BIRKDALE, England — Last month, the golf world returned home from Shinnecock with one very uncomfortable question.
Why do golfers behave this way?
It only took Jordan Spieth a few days to find the answer.
“Golf betting is something we’re going to have to do here soon,” Spieth said days after Wyndham Clarke’s apparently confrontational victory in the final round of the US Open, blaming the woes of the sports galleries on an impressively simple boogeyman.
Legalized gambling remains a new phenomenon in American professional sports. In 2018, the Supreme Court’s 6–3 decision in the case Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletics officially opened the door to the legal spread of the practice across the United States, starting a gold rush of well-funded legal sportsbooks and sports betting apps, as well as threatening the employment status of a country full of bookmakers.
The assumption that gambling may have some the adverse effects on polite society are less new. In fact, much of the reason gambling retreated from the public eye (and into the smoke-filled, phosphorescent halls of Las Vegas casinos) in the first century was due to concerns about safety, with Americans particularly concerned about the integrity of their sporting events.
Eight years after that Supreme Court decision have done little to rid us of these concerns. Almost overnight, betting has become almost ubiquitous in American life, dominating television advertising, app stores and idle behavior. Last year, nearly twice as many Americans placed a bet (57 percent) than read a novel or short story (38 percent), according to one study.
In the world of sports, these changes have come like a tidal wave, changing not only the way we perceive lines, scores and players, but also the way we speak about the games we watch, as Clark himself reminded us Tuesday.
“How many times do we hear guys at tournaments say, ‘Oh, Windham, I have 30-to-1 odds of winning this week, or 100-to-1 odds, I’m betting on you,’” Clark said. “This happens all the time.”
For those with eyes and ears, it would be callous to suggest that sports betting has changed nothing about the way Americans watch golf. In the world of instant betting, golf is unusually vulnerable – a sport whose constant action, proximity and decorum give the spectator inordinate power to change the outcome of a shot or moment.
“I would say every golfer who has played in a professional tournament has received a message of abuse from someone involved in gambling,” Matt Fitzpatrick said.
But there’s just one problem with taking Spieth’s words as gospel—blaming all the recent behavioral problems in sports on betting. The problem that looms over the Open Championship like a bright yellow leaderboard on the 18th hole: Is sports betting legal? Heretoo much.
Very little time has passed since arriving at the Open – any The Open is a recognition that something has changed in golf consumption in the UK. Fans don’t shout or interrupt. They don’t engage in jousting or make frantic screams during completion. Those over driving age do not require attention from players.
However, you don’t have to take my word for it. Listen to any player on the course this weekend, or any weekend at the Open, and they all agree annually and with weary unanimity: This is the best crowd in golf anywhere.
“You don’t have to hit it three feet to get cheers. I think that’s what players really enjoy, hitting a really good shot in a 15-20 foot crosswind, the crowd really recognizes it,” Justin Rose said. “I think that’s one of the things we like most about this tournament.”
If betting is the bogeyman it’s made out to be, why is there so much crowd at the Open, held annually in a country where sports betting has been fully legalized since 1962? And takes place this week in the small town of Southport, where no fewer than 15 brick-and-mortar establishments currently operate bookmakers?
“Look, we’ve always had gambling here,” Rory McIlroy said Tuesday. “I would say the crowd behavior for the most part was pretty good.”
That controversy hangs over golf as attention turns to the final tournament of the 2026 major season. Almost everyone agrees that anything must be done to correct behavior that has become all too common at events over the last 12 months, with players and spectators engaging in what could only be described as the physical manifestation of the internet comment section. But the simplest solution – gambling – is only a half-measure.
To be clear, no one is advocating doing this. Nothing about the gambling problem facing professional golf; it is as big and serious as any other challenge that the sport will face in the next few decades. But at the Open, we’re forced to face a nasty tipping point in the debate: What if gambling isn’t the best option? all solution?
“Everything has changed,” Justin Rose said. “I think people have access to how they’ve seen moments unfold on the golf course or other behaviors, crowd behavior, and it becomes the norm. Everything becomes normal.”
The human brain is a fundamentally lazy organ. Over time, people have developed what researchers call a “simplicity bias”—they prefer to believe simple solutions mainly because understanding complex solutions requires much more cognitive effort.
However, at the Open we may face a fan behavior problem, but it won’t be as simple as that. There is Something is going to change in American golf in 2026, and it likely won’t just have to do with the betting app on your phone. It’s about something deeper in our mid-2020s culture, and most likely something uglier.
“I think it’s just a way of life at the moment,” Rose said. “Everything has become much more accessible. People feel like they are more part of the moment and can influence it. We know about sports betting. We know about all this other history, and people are getting much closer – I think more involved in the outcome.”
The golf world can forget about its worries for at least a week. It’s likely to be another enjoyable weekend in the stands at Royal Birkdale, as always.
But if you were hoping for a simple answer to golf’s crowd problems, you may come away disappointed. The questions sound more polite when asked here, but the answers are just as awkward.