As Maria wrote last week, Paulina Gretzky accompanied Dustin Johnson to the Ryder Cup in France this weekend. Paulina’s presence was supposed to silence rumours about their troubled relationship, which started when Paulina deleted him from her Instagram. But almost all of the other players were joined by their partners. If Paulina had stayed home, it would have been unquestionable confirmation that they’d still not been able to sort out their sh-t. So did they sort out their sh-t? We’re talking about Dustin Johnson. And where DJ is concerned, there is always drama. 

Multiple outlets, including the Telegraph, Golf Digest, L’Equipe, and The Sun are reporting that DJ and Brooks Koepka threw down on Sunday at a party. First of all…these names. It’s like Brett Kavanaugh’s PJ, Bernie, and Squi. Considering were talking about a rumble, maybe the comparison isn’t that far off. DJ and Brooks are close. They train together. They have their own nickname, “the Bash Brothers”, because they’re both so long off the tee. When Jacek first started talking to me about Brooks Koepka a few years ago, my first reaction was… his name is BROOKS? He was like, what? I’m just saying when we’re talking about a dude whose name is Brooks, I have some thoughts. 

Anyway, according to L’Equipe, there was already some tension between DJ and Brooks on the plane en route to Paris last Tuesday. Then they were paired together and, as you know, the US side lost, badly, to the Europeans and dudebros are not known for handling losses very well. Brooks’s reps have denied that the fight happened. But the Telegraph and Golf Digest say that according to multiple sources: 

They were at a party with the European Ryder Cup team when the incident occurred…witnesses were "clearly shocked and upset by the nastiness, which was very threatening." The duo played together in Saturday afternoon foursomes, losing to Justin Rose and Henrik Stenson. The Golf Channel and the Guardian posted similar allegations to Corrigan's initial report.

Specifically what happened to cause Johnson and Koepka to be separated is unclear. A source told Golf Digest that Paulina Gretzky, Johnson's fiancee, was a central figure in the incident. Koepka's girlfriend, Jena Sims, was also involved.

According to The Sun, Brooks “exploded with rage and threatened to flatten his close pal” after the “Americans popped into the European team room to have a beer with their Ryder Cup conquerors”.

BEER!

Again with the beer!

Beer is having a really bad week. 

The Sun’s sources go on to say that:

One of the European team WAGs also witnessed the incident. And another onlooker revealed Paulina was “clearly shocked and upset when it all kicked off”. No one seems to have any idea what prompted the crazy bust-up.

But tempers appeared to cool down once the pair were dragged apart and taken to “neutral corners” of the room.

Really? No one seems to have any idea? 

Golf, like most sports communities, is a very insular world. There is a code. Which is why it wasn’t surprising to people in that world when the National Enquirer blew open the story of Tiger Woods’s infidelity and other shenanigans a few years ago. Suddenly they were all judgy and sanctimonious about his behaviour. As IF. It’s not like they weren’t keeping his secrets. 

So it’s bullsh-t that “no one seems to have any idea”. They clearly have some idea if, in the story, which ostensibly is about DJ and Brooks getting up into each other’s faces, they’re including vague mentions of Paulina and Jena. And when you factor DJ and Paulina’s recent estrangement into the situation, well, I’m sure you’re already thinking of the possibilities. 

And they say gossip is the domain of women. 

Please. Gossip isn’t confined to the living room. Gossip often originates in the f-cking locker room. There is no setting more fertile for gossip than where egos live alongside crushed beer cans and performed masculinity. How they’ve managed to rebrand what goes down in there as honourable competition while distancing themselves from the practise of gossip, and feminising it in the process, is a conspiracy as old as time.