In what can only be explained as an affront to all things American, two driving-range name plates for U.S. Ryder Cup players were grossly misspelled Tuesday at Gleneagles. Or maybe it was just an honest, simple mistake. THE WORLD WILL NEVER KNOW.
Roree MacElroix is going to pay for this.
The plates belonged to two of the three new Ryder Cup players — Jimmy Walker and Jordan Spieth. The latter has a difficult name to spell, except for those who value the time-honored “‘i’ before ‘e’ except after ‘c’ rule” that totally doesn’t apply to surnames anyway.
Spieth was asked about his misspelling: “Got to be the Europeans trying to get under your skin early,” he joked.
The misspelling for Jimmy Walker, a name that’s easy to spell in any language, was far more insulting.
I say Walker uses this to his advantage. He should get to the first tee — let’s say he’s playing Lee Westwood — and walk up to Lee, look him right in the eyes and say, “there is no ‘i’ in ‘team,’ but there are two ‘i”s in ‘Jiimmy,” then he should stare him down for an uncomfortable amount of time before unleashing a loud bark and slowly walking away. Mind games!
Fellow newbie Patrick Read Reed was unscathed in the international spelling conflict.
