Rory Pushes Back: "It's golf at the end of the day. It's not football"

Commissioner Jay Monahan has downplayed issues with fan behavior as part of welcoming new fans to the sport, as I noted for Golfweek. But he also said the uptick is the price of being in the world of sports where rooting against someone is the nature of things.

From Rex Hoggard's GolfChannel.com piece where Monahan is quoted replying to McIlroy's suggestion of cutting off alcohol sales. 

"In any sport, you go to an away game, in any other sport, and people aren’t rooting for you. Sometimes out here you’re going to have fans that aren’t rooting for you, but they can’t interfere with what you’re trying to do competitively.”

After a WGC Dell Match Play round 2 win over Jonny Vegas, McIlroy was asked about heckling in golf and disagreed with the Commissioner's view that golf is in the same boat as other sports.

I made my comments last week on St. Patrick's Day when everyone was just a few too many deep. I don't know, I'm all for people coming out here, having a good time. I don't know. It depends.

I think what happened to Justin Thomas at the Honda, that went over the line. I think that was too much. Because that's not -- it's golf at the end of the day. It's not football. There's decorum, there's etiquette, there's a lot of that that goes on in golf. Not that it doesn't go on in football, when you are on the field you can't hear all that stuff. We're a little thin rope that divides the fans from us, you can still hear what they are saying.