Martin Dempster: Azinger wins ‘clown of year’ award for talking nonsense

Well, that’s the “Clown of the Year Award” wrapped up again by Paul Azinger for the second season running before we’ve even hit the Masters.

Tommy Fleetwood, reacting to a birdie at the 17th on the final day of the Honda Classic, attracted some banal comment from Paul Azinger in his commentator’s role. Picture: Getty.

His comments at the weekend about Tommy Fleetwood and the European Tour were disrespectful, the former Ryder Cup captain seeming to be going out of his way in taking an insular American view about golf to a new level.

“A lot of pressure here,” he said in his commentator’s role for NBC as Fleetwood challenged for a breakthrough PGA Tour win in the Honda Classic in Florida.

“You’re trying to prove to everybody that you’ve got what it takes. These guys know, you can win all you want on that European Tour or in the international game and all that but you have to win on the PGA Tour.”

Really? “That European Tour”, the one in which Fleetwood’s three biggest wins – the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship in 2017 and 2018 and French Open in 2017 – came in stronger fields than the one for the Honda Classic.

Yes, of course, Fleetwood would love to taste victory as well on the US circuit and he’ll be hurting about losing out to Korea’s Sungjae Im on this occasion after taking a 6 at the last when a birdie 4 would have got him into a play-off.

It’s ridiculous, though, to claim that winning on the PGA Tour is all that matters, Azinger also having made himself a laughing stock in the game when he said that Francesco Molinari’s title triumph in the Arnold Palmer Invitational was the “biggest moment” in his career at a time when he was the Open champion.

Seriously, what does Azinger think the European Tour is? Does he believe it’s a circuit where any Tom, Dick or Harry can turn up and win over and over again?

If so, that is complete and utter nonsense because, every single year, the standard on the European Tour seems to go up another notch, with 21-year-old Finn Sami Valimaki being the latest to prove that after becoming a first-time winner in only his sixth start on the circuit in the Oman Open on Sunday.

Also at the weekend, Azinger apparently pulled a face when he talked about Lee Westwood’s 44 wins around the world, suggesting that the two on the PGA Tour are all that really count in the grand scheme of things.

He has not only triumphed all over Europe but also Japan, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, South Africa, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Korea and Australia, but, yeah, let’s just forget about them because he came out on top in two events played in the US.

Come on Paul, think before you come out with rubbish like this again because part of professional golf’s real attraction at the top level is down to it being a global game, with players such as Fleetwood and Westwood being far better all-round players than so many of the one-hit wonders we see winning on the PGA Tour.