PGA Tour pro pays off $6k bet after getting called out on Twitter

From Thursday through Sunday, the pros on the PGA Tour play for exorbitant amounts of money. The enormous purses at each and every event on the modern PGA Tour (thanks Tiger!) guarantee the winner at least $1 million. But there’s a lot of unofficial cash changing hands during the other days of the week -- we just don’t hear much about it.

So it was odd and highly entertaining this week when one particular wager and subsequent dispute went public in the most public way. And it was a third-party who brought it to light. Tom Gillis, a 48-year-old journeyman pro, bodied Ben Crane. The tweet not only called out Crane for welching on a bet, but took the time to also blast him for being a slow player and delivered a late body blow about his religion. This was not some subtle public attempt to get a player to pay up, but a napalming.

That set off a flurry of further inquiries to Gillis, who isn’t even on the ground this week playing the Zurich Classic and was lobbing grenades from afar to get his anonymous friend his money.

The agitated Gillis, however, was not even the one that Crane owed, as we’d come to learn later that day. Crane was in debt to Daniel Berger, the apparent winner of this $6k putting contest that took approximately 45 minutes on a putting green somewhere a few months prior.

Charley Hoffman, who shot one of the all-time rounds at Augusta and was leading the Masters just a few weeks ago, also blasted Crane on his Instagram account and tagged Berger in the caption (“@db_straitvibin is @bencranegolf digging into his pockets here to pay off the money he owes you or is he at a complete stand still like usual?”) as the one who still needed his cash.

Crane is notorious for being one of the slower players, a reputation that has been pegged to him for years. But you don’t hear much else negative about him and this was some serious heat from his fellow Tour pros, and all out for public consumption. We just don’t get this kind of out-in-the-open beef on the PGA Tour that often, unfortunately.

Brian Wacker, who is at the Zurich, went beyond the social media haymakers and spoke to both Berger and Crane. Apparently, the dispute was “handled” promptly this week after all the public attention.

“I wish it didn’t come to that, but it’s all taken care of,” Berger told Golf Digest’s Wacker. “It’s crazy how powerful social media can be.”

Crane obviously didn’t want to go into great detail, either, but did say it was “all good” and that both he and Berger had warmed up next to each other on the range. He also told Wacker that Gillis had “no idea what happened” because he wasn’t there and that he felt no need to defend himself against the Twitter blast.

Gillis may be a bit of an unhinged Twitterer, and Crane maybe not deserving of such public undressing, but I’m all for more beef.