Steve Elkington, widely recognised as the most hated man in golf, has always had a ready-made excuse for his unadulterated crassness. Ever since he enjoyed his five minutes of fame for winning the 1995 US PGA, ‘the Elk’, an unreconstructed son of back-country New South Wales, has cornered the market as an ocean-going oaf. He once made a notoriously awful remark about a female golf writer’s body, and saluted the decision by Michael Sam to become the NFL’s first openly gay athlete by quipping that the player was topping the charts for the “handbag throw”.
For the 2013 Senior Open at Birkdale, Elkington surpassed himself, making a horribly off-colour remark about local Pakistanis. Sexism, homophobia, racism: it was almost a full house. The backlash against Elkington was so fierce that he needed a police escort during his third round, even if his explanation for the slur was prosaic. “Being Australian, I was unaware that my use of language in relation to the Pakistani people would cause offence,” he said.