First-tee announcer bungles Rickie Fowler’s hometown, Fowler handles it perfectly

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The job of the first-tee announcer is pretty simple. There are really only two things you need to read from a piece of paper: 1) Town/City and State/Country where player is from, and 2) Name of player. Sure, sometimes you have to list a few accomplishments, but that only really gets tricky when Tiger Woods is involved.

At the end of the day, though, these are usually volunteers who probably don’t realise what they’ve gotten in to until the moment comes where there are hundreds of people standing around you in complete silence and it comes time to start announcing. Hence why we get all-time classic moments like the time the Honda Classic first-tee announcer hit for the cycle in 2020, mis-pronouncing Luke Donald’s hometown, getting the year he won the Honda wrong and adding a “Mc” to his last name and calling him Luke McDonald. Or the (many) times Brooks Koepka has been referred to as “Bruce”. Apparently, the job is not nearly as easy as it should be.

Another example of this came in the first round at the American Express tournament, where the first-tee announcer called Rickie Fowler to the first tee and said he was from Marietta, Georgia, not Murietta, California. A classic mix-up that would make “Tommy Boy” proud:

I mean, they are literally an hour-and-20-minute drive away from Murietta. This one should have been impossible to screw up. Alas.

Well handled by Rickie, though. Especially when you consider that stuff like this has happened to him before. Anybody remember Rickie Flower? From MURITA, California??

You can’t make it up.