Phil Mickelson calls this breach of golf ethics a ‘huge problem’. is she

Phil Mickelson calls it a “big problem” in golf, an unhappy consequence of Boom Covid.

Overstuffed sheets? The sharp pace of the game? Not exactly.

In one the last post at X, the six-time major champion and sometimes social media provocateur railed against what he sees as a scourge of insatiable bunkers — sandy minefields littered with the footprints and wedges of players who can’t be bothered to fix things.

“It is so disrespectful to everyone playing behind you to not dig the bunkers properly (or repair the course markings),” Mickelson wrote. “Since Covid, this has become a big problem even at the best clubs.”

Is Lefty right? Brian Green, a longtime member of Association of Golf Course Superintendents of America and director of golf maintenance at Lonnie Poole Golf Course in North Carolina State, says yes.

“It’s gotten worse,” he told GOLF.com.

Part of it, Green says, is a tagging gap—new players who picked up the game during the pandemic and never got the memo about leaving the course the way you found it. But it’s also a Covid hangover. Remember when we didn’t have to touch flagsticks or rockets? “People got used to that kind of no-contact golf,” Green says. “And many of them have kept up the habit.”

Green is not ungrateful for the entire initial game. Full tip sheets are “a good problem to have,” he says. But when you spend roughly 20 percent of your maintenance budget on bunkers, seeing them fall into disrepair. Recently, Green watched a player take two hacks into a bunker and walk away without so much as seeing a rake that was steps away. Green drove up and had a chat with the mocker.

“I don’t usually go up to golfers during a round and say nothing,” he says. “But in a case like that, I just felt I had to.”

So, yes – it’s a problem. But like most annoyances on the course, it’s privileged. And how upset about it do you want to get? In the thread in which Mickelson’s post appeared, some commenters went further in venting their dismay, condemning the issue of bunker ethics as a symptom of wider societal rot.

“This extends beyond the golf course,” one post read. “It’s like people have lost all their soft skills since Covid.”

Or maybe it’s just that they’ve been spending too much time on social media.

Bottom line: If you’re lucky enough to play golf, you probably shouldn’t let a few unstable bunkers put you off. They certainly don’t have to send you into existential despair. Much of it comes down to managing expectations. On a busy public course, you should know that imperfections—and lapses in etiquette—come with the territory. The rough won’t always be perfectly mowed, the greens won’t always be glassy, ​​and the sand may look like it’s been run over by a small herd. So what? This is golf in the real world.

It’s also worth remembering that bunkers are supposed to be dangerous. They are meant to test your skills and patience. The world’s highest-ranked course, Pine Valley, doesn’t even have a rake. Players are asked to calm things down with their feet and move on.

Somewhere along the line, golfers’ expectations grew. Between the hyper-manicured private clubs and the pristine conditions we see on TV, we’ve come to believe that every bunker should be as carefully tended as a sand mandala. But perfect bunkers of lies are a modern luxury, not a birthright. They didn’t always get into the game.

If you really can’t stand it, make a local rule among your friends: If your ball rests on a mark, you can pick it up and put it close — still in the bunker, but off the mark. Then play your shot without complaint. And, of course, dig in when you’re done.

Because the truth is, splitting the course cuts both ways. A messy bunker can say something about someone else’s behavior. How you react to it says something about you.