Hosung Choi accidentally hits playing partner with thrown club

Cult hero and internet sensation Hosung Choi resurfaced into the golf Twitter universe this morning after he accidentally struck his playing partner with a thrown club.

In a video tweeted from the Asia Tour’s Singapore Open, Choi is seen making his usually eccentric swing, uncorking his body and finishing with a pirouette on his left foot. But upon follow through, he lets go of the club and it ricochets off the ground, bouncing into the leg of his playing partner.

Twitter opinions of the act were … divided, to say the least.

“Hosung Choi at his finest,” one user said with accompanying laughing emojis.

Others were not so benevolent in their assessment of Choi’s latest antics.

“Absolute clown,” said one.

“Idiot,” said another.

“I’m not an advocate of violence, but if the guy who got hit by the club decided to drop him I’d have no problem with that,” chided one particularly aggressive account.

There won’t (or at least, shouldn’t) be any more Choi antics at the Singapore Open this week as his rounds of 72 and 74 leave him outside the projected cut line, but that surely won’t stop the internet takes from flying this weekend.

Choi came to internet stardom in 2018 when a video of his swing was tweeted from the Korean Open. No one had quite seen anything like Choi’s swing on a professional golf circuit, let alone a player who’d had relative success in their career. What at first started as innocent curiosity morphed into full-blown Hosung fever.

The 44-year-old ascended to cult hero status seemingly overnight as he vied for an Open Championship exemption via a top-3 finish at the Korean Open. Imagining seeing a swing like that competing inside the ropes at the sacred Open Championship had fans downright giddy. Choi would eventually stumble in the final round that week, but nevertheless, the legend of Hosung Choi was born.

In the time since, Choi has played steady golf, ascending into the top 200 in the Official World Golf Rankings and making his PGA Tour debut at the Pebble Beach Pro-Am. He capped the year with his fifth-career professional victory at the Heiwa PGM Championship.

The court of public opinion has been kind to Choi in the past as he brought flair and personality to a game that can, at times, be unwelcoming to outsiders. But it appears Choi’s welcome as a non-traditional golfer is wearing thin.

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