Jordan Spieth wants golf to crack down on abusive bettors. Fair enough. The problem is he’s being paid millions by FanDuel to push sports betting to the same people he’s now criticizing. That’s not a good look.

The Setup

Spieth’s comments came after Wyndham Clark copped serious stick from the crowd at the US Open. The world No. 9 was jeered repeatedly, and spectators eventually got ejected for crossing the line. During the press conference that followed, Spieth raised a legitimate concern: betting-fuelled harassment could compromise the integrity of professional golf, where gallery behaviour genuinely affects player concentration on tight shots.

It’s a real issue. Golf isn’t like football, where 50,000 screaming fans are part of the experience. A single heckler can disrupt a crucial putt. Spieth wasn’t wrong to flag it.

The Contradiction

But here’s where it gets awkward. Spieth signed as FanDuel’s first official PGA Tour ambassador back in August 2021 and has been actively promoting the company ever since. His recent social media posts? Packed with FanDuel promotions. At the time, he said partnering with a sportsbook would be “foolish” to pass up and that it would actually make golf better by driving interest.

That was then. This is now.

You can’t simultaneously tell people to bet on golf while complaining about the consequences of people betting on golf. Spieth’s essentially arguing that the product FanDuel is selling him to promote creates a problem that needs fixing. The cognitive dissonance is painful.

What Could Actually Work?

Some fair points have emerged in the pushback. Critics rightly note that FanDuel isn’t going to stop people wagering on tournament golf, so what’s the actual ask here? Tighter spectator conduct rules? Sure, and the PGA Tour should enforce them. But that’s not really a betting problem. That’s a crowd management problem.

If Spieth genuinely believes betting-driven harassment is damaging the sport, he could start by stepping back from the sponsorship money and using his platform differently. Instead, he’s having it both ways: taking FanDuel’s cash while publicly hand-wringing about the very activity that makes him valuable to them in the first place.

That’s not advocacy. That’s just poor form.

What the team thinks

Carl Mitchell says:

Baz makes a fair point about the optics, but I’d push back slightly on the broader framing. Yes, there’s a tension between Spieth’s FanDuel deal and his calls for accountability, but the industry actually needs more voices like his calling out the bad actors, not fewer, because problem betting behaviour genuinely does damage the sport’s reputation and ultimately hurts the operators who depend on sustainable markets. The real story isn’t hypocrisy, it’s whether the betting firms are actually putting teeth behind their responsible gaming commitments when a marquee athlete raises the alarm, and that’s where Baz should be turning the heat.