Justin Thomas has just called out someone online for the right reason. The two-time major champion weighed in on a club pro mistreatment story making the rounds on social media and has come up with a blunt, smart tactic to deal with it.
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Justin Thomas was responding to a post from Monday Q Info, an account run by golf reporter Ryan French. French tweeted that someone had sent him a video of a member lashing out at a club pro over a caddie shortage. It’s a problem that worsens every fall once high school-age loopers return to class. French said the video in person was badly out of line, but he chose not to post it to protect whoever filmed it.
French contextualized the incident: “But I feel so bad for club pros. 95% of people are great at clubs. The 5% outweighs the 95%, and it’s not close. Give up your summers, your weekends, and your holidays, and get bitched by people who will never be happy. Every club pro deserves a raise.”
Thomas, whose father is a PGA Professional, replied to the conversation and added a very smooth fix: “One of the cooler traditions I have heard is Whisper Rock posts in the locker room when a member is a pr**k or does something out of line. All in all, in front of the entire membership to see. So good!”
Whisper Rock, for context, is a private men’s golf club in Scottsdale. The club has some 580 members. About 20 professional golfers, including Phil Mickelson, Paul Casey, Geoff Ogilvy, Martin Kaymer are members of this exclusive course. Mickelson, interestingly also designed the championship layout, which features Pinehurst-style greens. The club is extremely strict about the right attitude and golf etiquette as JT’s little anecdote showed.
The nine-time PGA Tour winner’s solution to tackle rude golfers was simple: call out the person by name, or just by posting it where every member walks past it. Let the embarrassment do the rest of the work. The tactic JT seemed to advocate reflects his lifelong advocacy for caddies and club professionals.
They have been a constant thread throughout Thomas’s career. His father, Mike Thomas, is also a club professional himself, who shaped golf education for many young players. Naturally, he grew up around the working side of the sport. It also explains why a club pro getting berated over something as unglamorous as a caddie shortage struck a nerve.
Bad etiquette on golf courses is increasingly becoming a problem. On top of that, with the post-COVID golf boom, more people are willing to take golf lessons. That has left club pros struggling to find a balance between life in and outside the ropes.
This particular incident seems worse when you think of the fact that a club pro has little to do in this case. The shortage of caddies is a common problem. Most golf courses rely on high-school and collegiate golfers to fill in as caddies. The seasonal labor loss is a common theme across most golf courses in the USA.
Moreover, club pros are often at the receiving end of unrealistic member expectations. As the son of a club pro and a member of multiple high-profile golf clubs, Justin Thomas knows the situation all too well.
That being said, for a sport that markets itself on etiquette and respect, the exchange was a reminder that those values do not always survive contact with a bad day. Thomas, at least, thinks public embarrassment might be a better teacher.