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I watched a good part of the US Open on Saturday, and some on Sunday. What's with the on-course spectators, are they blind?

How many times did I see someone hit a drive, and the crowd would go wild cheering, clapping and whooping it up. The camera would follow the ball and show it land 20' in the fescue! Crowd still cheering.

Same on the par 3's or second shots. Golfer would hit a shot, crowd roar, ball ends up 15 yards short of the green, or flies directly into a trap.

Worse yet is that idiot yelling "in the hole" on par 3's when the ball is absolutely nowhere near the ~!@#$% hole.

Oh well, wish I could have been there, maybe this is just a jealousy rant!

That seems to be how it is on any event on tour these days. They probably don't even look at the ball. As soon as they hear "ping" they cheer as loud as they can. I wonder what the players think about this after they hit a bad shot.

Just havin' some fun, GenErr. Know what ya mean!
[This line added to avoid the "your post is too short" message.]

LOL. I just made sure to add the 25 character minimum post rule because a lot of forums I frequent have a bunch of posts that wholly consist of "I agree" or "I know!" or things like that. I thought we could do without that kind of stuff here. :)

The yelling as soon as they hit the ball is at most tournaments now, for better or worse. The pros seem to ignore it - maybe they've gotten used to it. Not that I will ever be in that position to have people cheer a shot that I hit, but it would drive me nuts! Overall, I thought the spectators were very good at the Open. Openly rooted for Mickelson, but you could hear a few yelling "Goose" after the last putt. He didn't get the ovation Phil would have got, but I thought they gave him a well deserved standing O - people understand that Goosen played better and deserved the victory. Well done!

Pretty neat post JimSomebody!

Thanks, GenErr; couldn't resist! Now, to actually address your question, IMHO there are a few possible reasons for the crowd's enthusiasm:
--Some were just plain happy to be there and were in a great mood.
--Some wanted to be part of the moment in some way.
--Some wanted to get on TV (even if only audio).
--Some may have been, um, "overserved."

Above possibilities are predictable. But maybe there's another possibility, too, for at least some gallery-ites: They wanted so much to see a great shot that they believed they had, and so they cheered. This speculation is based on my own experience of attending about 10 or 15 pro golf tourneys (granted, that's not a lot). At least once during every round I've attended, I got very close to a player's ball (could read the brand name, etc.). Now, the only time the gallery gets that close is when the player has hit it some place he shouldn't have, and now he must hit a recovery shot. As a gallery member, I'm thinking, "This is great! I'm going to see So-and-so, one of the best players in the world, hit out of trouble! What a moment this will be!" So if the guy just manages to get it airborne, I'm thrilled. "Whoa, look at that!" Plus which there's a silly desire to ingratiate yourself to this guy who'll never see you again, if he even saw you in the first place.

I'd love to know what the pro's really think about the fans.