There is no event in golf hyped up more than the Ryder Cup. The players arrive with their wives and girlfriends and other dignitaries on Monday, practice, talk to the press, make a bunch of non-golf appearances and don’t play an actual match until Friday. That gives us four full days to pick apart every word and movement. And that’s how Rickie Fowler’s haircut has potentially become a point of conflict at the Ryder Cup.
Rickie Fowler ‘USA’ haircut is ‘thuggish jingoism’ to one European writer
The senior president of the PGA of America joins young Rickie Fowler by shaving “USA” into the side of his head for the Ryder Cup, a display of ‘thuggish jingoism’ for at least one joyless European media member.
Before the team boarded their plane for Scotland over the weekend, Fowler tweeted out a new shaved USA into the side of his head. It was innocuous. It was nice. It is not something you see from a professional golfer on a golf course, and it’s part of what makes the Ryder Cup the most unique and fun event in golf. But this has stirred up some folks over in Europe, most notably one Oliver Brown of The Telegraph:
There is no other stage in the game that would permit Rickie Fowler to disembark the Americans’ Ryder Cup plane in Edinburgh sporting a GI Joe-style crewcut, the letters “USA” shaved around his ear in an exhibition of thuggish jingoism that on any normal day would give grounds for many a club secretary to throw him off the premises in a heartbeat.
A haircut is now “thuggish jingoism” in a sports competition where he’s playing for his country (h/t to Golf.com). The hot take also cites Tony Johnstone as another party skeptical of Fowler’s haircut, and calls into question Tom Watson’s ability to be a “moral adjudicator of golf.”
Decorum, please
Well Mr. Brown will be pleased to know that Ted Bishop, the more senior president of the PGA of America, which overseas the Ryder Cup on the USA side, has joined young Fowler with this affronting nationalistic hairstyle.
