Four-time PGA Tour winner Kevin Kisner has taken a rather unique stance on the heckler who interrupted Nico Echavarria and Scottie Scheffler’s match during Sunday Singles. The 42-year-old recently appeared on the Fore Play Podcast with other panelists to surprisingly defend the unidentified individual at the Presidents Cup. However, he did have a point!
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“I didn’t think it was that apparent,” Kisner said about the individual’s interruption. “We replayed it three times … He yelled whatever he yelled. But it wasn’t like the guy was standing 10 feet from him when he was on his downswing. For him to hit a 155 mph ball speed with a driver. It looked like he took a rig’s divot with it when he hit it.”
Scheffler held a 3-up lead over Echavarria through 13 holes. On the par-4 14th tee, as Echavarria began his backswing, a fan in the gallery shouted, “Go, Scottie!” The Colombian sliced his drive badly into the right rough, immediately dropped his driver in frustration, and glared toward the crowd.
Visibly annoyed, Scheffler walked across the tee box and called out the heckler, declaring, “There’s no place for that!” Echavarria recovered poorly from the rough and eventually faced a putt of roughly 32 feet for par from off the back of the green. In a notable act of sportsmanship, Scheffler conceded the putt rather than make his opponent attempt it after the disturbance.
The World No. 1 then missed his own birdie try, and the hole was halved. He went on to close out a 2&1 victory.
Under the rules of golf, a player gets no relief and cannot replay a stroke because a spectator yelled or created a distraction during the backswing. The fan can still face consequences, however. The PGA Tour addresses spectator behavior separately through its Fan Code of Conduct, which prohibits yelling, heckling, and other actions that disrupt competition. Violators can be ejected from the venue. It is unclear whether this fan faced any such penalty.
Team USA went on to make a stunning comeback on Sunday and won the biennial team championship 17-13. When asked about the incident, Scheffler said players work hard to put themselves in these moments and deserve a brief stretch of silence to prepare. He added that fans should give players roughly 30 seconds of quiet while they are over the ball or getting ready to hit.
He also felt the shout directly affected Echavarria’s tee shot: “He would never hit a shot as poorly as he hit, I think, off the 14th if there wasn’t a fan yelling in his swing.”
Scheffler’s frustration stems from similar situations earlier in his career. At the 2019 Houston Open, his rookie year on the PGA Tour, a spectator yelled during his swing on a par-3, causing him to slip and hit a poor shot into a bunker. He immediately fired back at the fan.
“Are you kidding me?” he shouted. “You can’t keep your mouth quiet for five minutes, man? Right in the middle of my swing.”
A more personal episode came at the 2024 Presidents Cup in Montreal. As Scheffler walked down a fairway with his playing partner, a fan directed a vulgar comment at him involving his wife, Meredith. His father, Scott Scheffler, and his caddie, Ted Scott, confronted the spectator, which led to police intervention, and the fan was ejected from the course.
It is easy to see why Scheffler took such a strong stance this time. Still, Kisner’s account suggests the incident was not as serious as Scheffler’s reaction first made it seem.