictable shots. Many complaints followed from the pros, most notably from World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, who spoke at length about this issue after the second round.
“I understand how a golf purist would be, ‘Oh, play it as it lies.’ But I don’t think they understand what it’s like to literally work your entire life to learn how to hit a golf ball and control it and hit shots and control distance and all of a sudden, due to a rules decision, [all] that is completely taken away from us by chance.
“In golf, there’s enough luck throughout a 72-hole tournament that I don’t think the story should be whether or not the ball is played up or down. When I look at golf tournaments, I want the purest, fairest test of golf, and in my opinion maybe the ball today should have been played up. But like I said, I don’t make the rules. I deal with what the rules decisions are.”
By week’s end, Scheffler was hoisting the Wanamaker trophy as PGA champion.
The 2025 Ryder Cup got heated long before the first shots were hit at Bethpage Black. In the lead-up, rivals Bryson DeChambeau and Rory McIlroy had a back-and-forth through the media.
At the “Happy Gilmore 2” premier in New York, DeChambeau fired the first volley, saying, “I’ll be chirping in [McIlroy’s] ear this time [at the Ryder Cup]. Now, if we go up against each other, I mean, you can be sure of it.”
McIlroy responded in the Guardian, saying, “I think the only way he gets attention is by mentioning other people. That is basically what I think of that. To get attention he will mention me or Scottie [Scheffler] or others.”
McIlroy, of course, got the last laugh (again) when the Europeans soundly defeated the U.S. team at the Ryder Cup. But Rory couldn’t quite let it go. During celebrations at Bethpage, McIlroy was spotted covering up DeChambeau’s name on a banner with a European flag.
Forget the Europeans’ dominance over the first two days at Bethpage Black. Same goes for the Americans’ heroic Sunday comeback that came up just short. The biggest story of the 2025 Ryder Cup, and perhaps of the entire year in golf, was the brutal harassment Rory McIlroy and his European teammates faced from fans.
Tempers flared. Fans clashed. This Ryder Cup went to the brink
In too many instances to recount, fans crossed every conceivable line with inappropriate comments hurled at McIlroy and his family throughout the three-day event.
A frustrated McIlroy responded in kind with expletives of his own directed at the fans and caught on live TV. In one of the most unfortunate moments, an emcee joined in on expletive-laden chant and was fired.
All of it marred the event forever and elicited a chorus of criticism from all over the golf world. In their victorious press conference, McIlroy and the European team further detailed the “astonishing” abuse they faced from fans.
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