Jordan Spieth wants autograph-seeking ‘scums’ to ‘get a job’

In the categorizing and sorting of adult males who a) wear professional sports jerseys unironically, b) bring their baseball glove to a game, c) wear golf shoes to a tournament, and d) make signs to bring to a game, the e) guy hounding for autographs to resell may be worth our most intense and constant derision among the ignoble adult sports fan behaviors. And the hound who gets his feelings hurt and starts cursing out a pro athlete, well, he is the most objectionable sort.

Jordan Spieth had one such encounter on Wednesday at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. It pissed him off so much that he decided to shout back and confront the autograph seekers and then go on a monologue about the entire practice in a press conference shortly thereafter.

Spieth, perhaps the most popular player in the world when Tiger is away, is often the top target of hordes of little kids and a few adult “scums” seeking his signature.

Here’s the full 314-word response Spieth had about his confrontation at Pebble and the autograph trade as a whole:

Yeah, and it’s not necessarily worth me spending time arguing. But I just, I’m not appreciative of people who travel to benefit off other people’s success. And just, we’re out here to — I enjoy signing and sign for kids whenever we get the chance. And when these guys have these items that you’ve already seen online and people, we have — our team keeps track of that kind of stuff. And these guys that just have bags of stuff to benefit from other people’s success when they didn’t do anything themselves. Go get a job instead of trying to make money off of the stuff that we have been able to do. We like to sign stuff for charity stuff or for kids or — and if you ask anybody universally it’s the same way, it’s just, they frustrate us. And so I turned around and they, one of them dropped an F-bomb in front of three kids, so I felt the need to turn around and tell them that that wasn’t right. And couple of them were saying you’re not Tiger Woods, don’t act like you’re Tiger, I mean it’s just like, whatever, guys, so. You’re still trying to benefit off me and I’m not even Tiger Woods. So, you know, what’s that say about you?

So, anyway, yeah, here and there get into it a little bit. Normally I let Michael get into it with them. But when you see guys that follow you around the entire round, they’re saying afterwards, “We’re huge fans.” A lot of other people did follow the entire round and so I want to make sure I sign for them, if I didn’t get them out there. So I was just a little frustrated at the end and I didn’t appreciate the language that was used and just some scums that just, it just bothered me.

Scums! Go get a job! This would qualify as an enraged state for the usually measured Spieth at these press conferences. But he’s not wrong. If you ever see these guys running up and down the rope lines at a PGA Tour event, it’s hard not to shake your head and want to cuss them out — and that’s as a bystander, not the subject of the hounding.