{"id":24160,"date":"2026-06-20T08:44:18","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T08:44:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/24160\/"},"modified":"2026-06-20T08:44:18","modified_gmt":"2026-06-20T08:44:18","slug":"liv-golf-star-becomes-first-player-to-receive-two-shot-penalty-for-club-throw-at-us-open","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/24160\/","title":{"rendered":"LIV Golf star becomes first player to receive two-shot penalty for club throw at US Open"},"content":{"rendered":"

LIV Golf star Joaquin Niemann has entered the history books for an unwanted reason after becoming the first player to receive a penalty under the new code of conduct rules governing major championships in 2026.<\/p>\n

Officials at the US Open handed the Chilean a two-shot sanction on Friday following his fog-delayed opening round at the tournament.<\/p>\n

The 27-year-old was deemed guilty of “serious misconduct” under Rule 1.2b after hurling his sand wedge in a moment of frustration during play at the sixth hole.<\/p>\n

Niemann has since acknowledged he is “not proud” of the incident that led to the historic punishment.<\/p>\n

The trouble began when Niemann, who had been playing at level par, struck two consecutive tee shots out of bounds on the par-four hole.<\/p>\n

His frustration mounted further when he found himself facing a difficult lie, with the golfer spotting ants near his ball and querying whether they were fire ants.<\/p>\n

After officials sounded the horn to suspend play due to darkness, Niemann struck his shot, and the accumulated anger proved too much to contain.<\/p>\n

He launched his club away from him, though he noted nobody was in the vicinity at the time.<\/p>\n

\"Joaquin<\/p>\n

Joaquin Niemann has become the first golfer to receive the two-shot penalty<\/p>\n

| <\/p>\n

GETTY<\/p>\n

The sand wedge was reportedly retrieved and returned to him by a police officer.<\/p>\n

Reflecting on the sequence of events, Niemann explained: “I finished my round, signed my scorecard, and then a referee came up to me and said ‘I need to talk to you’.<\/p>\n

“I knew I had a misbehaviour but I feel like everybody had some and it’s never going to be anything major like a two-shot penalty, you know?<\/p>\n

“They considered with the whole committee that it was a right decision to give me a two-shot penalty.<\/p>\n

\"Joaquin<\/p>\n

Niemann admitted he was not proud to pick up the penalty<\/p>\n

| <\/p>\n

GETTY<\/p>\n

“I was trying to argue back, but it’s their decision, and I feel like I wouldn’t be happy seeing players throwing clubs and behaving that way, so, yeah, I agree.”<\/p>\n

Despite initially attempting to contest the ruling, Niemann ultimately accepted the committee’s verdict.<\/p>\n

He continued: “I hit it two times out of bounds then got pretty frustrated.<\/p>\n

“I had a bad lie, I saw a lot of ants and I was just asking the referee if they were fire ants and he said ‘no’.<\/p>\n

\"Neimann<\/p>\n

Neimann said he ‘couldn’t resist’ but throw his club away<\/p>\n

| GETTY<\/p>\n

“I wasn’t angry asking him. I think they blew the horn (to suspend play for darkness) but after I hit that shot all the frustration came inside me and I had my club in my hand and I couldn’t resist to throw it away. <\/p>\n

“There was no one there, but I’m not proud of it.”<\/p>\n

The code of conduct policy has emerged as one of the most discussed topics of the 2026 season, with several high-profile incidents already occurring at major events.<\/p>\n

Scotland’s Robert MacIntyre and Spain’s Sergio Garcia were both issued reprimands for their conduct during The Masters in April, though neither received the stroke penalties now applied to Niemann.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LIV Golf star Joaquin Niemann has entered the history books for an unwanted reason after becoming the first…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24161,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[44,54,729,692,5574],"class_list":["post-24160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-golf","tag-news","tag-sgg","tag-sport","tag-us-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24160\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}