USGA Backtracks On Justin Thomas Twitter Trolling: "We realize he did not avoid a discussion"

I can only imagine the email our late great friend Frank Hannigan might have sent reading about the USGA PR account trolling a top 5 player over cancelled meetings about new rules gripes, only to learn that the trolling was completely uncalled for. Screen captured here is the original Tweet before all of this sleeps with Luca Brazi:

No apology of course, just egg on the face.

Back to our late friend Hannigan who’d be cooking up another Letter From Saugerties suggesting he never imagined it’d get worse than Walter Driver taking a private jet or Tom Meeks losing control of multiple U.S. Opens.

My first reply to the former Executive Director would inevitably have been about the reader replies to the USGA’s Tweet and how many expressed a total loss of faith in the organization. But I’m guessing his reply would have been something to do with the GIF’s about the Twitter walk back, which are pretty magnificent.

Ultimately, however, it’s hard to imagine how the USGA is able to recover from this with top players or insiders following this bickering online.

Certainly, any kind of effective regulation on distance will never happen now and it’s hard to imagine how players ever let up about anything course setup-related, even if the griping is unwarranted.

A sad day all round and arguably the darkest in USGA history, which is saying something given too many to chose from in the last decade.