After Sergio Garcia’s ‘fried chicken’ comments last month, England-born rookie Eddie Pepperell was lucky he didn’t end up in hot water in referring to the Irish Open crowd as ‘potatoes’.

Pepperell found himself bombarded with complaints after his post Irish Open first round comments on Twitter.

Despite being born in Oxford, and the famed worldwide centre for learning, the former double Faldo Series champion, Pepperell went onto Twitter saying:  “Great Irish weather. Potato’s (his spelling) everywhere.”

Eddie Pepperell upsets Irish Open supporters with ‘potatoes’ tweet. (Photo – www.golffile.ie)

Not surprisingly the 22-year old, who had shot a 71, then had to remove his comment and then went into overdrive covering up his social media blooper.

He said:  “Haha that last tweet annoyed a few people. My apologies.”

But that didn’t seem good enough for some of his 4,761 followers as he then posted a third message:  “Truthfully I wasn’t referring to the people as potatoes I was referring to the weather conduciveness towards growing potatoes!”

Last year, fellow England golfer James Morrison was fined by the European Tour for a Wales Open tweet:  “Thanks Celtic manor.  Dump! One more round then can’t get over that bridge quick enough.”

Despite apologising, the Tour later issued a statement declaring players would be sanctioned for ‘offensive, threatening, disparaging, hurtful or otherwise’ comments in any public media.