{"id":43488,"date":"2026-02-19T23:09:44","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T04:09:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/2026\/02\/19\/violating-the-rules-causes-laughter-thats-the-worst-i-hate-him\/"},"modified":"2026-02-19T23:09:44","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T04:09:44","slug":"violating-the-rules-causes-laughter-thats-the-worst-i-hate-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/2026\/02\/19\/violating-the-rules-causes-laughter-thats-the-worst-i-hate-him\/","title":{"rendered":"Violating the rules&#8230;causes laughter. &#8220;That&#8217;s the worst. I hate him.&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p class=\"\">Hao Tong Li knows where the story is going within seconds of it starting. he laughed.<\/p>\n<p>Then he interrupts.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s awful, dude,&#8221; Lee said. &#8220;I hate him.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I hate him.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Of course, LI is a joke. Appearing on The Smiley Show podcast this week, he did a lot by retelling a moment from the 2019 Presidents Cup that caused a small stir at the time. The setup is as follows: On the third day of play at Royal Melbourne, Lee and international team partner Marc Leishman faced Americans Justin Thomas and Rickie Fowler in a foursome match, and after hitting his tee shot into the trees on the right side of the second hole, Lee punched out &#8211; but there was a problem.<\/p>\n<p>advertisement<\/p>\n<p>Thomas was not in the hall. There is no penalty for playing out of turn, but according to Rule 6.4a (2), a player may give the offender another hit.<\/p>\n<p>And Thomas and Fowler asked Lee that.<\/p>\n<p>We continue our podcast exchange here (you can listen to the entire episode here). For a little background, know that Lee was playing in the Presidents Cup for the first time and Saturday&#8217;s game was his first event.<\/p>\n<p>Host Smiley Kaufman said, &#8220;So, Haotong, what does Justin say next to you&#8230;? What does he say?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Literally, that (expletive) made me play that song again,&#8221; Lee said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Where did he hit the first shot? Did he hit it back on the play?&#8221; Kaufman said.<\/p>\n<p>advertisement<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Well, I hit a perfect shot from a small gap, so I thought somebody just makes a play. I&#8217;m the only one on the team who played twice. At least the other players played three times. So it&#8217;s my first game and I&#8217;m very excited. But I don&#8217;t know anything about that rule. You know, I learned it now. And I was like, okay, I like to play quick, so I&#8217;m going to play some ready golf.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Kaufman said: &#8220;I agree.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Hao Tong: &#8220;Yeah, I did it. Then the boss looked at me and said, &#8216;Hao Tong, I don&#8217;t think you can play that game.'&#8221; And I said, &#8220;What do you mean?&#8221; JT says, &#8220;This is match play.&#8221; I said, &#8220;Yeah, what do you mean?&#8221; He said, \u201cYeah, you\u2019re going to play again.\u201d I was like, &#8220;What (expletive) are you talking about?&#8221; \u201d<\/p>\n<p>Kaufman said, &#8220;So the rules people said, &#8216;Yeah, Haotong, you&#8217;ve got to get another shot?'&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>advertisement<\/p>\n<p>Lee said: &#8220;Yeah, and the rules guy came and reeled it in and said, &#8220;Oh, we have to play it again.&#8221; What do you think? Hit a tree. And they were both laughing so hard at me. \u201d<\/p>\n<p>However, Lee&#8217;s retelling ended well.<\/p>\n<p>He says he is now friends with Fowler and Thomas.<\/p>\n<p><em>Editor&#8217;s Note: Click to listen to the entire episode of &#8220;The Smylie Show&#8221; with Lee. <\/em><em>here<\/em><em>. <\/em><\/p>\n<p>In this post, a rule violation causes&#8230;lol. \u201cHe\u2019s the worst. I hate him\u201d appeared first on Golf.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hao Tong Li knows where the story is going within seconds of it starting. he laughed. Then he interrupts. &#8220;That&#8217;s awful, dude,&#8221; Lee said. &#8220;I hate him. &#8220;I hate him.&#8221; Of course, LI is a joke. Appearing on The Smiley Show podcast this week, he did a lot by retelling a moment from the 2019 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43489,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[17],"class_list":{"0":"post-43488","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-golf"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43488\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}