It is an experience that will be familiar to many women. A professional golfer has published video footage of a man giving her unsolicited advice on her technique, citing as his qualification to lecture her his 20 years of playing the game.
Georgia Ball, a PGA pro, was filming her swing at a driving range when the man stepped in uninvited to tell her where she was going wrong.
Posted on Instagram with the caption “Can you believe he said this?”, Ball can be seen glancing towards the camera and laughing politely, but incredulously, at the man’s tips.
“Excuse me, what you’re doing there, you shouldn’t be doing that. You should be … right through. Swing and follow through,” the man told Ball after she had fired a ball down the range. Referring to her backswing, he told her: “You’re … too slow on the way up.”
Ball, 26, who added the caption: “So, the guy next to me tried to give me swing advice”, tried to explain to him she was working on developing a new technique, so was working through each component of her swing slowly.
Undeterred, the man pressed on. “No, I know. What you’re doing there is you’re coming back too slow,” he told the professional coach, before delivering the killer line: “I’ve been playing golf for 20 years.”
As Ball shot a look at the camera, he added: “What you need to do is follow through a lot quicker than you’re doing there.” Ball appeared to disengage from the conversation, before deciding to try once more to explain she was playing that way because she was working on changing her swing.
But, interrupting her, the man suggested she have another go. Ball, flashing her eyes at the camera as she turned away from him, hit a second shot. She could not help “laughing in shock” when he suggested that shot, which she said was about as good as the first one, was “much better”.
Ball decided to try one more time to explain she was deliberately going through her swing slowly. But, interrupting again, the man reminded her that he has been “playing golf for 20 years”.
Alongside tips, the man offered encouragement. “Keep doing that, anyway,” he said.
“Thanks for your advice,” Ball replied.
While people commenting on her video argued that she could have put the man in his place by telling him that she was a professional golfer, Ball told BBC Radio 4 that she was a “humble person” who would not go looking for an argument.
“For me to turn around and say ‘I’m a PGA pro’ … it’s not in me to do that,” she said. “I have a lot of interaction with males and females every single day. And I’d say it’s mostly always positive.
“For me personally, it’s just … get everyone involved in the game, work together on it, we just want to grow golf as much as we can.”