ESPN pulls incredible troll of late-arriving pro at PGA Championship

Garrick Higgo was late to his tee time on Thursday morning at the PGA Championship by “one second” and received a two-shot penalty for his tardiness.

On Friday afternoon, ESPN ensured he wouldn’t make it two days in a row … with the best troll of the golf season so far.

Perhaps you saw the story from Garrick Higgo’s disaster start at the PGA Championship on Thursday, when he was assessed a two-shot penalty after arriving less than a minute late for his tee time to start the second major of the season.

Higgo’s penalty was one of the rarer feats of major championship rules inanity. It is exceedingly unusual to see a player miss his tee time, even if, as he explained on Thursday afternoon, he was only a few seconds behind his scheduled arrival time.

“I was there at 7:18 and 30 seconds, you know what I mean?” he said after. “I don’t know. I don’t want to be there 10 minutes early. I know that five minutes is fine. I thought I had time. I was obviously too casual, yeah.”

Higgo showed impressive resiliency by shooting one under despite the penalty. Without the two-shot penalty he would have been tied for the first-round lead.

On Friday, he arrived not only with a chance to make the cut but with a chance to vault himself into an unlikely spot near the top of a crowded Aronimink leaderboard. Of course, he also arrived with a chance to show he’d learned a thing a two from his mistake on Thursday.

The latter seemed to attract the attention of ESPN’s golf broadcast team, which handles one of its lone events of the year annually at the PGA. As Higgo arrived on screen about 40 minutes into the network’s coverage of Friday’s second round, ESPN flashed a graphic on the screen that showed the fans at home they were paying attention to Higgo’s time management, too.

As the golfer hit his warm-ups and chatted with his caddie and coach, ESPN’s graphic showed a countdown clock with the minutes (and seconds) until Higgo’s big second-round start.

The troll quickly earned the attention of social media, which delighted in seeing the network poke fun at one of golf’s most good-natured players.

And, to the great relief of all involved, the countdown clock worked: Higgo made it on time to the start of his second round at the PGA Championship, successfully leaving his Thursday embarrassment behind.