Top pros like Justin Thomas, Keegan Bradley, Brooks Koepka can’t wait for Philly fans at PGA at Aronimink

The last time English golfer Matt Fitzpatrick played in the northeast region of the United States, he left his parents at home. Aggressive fans at Whistling Straits in 2021 hurled abuse at the golfer and the couple during America’s previous Ryder Cup home game — one encouraged Fitzpatrick opponent Daniel Berger to “slit his throat” — and Fitzy didn’t want them to suffer further trauma.

“They didn’t have a great experience in Whistling Straits,” Fitzpatrick told reporters last year. “No denying that they had a bad experience in the past.”

Smart move. Boors at Bethpage blackened the eye of American golf forever in the worst display of bad behavior in the history of modern golf, from lewd and vulgar taunts to throwing a beer on Rory McIlroy’s wife, though the European team got the last laugh with a second straight win.

But Fitzy & Co. knew what to expect from fans in the northeast United States, and, while things have gotten out of hand at U.S. Ryder Cups, golfers tend to embrace fans when they’re rowdy but respectful.

As they are expected to be when the PGA Championship is played May 14-17 at Aronimink Golf Club in Newtown Square. And as they were at the U.S. Open at Merion in 2013 and at the U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills on Long Island in 2018.

Fitzpatrick wasn’t sure if his parents would be coming to Philadelphia, but he wasn’t worried about them this time.

“I would rather play in front of that regularly,” Fitzpatrick recently told The Inquirer. “I’m obviously a big, big football fan — sorry, soccer fan — so, like, that is part of it: the crowd interaction and all. It gets heated, and I always think ‘That’s part of the fun of it.’

“I know they can say whatever they want. It doesn’t really affect me. You know, I’ve heard it all before. I love football so much. It comes with the territory.”

Fitzpatrick is 31, so he’s old enough to recall the exploits of some of England’s worst football hooligans. He supports Sheffield United, which years ago featured the ill-intended Blades Business Crew, a bunch of blokes who made the worst fans in the 700 level of Veterans Stadium look like pussycats. Fitzpatrick has a natural callousness to all but the worst fan fecklessness.

U.S. captain Keegan Bradley won the 2018 BMW Championship at Aronimink, grew up in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts, and played golf at St. John’s in Queens, so yes, he’s familiar with that northeast vibe. He did little to muzzle the miscreants at Bethpage or to dampen his team’s encouragement of the bad actors.

Asked in March specifically if he enjoyed crowds like the ones at Bethpage, Bradley replied, “I love it. Like I said, the people don’t get much (PGA Tour golf), so it’s always a big atmosphere, which is really fun.”

Don’t expect Aronimink to produce an atmosphere anything like Bethpage, but it might be a little more raucous than the patrons who visited the Philadelphia Cricket Club last spring for the Truist Championship, where Justin Thomas tied for second.

“It’s very, very passionate sports fans,” said Thomas, a Kentuckian who is familiar with game-day passion; he’s a big fan of the Bengals and of Alabama football. “You’re going to get that in the northeast. They’re going to shoot it to you straight. That’s their M.O. I mean, the Truist last year, Philly Cricket Club, I loved. I thought the atmosphere and vibe at that event was awesome.”

Former LIV Tour star Brooks Koepka doesn’t always think fans are awesome.

As Koepka careened toward missing the cut last year at the PGA Championship at Quail Hollow in Charlotte, a fan in a tent near a tee box taunted him with a reference to Koepka’s $100 million bonus from LIV and the tour’s guaranteed paydays:

“Guaranteed money does that to ya, Brooks.”

Koepka, a 6-foot-2, 220-pound specimen, snapped. He walked over to the tent to confront the fan, and said, “Want to come down here and say it. Want to come down here and say it? Tough guy now, huh?”

In 2022, Koepka snatched a cell phone from a fan who was walking beside a golf cart in which Koepka was riding and asked him about a match Koepka had just finished.

In the past, however, Koepka has encouraged fans to heckle a rival, Bryson DeChambeau, with “Brooksie” chants, and even offered to buy beer for fans who were ejected for taunting DeChambeau.

In March, as he began his return to the PGA Tour from LIV, Koepka said he generally enjoys fans when he plays in the northeast region. He won that U.S. Open at Shinnecock in 2018, where the fans were alternately supportive and caustic for pretty much every golfer.

“I like it when the fans let you know whether it’s good or bad. They’re brutally honest,” Koepka said. “And it can go one of two ways. Kind of depends on your reaction to it and how you take it, very blunt, straightforward. I like a little bit of chaos. So it’s fun.”