Jordan Spieth highlights a major issue the PGA Tour needs to fix

The PGA Tour is on a positive trajectory with a new CEO in charge and an improved schedule on the horizon, but Jordan Spieth believes there's a major issue in professional golf that needs to be addressed. Speaking ahead of the 2026 John Deere Classic, Spieth outlined the dangers that legalized sports betting has brought to the PGA Tour. 

More specifically, Spieth hypothesized that the fan abuse Wyndham Clark endured at the U.S. Open was tied to the rise of sports gambling. 

"I think the one thing that I’ll point out is I do think that betting in golf is something that’s going to have to be tackled here soon," Spieth told reporters at TPC Deere Run, per Golf Digest, "because I don’t know how much of the Wyndham scenario was the fact that it was enticing to bet the field versus Wyndham on Sunday in a legalized betting state. And you could have had people out there that are essentially, you know, have $100 to $10,000, depending on who it is, on the field versus somebody else."

Throughout the final round at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club, fans outwardly rooted for Clark to blow his lead. The New York crowd urged Scottie Scheffler and Sam Burns to make a run at Clark and heckled the leader relentlessly.

Heckling isn't against the rules of golf, but it does open the door to shouting in a player's backswing to affect his shot. That, Spieth says, is the slippery slope sports betting could cause.

"In golf it's tricky because you could actually impact the outcome if you wanted to," Spieth said. "It may not last very long, but you could impact a shot if you wanted to. I don’t know of another sport that you could impact as a fan like you can in golf. So I don’t know how much that’s having to do with it, if it's different than it used to be...

"I will say that from what I’ve seen, a lot of times it has to do with betting, and that is in the last five years. We'll see what happens with that."