Brandel Chamblee has told a great story about Raymond Floyd doing something incredibly arrogant during a practice round ahead of a PGA Tour event.
Floyd was one of the greatest players of his generation, with four major championships to his name, and he was a huge star when Chamblee came out on the PGA Tour in the mid-1980s.
Back in 1993, Floyd became the oldest golfer to ever play in the Ryder Cup – a record that still stands today.
Now 83, Floyd came remarkably close to completing the career Grand Slam. He won the PGA Championship twice, and The US Open and The Masters once.
The best finish he managed at The Open was a tie for second in 1978, as he just missed out on golfing immortality.
Floyd had a real reputation for intimidating his playing partners and that is perhaps what made him so successful.
And Chamblee has now told a remarkable story about something that he witnessed the American golfing legend do many years ago.
Brandel Chamblee shares incredible Raymond Floyd story
Chamblee has been in the news for demanding rule changes on the PGA Tour over the past few days.
This time, though, he discussed a different kind of controversy – Floyd’s actions on the golf course, when speaking on The Favorite Chamblee Podcast.
He said: “I was playing with Mark Brooks at Honda.
“Brooks and I, we weren’t the fastest players in the world. We were talking, telling stories, I don’t know.
“We were walking off the tee box, maybe the 15th hole, and we were about 100 yards off the tee box, and we hear ‘whoosh’. Somebody had just zipped a ball over our heads without asking if they could play through.
“And it was Ray Floyd. He was walking down, he walks up, his caddie gives him a number right beside us, he never acknowledged us, didn’t look in our direction nothing. He got his yardage, took his time, pulled a club out, hit it on the green, walked up to the green, caddie cleaned the ball, he took his time and putted out.
“He didn’t look at us, didn’t say anything.
“He walked over the next tee and I thought that is the most awesomely arrogant thing I have ever seen in my life. Like, we did not exist in his world. We were absolutely irrelevant to him. The Tour was a lot like that then.“
When Raymond Floyd ‘dug Seve Ballesteros in the ribs’
The 1991 Ryder Cup at Kiawah Island became known as the ‘War on the Shore’ due to the animosity between the two teams.
Floyd was involved in one of the most fiercely contested matches in the history of the Ryder Cup.
He and his partner Fred Couples faced the European duo of Seve Ballesteros and Jose Maria Olazabal.
Ballesteros ‘developed a cough’ during the round and Floyd reacted the only way he knew how.
The Guardian covered the story back in 2006.
“Once, in the Ryder Cup at Kiawah Island in 1991, Ballesteros coughed during Fred Couples’s backswing on the second tee. Couples’s playing partner Raymond Floyd dug Ballesteros in the ribs with his elbow and told him to stop – and he did, for the remainder of the round.“
That incident tells us all we need to know about Raymond Floyd. He was a fierce competitor and he didn’t take any rubbish from his opponents in the Ryder Cup.
After Chamblee’s comments, it’s clear to see that Floyd was rather aloof towards his fellow Americans as well!
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