Ryan McCormick may have taken things a step too far, but it helped him stay quiet.
The hot-headed professional golfer taped his mouth to “shut himself up” for his entire round on Friday at the Club Car Championship in Savannah, Georgia to put a stop to his on-course tantrums.
“Been having not-so-fun times this year on the golf course,” McCormick said in a video with the Korn Ferry Tour. “Pretty angry and mad. So I figured I’ve tried a lot of things, and I just figured I’d shut myself up. So I put tape over my mouth.
“I mean at this point, I’ve tried about everything. I’ve read a lot of books. I’ve talked to people. Just too angry on the golf course so I have run out of ideas, and I thought about the tape thing a couple of weeks ago. So, just unfortunately came down to that today. I was hoping maybe that it would help me. Can’t say that it did or didn’t. It certainly makes you breathe. I felt like Bane, like Batman, muzzle myself.
“I mean, I’m not like proud. I don’t want to create an experience for my playing partners that’s not fair. And, you know, it’s not fair to me either or other people. Having a tough time, and that was my solution today.”
To communicate with his caddie for the day, McCormick said he wrote down the numbers and just “point and ask for a read.”
However, McCormick’s strategy couldn’t keep him in the tournament, as he finished 1-over par, which was a shot better than his round on Thursday but still fell four shots back from the cut line.
It also didn’t please golf fans, who called him out for “attention seeking.”
“What a complete and utter joke! Imagine being an adult and doing something this childish for the whole world to see. No sponsor should want to touch the “basket case” that is @McCormick__Ryan,” an X user wrote.
Another said that McCormick would do “anything for clicks” and it was the “dumbest thing” to witness.
The 33-year-old American was formally with the PGA Tour for all of 2024 but was eventually relegated to the Korn Ferry in recent months after a No. 161 rank in the FedEx Cup standings.
