Sports leagues and organizations sometimes take shots at each other, especially on social media. It’s particularly remarkable when one gets deleted, though. That was the case for the PGA Tour on Sunday.
Following the conclusion of the PGA Championship, the Tour’s official accounts on X and Instagram put out a post comparing winner Scottie Scheffler’s 15 Tour victories since 2022 to the 14 achieved by the NFL’s Carolina Panthers over that span (covering the 2022, 2023, and 2024 NFL seasons). The connection was that this week’s PGA Championship took place at Charlotte’s Quail Hollow club, leading to the “when in Charlotte” caption. However, the posts were deleted before long, and The Athletic’s Joe Person theorized that there might be a connection to Panthers’ owner David Tepper, who happens to be a Quail Hollow member and lives on the course:
The idea behind the post wasn’t necessarily a bad one. Remarkably, Scheffler has more wins since 2022 than an NFL team. And the Panthers’ 14 wins are the league’s fewest over that span, so they’re not being singled out randomly, and the local connection adds another angle to it.
However, there is a difference between a stat like this being posted by a journalist, fan, or media organization and it being posted by a league or organization’s official social media accounts. And it’s understandable why Tepper and the Panthers might not have been thrilled with this. (The obvious answer, as to most discussions of trolling or running up scores, is just “play better,” though.) The amusing thing is that they’ve now generated a Streisand effect, though; the deletion of the post seems likely to draw much more attention and accusations of Panthers’ sensitivity than the initial post would have if left alone.