Poults, R-Mac in tweet row over spikes

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bruced
March 29, 2011

Metal spikes – good or bad? Ian Pounter and Rory McIlroy couldn’t agree in their twitter war or words last week.

Metal spikes – good or bad? Ian Pounter and Rory McIlroy couldn’t agree, one way or the other, in their twitter war or words last week.

Poulter, one of golf’s busiest and most followed ‘tweeters’ isn’t at all impressed by metal spikes and was clearly angered by the damage they did at Bay Hill last week.

The Englishman found the greens so scuffed up in the first round of the prestigious Arnold Palmer Invitational on Thursday, in fact, that he went straight into a tweet after his round that said: “The greens got crusty out there this afternoon, baked in the heat & wind & plenty of spike marks. Why do people still use spikes?”

One of the quickest answers that came back at him was from Ryder Cup team-mate Rory McIlroy who said with some sarcasm: “I wear spikes! Problem!?!? If you got your swing speed over 100mph, you might need spikes too!”.

The young Northern Irishman added a smiley at the end of his tweet to try and keep the subject from getting too heavy, but Poulter didn’t say anything to indicate that he saw the funny side of things.

And nor did a number of other players at Bay Hill, it has been reported.

According to the US blog, www.weiunderpar.com, both England’s Justin Rose and Sweden’s Henrik Stenson complained that metal spikes were a problem in certain conditions, though neither called for the small numbers of players still using them to be banned from the practice..

It should be noted that away from the professional circuit, the great majority of clubs around the world, both private and public, have banned steel spikes and insist that only soft spikes be worn on their courses..

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