So remember the other day, when the Blob opined that what golf needed was more trash-talking, and that the problem with the rivalry between Team USA and Team Europe in the Ryder Cup was that it wasn't enough like, say, Auburn-Alabama?
Well. Perhaps I spoke too soon.
Apparently, there's lots of trash-talking of Team Europe going on up there at Hazeltine in Minnesota -- to a degree, in fact, that some U.S. team members occasionally try to tamp it down. Which of course is an exceptionally golf-y thing to do.
Not that it works all that well. Yesterday, it seems, Rory McIlroy got into a staredown with a particularly obnoxious fan, pointing at him and having him removed by security after said fan apparently spouted a particularly vile obscenity at him.
Not that McIlroy was the least bit ruffled. I mean, come on, he grew up Northern Ireland watching soccer. Soccer hooligans make golf hooligans look like Thurston Howell III.
And so, McIlroy stared the guy down, shrugged and striped his next iron right over the flag on No. 8, where it fetched up 15 feet from the cup. He and Thomas Pieters won the hole and went on to win the match 3-and-1.
After which McIlroy said, essentially, bring it on, homies.
"It fueled me a lot," he said of the heckling. "The more they shouted, the better we played. I hope they shout at us all day tomorrow."
Sounds like a gauntlet flung down to me.
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