Watson tees off on Elkington

By John Reger PA SportsTicker Contributing Writer

AVONDALE, Louisiana (Ticker) - Instances of on-course incidents are fairly rare between golfers, but there was one in Friday's second round of the Zurich Classic of New Orleans.

Bubba Watson and Steve Elkington exchanged words on the 10th hole and requested a rules official come into the scorer's tent to resolve the flap.

According to Shigeki Maruyama, who was the third player in the group, Watson was upset Thursday when he thought Elkington and his caddie were walking in Watson's line in the fairway and making noise.

Watson apparently did not say anything the first day, but on Friday there were words exchanged between the players on the 10th hole.

"A couple of F-words by Bubba," Maruyama said.

Television microphones picked up Watson saying, "Steve can kiss my ...," and the last word was bleeped.

When the players reached the 18th green the tension was obvious. Elkington putted out before Watson and shook the hand of Shigeki Maruyama and his caddie.

When Watson's caddie extended his hand to Elkington, the veteran golfer did not acknowledge him, walking off the green. When Watson putted out, Elkington quickly made his way to the scorer's tent.

When Maruyama came out of the scorer's tent, he was smiling and started shadow-boxing before saying, "big problem."

Tournament director Arvin Ginn was called to the scoring tent to help facilitate the discussion between Elkington and Watson.

"I've had a talk with all three of them at one time and they were very gentlemanly about the entire thing, about resolving it among themselves and did so," Ginn said. "They shook hands and there's no incident here."

Elkington emerged afterward and refused comment, walking past reporters and fans seeking autographs.

Watson, who may be fined by the PGA Tour for uttering obscenities, came out shortly after and said the issue had been resolved.

"I made a bad decision and I want to apologize to everybody in the tournament, whoever heard it," Watson said. "You know, I don't drink or smoke, but every once in a while I get a little angry and I said some stuff I probably shouldn't have said."

It is not the first time players have had altercations on the golf course. At the 2005 Masters, Vijay Singh and Phil Mickelson exchanged words in the locker room after Singh sent out rules officials to check Mickelson's spikes. Singh said they were damaging the greens.

Later that year at the Booz Allen Classic, Rory Sabbatini had a problem with Ben Crane's slow play and played ahead on hole No. 17, walking toward the 18th tee and leaving Crane in the fairway.

After the round, Crane was lectured by an obviously annoyed Sabbatini, who later apologized for his actions.

Most on-course arguments don't turn into confrontations but are played out in the media.

Jarmo Sandelin accused Mark O'Meara of cheating at the 1997 Lancome Trophy, a European PGA Tour event. Sandelin's manager even went to the extreme of passing out videotapes that appeared to show O'Meara replacing his ball after marking it on the green closer to the hole. The view, though, was that the act was done unintentionally and O'Meara denied trying to gain an advantage.

In a book written by Gary Player, he accused Tom Watson of using clubs that didn't conform to win the 1977 Masters and British Open.