PGA Tour chaos, DP World Tour slowness and proposed super leagues -'time to move on from silly season'

Is this the week golf grows up and leaves behind its silly season? Because that is certainly what it has felt like so far this year.

How else should we characterise a period when millions of dollars are being thrown at people who need it least and beer cans are aimlessly hurled from stands because, well, that is what you do when someone gets a hole-in-one?

There have been other moments of madness — the DP World Tour playing the final rounds of their two biggest tournaments of 2022 to date in pedestrian three balls for starters.

And last Sunday's PGA Tour climax in Phoenix was completed after the United States had switched over to the Super Bowl. Sometimes golf doesn't exactly help itself.

Only at the Waste Management Phoenix Open would a hole-in-one require a mass clean-up operation. That is what was needed after Carlos Ortiz aced the grandstand par-three 16th at TPC Scottsdale.

The hole is surrounded by stands and the celebrating Mexican admitted he was «nailed pretty hard with a beer can» after his tee shot dropped into the hole as he neared the end of his final round.

This Arizona event has built its own party identity. Many of the golfers play up to the boisterous atmosphere and it creates a unique golfing spectacle.

But when players are struck by flying cans and bottles, things are probably overstepping an acceptable mark in a game like golf. Indeed, imagine the furore in any other sport if crowds behaved that way en masse.

This was the same tournament that yielded an extraordinary outburst against the rules by Charley Hoffman, who was aggrieved when his ball rolled back into a penalty area after he had placed it having already taken a one-stroke penalty.

Yes, he was extremely unlucky but to launch a social media attack on