In September 2025, a Ryder Cup crowd at Bethpage Black booed European players off the tee box, cheered missed putts, and forced the PGA of America to bring in extra State Police. Then, in June 2026, a U.S. Open crowd at Shinnecock Hills did much the same to its own eventual champion, jeering Wyndham Clark from the first tee through the back nine and getting several spectators ejected along the way. The pattern has sparked the same complaint about how Long Island treats the players it comes to watch.

That is exactly what Golf Channel’s Eamon Lynch addressed in a clip the network posted to X on June 22. He did not soften his point. Instead, he tied Clark’s treatment directly back to Bethpage and delivered a blunt verdict on the venue’s future:

“The PGA of America is supposed to go back to Bethpage in 2033 with the PGA Championship. That should not happen. These people do not deserve a major championship.”

Lynch acknowledged Clark’s complicated reputation going into the point, but he wasn’t interested in stopping there.

“Narrative that Wyndham Clark’s not necessarily a popular guy, and that contributes to it. Okay. But, you know, it’s a societal problem. We live in this era. People are kind of gambling on golf. All of that, I get it. But Long Island golf fans are a stain on the game of golf. That’s what we saw at Bethpage. It’s what we see every single time we go to Long Island.”

It’s worth being precise about what that statement is. It’s Lynch’s own characterization of an entire region’s fanbase, not a fact, and he frames it as his opinion throughout.

What Lynch described as repetitive and predictable is backed by reporting. At Bethpage last September, European players endured sustained boos, heckling timed to their backswings, and crowds that openly cheered missed putts. Rory McIlroy took much of the abuse. One fan threw a drink that struck his wife, Erica, and an emcee stepped down after leading a chant from the first-tee microphone.

McIlroy didn’t hold back afterward, calling the conduct unacceptable and abusive, and saying golf should be held to a higher standard than what he saw that week. European captain Luke Donald said some of what happened, particularly comments timed to disrupt players mid-swing, crossed a clear line, and the PGA of America responded in real time by adding State Police and ramping up on-screen behavior warnings.

Something similar could be said about Clark’s week at Shinnecock, which followed a similar shape. He was jeered from the first tee onward, and reports throughout the championship described a crowd that stayed hostile no matter how well he played. Some of that hostility traced back to his locker-room outburst at Oakmont last year, an incident he’d already apologized for, and one fans clearly hadn’t forgotten. Clark won anyway, and he didn’t pretend the atmosphere had been easy.

“It’s pretty rare in a US Open or a major to have fans kind of boo against your shots or cheer for bad shots. Some of it’s self-deserved. I kind of brought it on myself.”

That was Clark himself afterward, splitting the difference between calling out the crowd and owning his part in why it showed up the way it did.

While all these were highlighted by Lynch, he also offered a solution in his comments on the show. That solution was Augusta National, which sits at the opposite end of this spectrum. Patrons, the only term the club allows, face a strict no-phone policy, a code that bans yelling and disruptive behavior outright, and a removal process that can escalate to credential forfeiture or a lifetime ban. The club’s reputation for decorum rests on those rules being enforced consistently. And that is the solution that Lynch offered, a model to fix the lack of decorum in golf.

“Maybe the golf in its entirety needs to take the Augusta National model. No phones, no tolerance, no second chance.”

He tied that frustration to a bigger problem: some fans now seem to treat disruptive behavior as entertainment, filming themselves heckling players in the hope of turning someone else’s bad moment into viral content. It is also a familiar complaint from him. Lynch has made versions of this argument before, including after the Ryder Cup, when Bethpage was already drawing the same kind of scrutiny it is facing again now.

That does not change the official plans. Bethpage Black is still scheduled to host the PGA Championship in 2033, and the PGA of America has given no indication that is changing. What Lynch’s comments do is reopen a debate golf has been having for months: how loud is too loud, where does passionate support cross into abuse, and whether Long Island’s crowd behavior fits the standard the sport expects anywhere else.