Heckled and beleaguered Kevin Na finds fan support at Bay Hill
Kevin Na, who has unfairly become the poster child of slow play, was the object of some vicious heckling during the opening rounds at Bay Hill but other fans showed the one-time PGA Tour winner some love on Saturday.
Kevin Na was heartened to know, a day after being on the receiving end of some vicious heckling for his reputed slow play, that some fans have his back.
Na, who has come under scrutiny for his methodical pre-shot routine since he had serious trouble pulling the trigger at the 2012 Players Championship, was playing the 13th hole at Bay Hill during Saturday’s third round of the Arnold Palmer Invitational when he noticed several fans sporting “Kevin Na, worth the wait!” tee shirts.
“It was cool,” Na told Brian Wacker after he greeted one fan with a bear hug and shook the hands of others as he made his way to the 14th tee. “I walked up to the green and I kind of peeked over and looked over there at what it said and I just started laughing. It was nice to get some support.”
Na is no stranger to off-color comments coming from outside the ropes, as boo birds were out in full throat at The Players.
The most recent incident occurred a day after several thuggish spectators took it upon themselves to penalize Na for his pace of play by bullying him so frequently and vociferously that first-and second-round playing partner Scott Stallings refused to air their offensive remarks.
“It was all day, both days. He handled it great, but he just got fired up,” Stallings, who told Golf Channel’s Geroge Savaricas the incidents were “about as brutal as I’ve seen,” said to Will Gray after Friday’s round. “He’s trying his absolute best. It’s unfortunate … He had every right to be frustrated.”
The taunting got so bad the rowdies were yelling on the backswings of Na and Stallings, who made it clear that the beleaguered member of his threesome had no pace-of-play problem the entire day.
Na declined to lower himself to the level of the morons, who were not ejected after their classless behavior.
Getting past Tiger
“I like Bay Hill, Iove coming to Arnie’s place. It’s a good golf course for me and I had a great time out there,” Na, who engaged tour official Mark Russell in a lively discussion midway through Friday’s round about the situation, told Savaricas. “It happens once in a while out here but it was a good day.”
Na accepted Russell’s offer of enhanced security -- an Orange County SWAT team, according to Savaricabs -- for the remainder of his round with Stallings and Ryan Moore.
Golf watchers may argue whether Na is any more, shall we say, deliberate, than some other notorious tortoises (we’re looking at you, Jim Furyk), but there should be little debate that the behavior of the morons who verbally accosted Na was completely out of bounds.
His reputation for slow play preceded Na to the Arnold Palmer Invitational -- a week after he and Valspar Championship playing partner Robert Garrigus were put on the clock at Innisbrook. Na, who has been forthright and apologetic about his issues, as well as his attempts to accelerate his play, is probably not even the slowest player on tour.
The taunting got so bad the rowdies were yelling on the backswings of Na and Stallings
“Jack Nicklaus was slow but ... they called him ‘methodical,’ or ‘thorough,’ or ‘deliberate,’ or ‘idiosyncratic.’ Bernard Langer was probably the slowest player in history. Jim Furyk ... probably the slowest player on this PGA Tour,” GC analyst Brandel Chamblee said prior to Saturday’s kickoff. “None of them were criticized or blighted by the stigma of slow play to the extent that Kevin Na is being subjected to.”
Chamblee blamed Na’s inconsistent routine for the scrutiny he receives, since TV producers don’t know when to put the camera on him.
“Jim Furyk is a slower player than Kevin Na, but Jim Furyk is consistent with his pre-shot routine,” said Chamblee. “[Producers] know that they don’t go to him until he backs away from his putt the first time ... You don’t see all those deliberations that Jim Furyk is going through.”
Chamblee observed on Friday that Na’s status in the game also had something to do with the amount of criticism he receives. Were he to win a major, the “completely unfair” criticism might let up, said Chamblee, who suggested that tour officials time “every single hole so that every single player, regardless of their position in the game or on the PGA Tour, is subjected to the same scrutiny that’s being directed at Kevin Na.”
Na started Sunday’s final round at 4-under -- 11 shots back 36-hole leader Adam Scott.
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