Thought for the Day:
If you want the rainbow, you’ve got to put up with the rain
We need to talk about Kevin
Those of you who watched Kevin Na’s extraordinary performance at the Players’ Championship will probably have one of two possible reactions – acute annoyance towards someone who needs to buck up, or deep sympathy for a soul in torment because he has developed a pre-shot routine that takes longer to complete than a Colin Montgomerie press conference. I find myself leaning towards the sympathetic end of the spectrum. For those who didn’t see him, a quick recap. At its worst, his routine consists of seven waggles (you can’t stop yourself from counting them), a full swing in which the clubhead swishes over the ball, a step back, step forward and re-address the ball (while the caddy moves in behind to check the player’s alignment), several more waggles and then the swing itself which, more often than not, sends the ball straight down the fairway. Watching all of this is like being allowed into an experimental psychiatric facility, where bizarre behaviour is encouraged in order to study it and hopefully find a cure. It is reminiscent of Sergio Garcia a few years ago when he gripped and re-gripped his club to such an extent that you feared he would develop a repetitive strain injury. Not surprisingly but with enormous disappointment I noticed that the reaction of some in the gallery was as wantonly cruel as it had been to Garcia. In his case they counted out loud as the number of re-grips escalated. With Na, they simply shouted things like ‘Hit the ball’ while he was still halfway through his tormented drill. Is this kind of malicious delight in someone else’s travails unique to American galleries or do you think it would happen over here?
I am reluctant to suggest, as some try to do, that golf watchers on the other side of the Atlantic are all loud, boorish imbeciles and that fans in the UK are, to a man, well-mannered, civilised and at all times show competitors the respect they deserve – although the continued inanity of ‘Get in the Hole!’ or ‘You’re the Man’ make it difficult at times. And there is enough evidence from televised events in the UK to banish the notion that we are all paragons of gentility. Nevertheless, it does appear that there is a minority of sports watchers in America who think that the price of an admission ticket buys them the right to offer an opinion, no matter how loud, obnoxious and unwanted it may be. In stadium sports, like baseball or American football this is perfectly acceptable but in golf it is not and if the PGA Tour had any respect for the game, or its members, it would throw these morons out of the venue.
As for Na, he admits, with disarming honesty, that he has a problem, that he’s working on it and will find a solution. He should be given the opportunity to fulfil that promise.
Hail the Master
You may have read that just over a week ago, Phil Mickelson, Hollis Stacy, Peter Alliss and Sandy Lyle were inducted into the Golf Hall of Fame, and rightly so. But they were joined by a fifth person of whom you may never have heard, sportswriter Dan Jenkins. He is an 82-year-old native of Fort Worth, Texas, irreverent, irascible, opinionated, unflinching in his judgements and, in my view, the best golf writer still working today. He once played the course over which the first 12 Open Championships were held and wrote: ‘The green was there, all right, as are all of the greens at Prestwick, but you never see them until you are on them, which is usually eight or ten strokes after leaving the tee.’ And if you were in any doubt, he later added: ‘You would like to gather up several holes from Prestwick and mail them to your top ten enemies.’
On another occasion he wrote: ‘Bad shots are funny… especially when somebody else hits them.’
He comes from the same Texan town that produced Byron Nelson and Ben Hogan, played golf with Hogan at least 40 times and still maintains he is the best he’s ever seen. During his induction speech he told the following story:
‘One day in 1956 [Hogan] called me at the paper on the phone and said: “I’m going to play an exhibition for the US Olympic fund, and I want you in the foursome.” And I said: “Ben, there’s got to be somebody better than me.” He said: “No. You’re the one I want. We’ll have a lot of fun. My brother will play, there will be four of us.” So I go out there, I work half a day. I expected maybe a couple hundred people. There are 3,000 people lining the first fairway. I somehow got off the tee okay down the fairway without injuring myself or anybody else, and then I topped a 3-wood, then I topped another 3-wood, then I top-scraped a 5-iron, and all I wanted to do was dig a hole and disappear. I could hear giggles in the gallery. Who is this idiot? How did this guy get here? Then I realized Ben was walking beside me as I dropped my ball and he gave me the greatest golf tip at the time under those conditions I’ve ever had. This proves he had a sense of humor.
‘He said: “You can probably swing faster if you try hard enough.”
Quote of the Week
I don’t fear death, but I sure don’t like those three-footers for par.
Chi Chi Rodriguez