Matthew Wolff, during the TaylorMade Driving Relief charity event in May, was in a sand bunker on the 3rd hole at Seminole Golf Club. “And, like, everything there is a sand bunker,” Wolff said. His lie was bad, too.
And Dustin Johnson, one of his opponents, was in the fairway.
And Johnson, once upon a time, was once in a waste bunker. On the 18th hole of the 2010 PGA Championship, to be exact. And seemingly most everything far off the fairways at Whistling Straits was a waste bunker. Johnson accidentally thought otherwise. He would ground his club, be assessed a two-stroke penalty and miss a playoff.
Wolff wouldn’t, would he?
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Yes, yes he would.
“I ended up making up double on the hole, so I really shouldn’t have said anything,” Wolff said on this week’s episode of GOLF’s Subpar. “But I was in the right waste bunker, DJ was in the fairway, and I, like, call over and I had a really bad lie, and I was, like, ‘Hey, Dustin, can I ground my club in this?’
“And then I go, ‘Oh wait, wrong guy. I probably shouldn’t have asked you.’”
Wolff is 21. He’s been a pro for just over a year. But his trash talk is beyond his years. His smack is that of someone his senior.
And much like his actual golf game, just think of where he’ll be a decade or so from now.
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“It’s hard sometimes,” Wolff said. “Like, I feel like I’m a pretty good trash talker for not having had that much going on before. You know, it’s easy for Rory or Rickie or Phil or anyone to be a good trash talker because they’re, like, ‘Oh yeah, I’ve made $500 million on the course, and I have my own jet.’ For me, it’s, like, I didn’t really have – I could be like, ‘Yeah, I won the 3M,’ and then Rory could be like, ‘Yeah, I won the U.S. Open.’ And it’s just like, for me, it’s hard.”
Wolff’s worked on it. Much like he has at his golf, too. He’s seen results in both trash talk and tournaments. This year, he tied for fourth at the PGA Championship. He led after three rounds at the U.S. Open. And he’s chirped at DJ and Rory McIlroy, among others.
“I feel like I’m pretty creative with my trash talking,” Wolff said.
“I’ll blow it by Rory by 20 yards, and he’ll be like, ‘Oh, well you haven’t won a FedEx Cup.’ And I’m like, ‘Oh, congratulations, buddy.’ We’re not talking about the FedEx Cup; we’re talking about right now.”