Olympic Broadcaster Drops F-Bomb During Golf Competition

Some broadcasters have been making headlines for all the wrong reasons at the 2024 Olympics — and one golf analyst let her excitement get the better of her.

Canadian golfer Brooke Henderson shot three birdies in the second round of individual stroke play on Friday, August 9, and celebrated one of them with her caddie. Her excitement rubbed off on NBC’s Morgan Pressel.

“She’s f—kin’ fired up, you love to see it!” Pressel declared, seeming to forget for a moment she was on live TV.

Pressel, 36, was a pro golfer herself, competing on the LPGA tour from 2001 to 2021 and finishing second in the 2011 LPGA championship.

The broadcast quickly moved on after Pressel’s slip as she either didn’t realize what she said or felt it best to just keep going. Neither NBC nor Pressel have commented on the incident.

Pressel’s miscue comes the day after track and field broadcaster Steve Backley misgendered Team USA shot putter Raven Saunders, leading to his broadcast partner correcting him on air. Saunders uses they/them pronouns, and when Backley referred to their multicolored dyed hair using she/her, Jazmin Sawyers interjected.

“Well, we can’t see them very well,” she corrected. “Raven Saunders is actually non-binary and wearing the mask there, we’re quite used to seeing them with interesting attire.”

On Sunday, August 4, Leigh Diffey credited the wrong runner with the win in the men’s 100m final, giving it to Jamaica’s Kishane Thompson rather than USA’s Noah Lyles.

“The men’s 100 was epic & closest of all time! My eyes & instinct told me Kishane Thompson won. Obviously, that wasn’t the case,” Diffey wrote via X on Monday, August 5. “I shouldn’t have been so bold to call it, but I genuinely thought he won. I got it wrong.”

With those incidents as perspective, it makes an errant F-bomb seem trivial. Regardless, social media didn’t let Pressel’s slip go unnoticed. A nine-second clip of the broadcast made its rounds on X, with golf writer Ryan Ballengee and sports media outlet Awful Announcing quickly sharing it.

For a sport known for its quiet, reserved broadcasts, viewers seemed to like the change in pace.

“Can’t say I dislike it,” Ballengee wrote via X.

“Shocking f bomb from the usually measured Morgan Pressel,” another fan wrote. “The Olympics have transformed her into Jon Rahm and I’m loving it.”

Brandon Contes of Awful Announcing, however, wasn’t sure Pressel dropped the F-bomb at all. He speculated that Pressel may have caught herself mid-word and tried to reverse course. He argued she may have said, “She’s fuh…getting fired up.”

It’s hard to tell, but that’s not what it sounds like.