A devastating story about teemarkers and angry professional golfers originally appeared in Athlon Sports.
When his work simultaneously demands that he become an enforcer and counselor of the PGA Tour rules, Mark Russell will make him a stunning diplomat.
“I understand that, I really do,” he tells the player he guilty of having too much aggression towards someone else’s property, inanimate things.
“But you can’t break the damn tee marker.”
Honestly, the majority of players listened as the overwhelming numbers of tee markers lived to see another day. But “the teemarker is a sitting duck,” and members of Curtis Strange and the World Golf Hall of Fame, Ernie Elles, once explained that “no one is made of rocks here.”
“We all have our own feelings.”
In other words, Russell, a longtime vice president of rules and regulations before resigning in 2021, said, “It didn’t always happen.”
“But (the tee marker) is convenient and it happened occasionally in the heat of the moment.”
Case: In the second round of the US second round at Oakmont last Friday, Rory McIlroy expressed disgust at the false drive by destroying a tee marker on the left side of the No. 17 teebox.
Certainly, it was yet another hiccup of McIlroy’s Wild Postmaster ride, but for now I’ve put that discussion to the table.
Instead, find sympathy in our hearts about the unprotected tee marker.
“Because they’re there.”
The answer is provided by the cleverest Sage in the professional golf scene, the respected Billy Harmon, and after a heartfelt laugh at his answer, we found out there is plenty of feed to support the story of breaking the tee marker.
You should also start with a tee marker that may have absorbed the most smashes in the history of the PGA Tour. This is a real pineapple that has adorned all 18 holes at Waiarae CC in Honolulu, which has been holding PGA Tour tournaments since 1965.
Mark Calcavecchia raised his hand and never biased ownership of his moments of fury years ago.
“We blow up Hawaiian pineapple in the fourth hall of the year. “John Houston asked if he had asked if he had pineapple insurance.”
Corey Pavin is another person who once buried the club in the extremely soft pineapple of the 13th tee, which goes a long way to the misfortune of the audience standing nearby.
Heck, even Brad Faxon, chose a gentle player so you could meet – beats with Sony’s open pineapple for a year.
Wake up, a few years ago, the Sony Open tournament official turned to a traditional box-shaped tee marker. They still have a choice, but there’s nothing like the era in which players can easily draw out their anger on soft, ripe pineapples.
“They were more abused than any Teamarker on tour,” Strange said. “Why? Because they were soft.”
While he’s not tolerating such destruction, Strange never overreacts about his competitors breaking the Pineapple Tea Marker at the Sony Open.
“Frankly,” Strange said, “they’ve got a lot out there. Get through that.”
The two-time US Open champion explained, “We all regret what we do, but sometimes it happens.”
For more people than others, Ian Poulter and Tyrrell Hutton have come up frequently because they destroy tee markers in golfer’s highly primitive data searches.
The latter destroyed the tee marker at the 2018 World Cup of Golf at Sydney’s Metropolitan Club.
Later this February in Dubai Desert Classic, Hutton explained that he was guilty of being indicted but threw himself into the court’s mercy.
“Yes, I probably shouldn’t have done it. Does that make me a bad person? No. It was a spur of the moment,” said the volatile but adorable British.
Poulter is brilliant at exoneration of himself. Because he clearly considers himself the only person there in a competitive fire.
“I will not lose my passion,” he declared after smashing a teemarker in Cologne, France at the 2011 Mercedes-Benz Championship.
Four years ago he was responsibly reprimanded for breaking the Teemarker at the Open Championship at Carnoucy and at the British Masters.
“I’m not going to accept hitting bad shots,” Paulter said in his own defense.
“That’s not in my DNA.”
Hitting the poor seems to be in his DNA, but players should always go back for a minute and think about what happened to Australia’s Brett Ogle in the 2001 Heineken Classic outside Perth.
Ogle destroys the tee marker after the wrong drive, and later learns that flying debris cut the 43-year-old woman nearby.
“Piquet’s Harmful Fit” gave an opinion on the Sydney Morning Herald, and Ogle felt it was so bad that he reached out and apologized to the woman.
Certain golf courses test the player’s nerves more than other golf, given the extreme setup.
Oakmont, certainly. But Carnoustie may be even more cruel for golfers. It led long-standingly respected golf correspondent LeWinemaia to write about the actions of Swedish Henrikstenson at the 2007 Open Championship.
“After hitting the eighth first shot and knocking the second method correctly, (Stenson) was unhappy with the R&A teemarker.
In Stenson’s case, it was hard to hide considering the height of the event’s eyes in the Open Championship.
However, Russell said he has heard of the Teemarker being destroyed through Marshall multiple times, as he said that rule officials cannot be anywhere.
“We didn’t have any players we didn’t own (yet),” Russell said. In fact, players have once corrected their former S account.
“(The player) told me, “I didn’t take one big smash, I swipe it and missed it, but on my second swing I got it.”
If there’s deterrent, Russell saw it years ago at the LaJet Golf Classic in Abilene, Texas.
“They used these oil drill bits and big steel tee markers,” laughed Russell. “No one was going to break them.”
Strange laughed, remembering those tee markers.
“We won in 1984,” he said, no, shattering one of them never got into his mind.
He can get hot, yes, but the strange thing was not the Teemarker Smasher, but he understood why others were.
If the PGA Tour, the R&A or the USGA or PGA American PGA thinks it’s a problem and needs to eliminate this tee marker crushing, Strange suggests, “They just put a big stone there.”
Is there a possibility that some of these LaJetty Markers will be found and will be crushed?
Related: No comparison required: Scotty Schaeffler creates his own legend
Related: They Keep Precious Memories Life: Ken Venturi’s Epic US Open Win
This story was originally reported by Athlon Sports on June 19, 2025, and first appeared there.
