Hot under the collar

• By SHELDON MICKLES
• Advocate sportswriter
• Published: Mar 29, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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AVONDALE — Veteran Steve Elkington and Bubba Watson got into a heated discussion Friday between the 10th tee and green during the second round of the Zurich Classic of New Orleans, which carried over to the end of the round when they did not exchange the customary handshakes.

Elkington would not talk about the incident after leaving the scorer’s tent, walking straight to the locker room. Watson would only say he heard some movement as he was preparing to hit his approach shot to the green on the par-4 hole.

Elkington had hit his second shot and he and his caddy were walking toward the green. The Golf Channel’s microphones picked up the exchange with Watson yelling in the direction of Elkinton and his caddy, “You gonna stop walking, man? Damn. You did it all day yesterday. I tell you what — veterans can kiss my ass.”

Watson later apologized to tournament officials, media and fans and whoever else heard him. He said Elkington tried to calm him down after the incident and the two eventually hugged in a tunnel that leads from the 18th green to the scoring area.

“Everything is good,” Watson said. “You know, he’s not mad. He’s looking at me like a son basically because I am a lot younger than him. He took me aside and said, ‘Look, be stronger in what you’re doing and make sure you don’t do that.’

“I was over the ball and just trying to make the cut and play better, and not getting the right breaks,” he said. “I was already mad for the day and I just took it out on them, and I shouldn’t have. I don’t drink or smoke, but every once in a while I get angry. I said some stuff I probably shouldn’t have.”

Tournament director Arvin Ginn was notified of the problem a couple of holes later and intervened when the players reached the scoring area.

“There was something that happened that supposedly interrupted play,” Ginn said. “One of the players had the potential of doing that.

“In the heat of battle, these players they’re very high-keyed at this point in time. I had a talk with all three of them (including playing partner Shigeki Maruyama) and they were very gentlemanly about the entire thing. They shook hands and there’s no incident here.”

When Maruyama emerged from the scoring area, he looked at a large group of waiting reporters and pretended to be boxing. He then smiled and said, “Big problem.”

Through an interpreter, Maruyama said the incident started during Thursday’s first round and everything boiled over Friday.

“(Watson) said Elkington was noisy and his caddy was loud, too,” Maruyama said. “Elkington wanted to talk with him about it, but (Watson) ignored him. Then, he (Watson) said a bad word.”

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