It’s safe to say that Jordan Spieth wants sports fandom to go back to the way it used to be.
Ahead of the John Deere Classic at TPC Deere Run in Illinois, Spieth was asked if he felt golf crowds were getting rowdier in the wake of Wyndham Clark’s treatment at the U.S. Open, and Spieth blamed a lot of it on gambling.
“I do think that betting in golf is something that’s going to have to be tackled here soon,” Spieth said, unprovoked.
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“I don’t know how much of, say, the Wyndham scenario was the fact that it was enticing to bet the field versus Wyndham on Sunday in a legalized betting state, and you could have had people out there that are essentially, you know, have $100 to $10,000, depending on who it is, on the field versus somebody else.
“In golf it’s tricky because you could actually impact the outcome if you wanted to. It may not last very long, but you could impact a shot if you wanted to. I don’t know of another sport that you could impact as a fan like you can golf. So I don’t know how much that’s having to do with it, if it’s different than it used to be.”
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Spieth said that fan vitriol is not “a crazy new thing,” but most of it now “has to do with betting, and that is in the last five years.”
It should be known that Spieth was once an ambassador for FanDuel.
Clark’s jeers came at Shinnecock Hills in the Hamptons, roughly 60 miles away from Bethpage Black, where fans became the subject of controversy during the Ryder Cup. It prompted Golf Channel’s Eamon Lynch to call Long Island fans a “stain” on golf who did not deserve another major golf event in their area.
Sports gambling has been legalized in 39 states since 2018 — only Nevada had allowed it prior. Thirty-two of those states, including Illinois, allow online betting.
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