Jon Rahm brutally mocked fellow LIV Golf rebel Tyrrell Hatton during this week’s meet at the JCB Golf & Country Club.
It’s the third time LIV Golf has come to the United Kingdom, with golf-obsessed fans descending on the course near Uttoxeter.
But during a tee shot for Brit Hatton, Rahm could be heard sending a sly dig in the way of his Legion XIII team-mate.
While preparing for his shot, Hatton accidentally nudged the ball with his club, with Kieran Vincent - another LIV Golf ace - shouting out: “One… it’s one”.
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The jibe was a suggestion from Vincent that Hatton’s accidental mistake should actually go down on the scorecard as a shot.
Rahm was next to chime in, with the Spaniard commenting: “There’s always one person right?”
Fortunately for Hatton, the laws of the game would come to his rescue this time - not that anyone truly believed he should’ve been punished for the accidental touch.
According to the rules, a stroke is defined as ‘the forward movement of a club made to strike the ball’, and as Hatton was merely placing his club underneath the ball to line up the shot, he was spared the embarrassment of a +1 next to his name.
A similar situation happened to Zach Johnson at the 2019 Masters, although the American’s gaffe at Augusta National was under a much more pressurised environment.
Johnson was in the middle of a practice swing on the 13th hole when he clipped the ball, forcing it to be knocked off the tee.
To the untrained eye, this looked like a careless error from the golfer and Johnson himself was unsure about what it meant, asking his caddie and playing partner: “What happens now?”
His blushes were very quickly spared when he found out he’d be allowed to place the ball back on the tee because the practice swing that went wrong wasn’t a genuine attempt to hit the ball.
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Remarkably, it wouldn’t be the last time Johnson mistakenly hit the ball out of the tee box while lumbering up for a shot.
Three years later at the WM Phoenix Open, the 2013 US Ryder Cup captain was stretching his arms out when his driver knocked the ball off its tee.
Again though, just like Hatton this week, as it wasn’t deemed an intentional shot, no punishment was handed out and he was able to retake his tee shot as normal.
