Keegan Bradley's comments about a fan at Tiger Woods' World Challenge who called him a cheater last week for using a belly putter gave Graeme McDowell a platform to speak out against another kind of noise from the gallery that has gone on too long.
''You da man!'' has given way to ''Get in the hole!'' to ''Mashed potatoes.''
''I'm kind of fed up with all this 'mashed potatoes' and all this rubbish that the crowd are kind of enjoying shouting right now,'' McDowell said Sunday after his win at Sherwood.
''Keegan had a guy out there . . . after every shot he was, 'Yabba dabba doing,' and it was just stupid. It's something for the players. It's not a lot of fun, and it's kind of becoming a little bit of a cool thing to do for the spectators. It gives them their two or three seconds of fame. But it gets a little frustrating for everyone.''
Bradley said a heckler called him a cheater on Saturday because he uses a belly putter. Golf's rulesmakers announced last week a proposed rule that would ban anchoring putters against the belly or other parts of the body, but that would not become part of the Rules of Golf until 2016. The US Golf Association responded with a statement that Bradley is playing within the current rules.
