Duncan Stewart calls spate of driver sabotages ‘quite worrying’

Scottish European Tour pro Duncan Stewart has described a recent spate of players having the settings on their clubs altered as ‘quite worrying’.

Speaking to bunkered.co.uk this morning, the 33-year-old said he found out that his Callaway driver had been tweaked when he took the decision to visit a tour rep prior to the French Open.

Initially, he managed to convince himself that it was something he had done – despite rarely tweaking his driver – but after Bernd Wiesberger posted about his Titleist driver being altered after the second round at Le Golf National, it raised concerns for the Scot that there had been foul play involved with his, too.

“I asked one of the Callaway reps to have a look at my driver because it wasn’t going as well as normal,” he told bunkered.co.uk.

“He put it back to what should’ve been neutral and the grip was around the wrong way – and it had only been re-gripped two or three weeks ago.

“I’m not one of those that tweaks my driver every week and when I saw Bernd’s tweet, it convinced me more that someone had changed it. The more people you speak to, the more it seems to have been going on.”

Players’ equipment is predominantly kept in a bag store on-site at each European Tour event, with only players, caddies and those with access to the locker room able to get into it.

It is that which worries Stewart the most about the goings-on and he admits he’ll be much more vigilant about checking his equipment after the recent events.

“It’s a strange one,” he added. “Obviously you wouldn’t like to think somebody is doing something like that. The only opportunity where something like that could happen is when your bag is in the bag store overnight and that’s something that’s quite worrying because you trust everyone that goes in there.

“I think it’ll be a one-off thing but it’ll make all of us look at our clubs as soon as we take them out on the range to make sure they’re right, whereas normally you don’t bother.

“I would hate to think that someone would deliberately try and sabotage clubs – but you just never know. Maybe it was just somebody trying to have a laugh at a tournament – but it’s not exactly very funny.”