Marc Leishman’s wife, Audrey, rips rude USA fans at Presidents Cup

Audrey Leishman may be married to Australian golfer and Presidents Cup International player Marc Leishman, but the proud American was anything but proud of the coarse behavior of her countrymen (fans and players alike) during Team USA’s lopsided win in last week’s Presidents Cup.

In a heartfelt post on Tuesday on her blog that she dedicates to raising awareness about toxic shock syndrome, which nearly killed her in 2015, Audrey slams the U.S. attitude — epitomized by American player Daniel Berger’s comments — about crushing her husband’s team as being “hard on my heart.”

The daughter of Pilipino immigrants whose father served in the U.S. Navy, Audrey conceded that before she met Marc she “did not know a birdie from a bogey” but that she has grown to appreciate the “gentleman’s sport.” What she did not hold so dear was the way well-oiled spectators comported themselves at Liberty National, and she worried about how her children would react to the flat-out poor sportsmanship.

“There were many times last week that I thought about what the kids were seeing. The crowds booing for good shots and cheering for missed putts. The drinking at 7 a.m.? Screaming ‘Big Easy’ to [assistant captain] Ernie Els and begging for his autograph and then yelling at his players. Heckling a wife for her beauty and then her husband for his play,” she wrote. “I was thankful my boys weren’t there to see the way people were treating their daddy. Their hero. My parents could simply turn the television off.”

Indeed, last week’s event “was not the golf I know,” she observed.

“During the opening ceremony, I was enjoying the Fanatics [a group of yellow-shirted, chanting International fans] singing their songs that most people have come to love when I heard an American scream, ‘Speak English!’” Audrey wrote, noting it was “an awful and ignorant thing to say,” and, oh yeah, “they were speaking English.”

Leishman went on to note that half of those on the International squad were bilingual and wondered how many languages the boisterous boobs sharing their bigotry knew.

Audrey also took Golf Channel’s Brandel Chamblee to task for his choice of wording — now in light of last week’s senseless slaughter in Las Vegas — in describing the play on the course during the first day of competition.

“‘If you’re Captain Nick Price, what do you do when you’re looking at a massacre?’” she quoted Chamblee as saying. “Was that kind? Necessary? True? I don’t think it improved upon the silence.”

Leishman believes that most of last week’s boorish behavior emanated from a minority of the crowd, most of whom were likely not golf fans. They were, however, “the loudest,” and Leishman was chagrined that no one in their vicinity asked them to stop acting like vulgarians.

Leishman began her emotional comments by recognizing that those who may not like what she had to say were free to “click the X” at the top of page. She ended by expressing sadness that an obnoxious few ruined the opportunity “to come together over something so simple, the love of golf.

“I wish we could have shown our best,” she wrote. “With the Statue of Liberty as our backdrop, we certainly should have.”