#Brooks Koepka’s solution to golf controversy: Announcers should ‘shut up and listen’

The four-time major champion aggressively dismissed the idea that is being pushed onto players in an attempt to liven up fan-less broadcasts.

“I don’t understand why they want us to wear a mic when there’s a boom mic that stands 10 feet away from every shot that I hit,” Koepka told reporters at the RBC Heritage Open. “If the announcers would just shut up and listen, you could hear every word that we’re talking about.”

The notion had gained steam in part due to the success of The Match between Phil Mickelson and Tom Brady against Tiger Woods and Peyton Manning. Ironically, Koepka was one of the players who called into the broadcast after challenging a struggling Brady to make a par for a charitable donation.

Justin Thomas, who was an on-course reporter for that broadcast, is also opposed to players being mic’d up.

“I would not wear a mic, no. That’s not me. What I talk about with (caddie Jimmy Johnson) and what I talk about with the guys in my group is none of anybody else’s business, no offense,” Thomas said before the PGA Tour’s restart last week.

Canadian Adam Hadwin was mic’d up for Thursday’s first round in South Carolina and viewers were taken though an agonizing penalty. Hadwin was in a fairway bunker on the 13th hole and he attempted to remove what he thought was a rock from behind his ball.

“I removed a rock and then I went to remove what I thought was another rock, and as I grabbed said rock it crumbled, because it was actually sand,” Hadwin could be heard saying, according to GolfWorld. “It looked like a rock to me, that’s why I was trying to remove it. I assume it’s a penalty.”

It was a two-stroke penalty and turned a would-be par into a double bogey for Hadwin on the par 4.