A mob of climate protesters stormed the 18th green at the Professional Golf Association’s Travelers Championship in Cromwell, Connecticut, on Sunday afternoon during a pivotal closing moment, setting off colorful smoke bombs and preventing play from continuing.
As Scottie Scheffler prepared to take a putt to win the championship, play was interrupted as the protesters charged onto the green. Police immediately descended on the mob, tackling and handcuffing the protesters as the audience booed, chanting “a**hole” and “U-S-A” as police led the disruptors off the course.
Several of the protesters were wearing shirts emblazoned with the phrase, “NO GOLF ON A DEAD PLANET.”
The storming of the green and the use of smoke bombs resemble tactics climate protesters have employed in recent months.
Climate protesters recently vandalized Stonehenge with powdered spray paint and rushed the field at the Congressional Baseball Game earlier this month. Just Stop Oil, the group behind the Stonehenge vandalism, has also defaced or, at the very least, thrown soup at the glass coverings of, paintings like Vincent Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, Diego Velázquez’s Rokevby Venus and Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. In fall 2022, the group threatened to begin destroying the works of art by slashing the canvases on which they were painted rather than simply throwing soup at them.
Just Stop Oil activists stormed courts at the Wimbledon tennis tournament in 2023, have interrupted numerous soccer games over the past few years, and most recently vandalized private jets at a United Kingdom airport in an attempt to target Taylor Swift’s plane — which was not at that airport.
In May, Just Stop Oil activists smashed the glass protecting the Magna Carta at London’s British Library.
The disruption to the Travelers Championship lasted only a few minutes, with Scheffler’s putt stopping before reaching the 72nd hole and second-place Tom Kim sinking his for a birdie, forcing a playoff. Scheffler ultimately prevailed in the one-hole playoff.