Apparently, my feelings on the golf establishment haven’t changed in the past four years. I wasn’t aware of this until yesterday, but there’s something to be said for consistency.
Jason Day
With that, this weekend I will be rooting for charismatic 25-year-old Australian Jason Day -– the leader after Day 2 — to win the Masters, instead of the guy who likely will be the sentimental favorite, 53-year-old Fred Couples.
This is because most fans of Fred Couples sort of look and act like Fred Couples, and it’s about time golf expanded its cultural and ethnic horizons.
Crowning a younger, worldly champion like Day might help carve this path.
Anyhow, this was the argument I had planned to bring yesterday to the William Hill Sports Show, on which I’ve become something of a regular guest. The show runs Fridays from 5 to 6:30 p.m. on 94.5 ESPN Radio.
With the second round of the Masters finishing up as we took to the airwaves, I knew the golf tournament would be the topic of at least one segment.
In an effort to make sure I was prepared, I decided I was going to dust off my “new school > old school” argument about golf, and I remembered that I had penned a blog post about it a few years back when a then-59-year-old Tom Watson came within a missed 8-foot putt of winning the British Open.
I tracked down the post -– which exists on a now-defunct free blog site I used back in the day -– and re-read it, in order to see if there were any tidbits I could use for my radio spot.
Much to my pleasant surprise, I found out there were quite a few timeless, relevant points from that post that I could use on the show. Moreover, I discovered something else even more surprising … it made me laugh … repeatedly.
This is a rarity on several fronts. For one, I’m a bit of a snob when it comes to humor, particularly from writing. It’s difficult to move me to laughter from the written word, and I don’t find most humorists as funny as many people believe they are.
What’s more, I am by far my own worst critic. It’s an extremely rare occasion in which I’ll look at something I wrote and decide it’s above-average or, dare I say, “good.” This Tom Watson post is pretty good.
I had forgotten almost every word of it and, as I read it yesterday, it felt as though I was reading someone else’s work. I also laughed out loud a few times, and both such reactions are a bit uncomfortable and unusual.
Anyhow, I decided to pay homage to my irreverent take on the golf establishment by re-posting it on my (somewhat) new-and-improved website, where it’s bound to get a few more views than it did on my low-profile, pre-Facebook (for me) WordPress site four years ago.
Enjoy.
No Ground Control For Another Major, Tom (July 23, 2009)
As Tom Watson strolled up the 18th fairway Sunday to the deafening roars of the faithful golf fans in Turnberry, Scotland, you had a feeling we were about to see history.
Tom Watson
Sensing the gravity of the moment, as any sports fan might, a couple of words came to mind as I watched Watson line up his 8-foot putt for the win in the British Open.
Please choke.
Make that six words.
Please, please, please, please please choke.
This was asking a lot, because I knew most of the sports world was against me, including a warm-and-fuzzy ABC commentator who predicted Watson would sink the putt and win his ninth major title at age 59.
Then, as if I had scripted the outcome, Watson approached the putt with that dentist-chair-in-sight squeamishness to which we have become so accustomed while watching Shaq step to the free-throw line.
His stroke also mirrored that of Shaq; no touch, no confidence, no chance.
Mission accomplished.
Although Watson’s miss didn’t technically end his British Open run, we all knew it was over. Similar to Derek Fisher’s 3-pointer that tied Game 4 of the NBA Finals at the end of regulation, Watson’s playoff against Stewart Cink was a mere formality, similar to the Lakers’ overtime walk-through against the Orlando Magic.
Whew. With all due respect to Major Tom –- and a guy with eight majors to his credit deserves his share -– the last thing the golf establishment needs is another reason to give more unabashed glory to an old white guy.
The thought of this makes me more ill than all those unfortunate close-ups of the blotched, faded skin on the back of Watson’s neck, to which ABC so regretfully subjected its viewers.
Golf already is bent on deifying the ghosts of its past without any legitimate justification, and a win by Watson would have taken this shtick to unprecedented lows. The sport’s silent majority was still rolling on the putting green with laughter at the fact that the really famous black guy in the tournament missed the cut.
This gave them a chance to celebrate the British Open’s winner as a master of the “old school” style of golf. Well, when perfectly true tee shots hit the middle of the fairway, only to be sucked into an abyss of a bunker 40 yards out of view, this isn’t golf. It’s the old Atari video game “Pitfall” brought to life on a grassy knoll.
Given the alternative, I’ll take Tiger Woods and Anthony Kim smashing their drives 350 yards and drilling 50-foot putts any day of the week. Call me “new school” if you will, but don’t call me on Sunday at 6 a.m. to watch the British Open.
Handing over the “jug” that is bestowed upon the winner to a guy who needs to change his Depends after nine holes -– six or seven on some days, it depends -– would have effectively rolled golf’s clock back at least 20 years, and the sport’s “purists” would have put a death grip on the hands of time to keep it there indefinitely.
Golf doesn’t merely celebrate its past -— it lives off it, present and future be damned. Never has an entity honored dudes who have at least one foot in the grave this side of the local funeral home, and the assisted-care facility with which it contracts.
Whenever you watch the Masters or the British Open, the coverage is flooded with highlights and homage to past champions. Not last year’s champion, mind you, but endless, grainy reels of guys like Bobby Jones, Sam Snead, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and the like.
Without fail, one living member of the Boys Club is trotted out to take part in the tournament. Inevitably, our living legend limps through a round of 97, and his triple-bogey on No. 18 is met with a standing ovation, as if this were some sort of accomplishment.
Really, it isn’t. Such deeply grounded golf traditions only prove that an old fart like Arnold Palmer is, in fact, old.
Watson’s near-miss in the British Open -– though his choke on the final putt was anything but “near” –- is a much more meaningful feat, but that doesn’t mean it’s something we couldn’t have lived without.
For instance, I’d be willing to bet that Rick Barry could beat LeBron James in a free-throw shooting contest today, but I wouldn’t turn on the TV to watch it. Moreover, you don’t see the Lakers letting Jerry West play the first 5 minutes of a playoff game, to pay homage to the fact that he used to be good at basketball, do you? And if they did, would you be impressed?
I’d like to tell you how badly I feel for Watson, but I don’t. Frankly, he was a little too self-indulgent for my taste. When his performance became the story of the British Open, he did everything he could to keep it that way. When was the last time you saw Tiger Woods lead the crowd in the wave, or visibly cry as the other guy sealed a victory?
In the end, Watson’s putt just didn’t have enough ground control to win another major for Major Tom. Although, to his credit, he didn’t go down without a fight.
I could have sworn I saw him replace the ball at least two inches ahead of where he marked it on hole No. 18 (I’ve never understood why golf allows this, seeing as it is physically impossible to place the ball in the exact same spot from which it was moved), and I’m pretty sure I saw Watson purposely break wind during Cink’s backswing on the first playoff hole.
But alas, it wasn’t meant to be. So instead of the jug going to a past-his-prime champion who looks like a dead ringer for William H. Macy — minus watson’s goofy powder blue sweater vest and pants — it went to an underachieving first-time winner who has lookalike qualities of his own.
The 36-year-old Cink, coincidentally, is a dead ringer for the third-place finisher, 36-year-old Lee Westwood, save for the latter’s goofy neon green sweater vest and cap. This merits mention because the loud attire is the only way to tell the two apart.
That, and the fact that the Alabama-born Cink was the one holding the trophy at the day’s end. I would have preferred watching it go to Westwood, because the England-born golfer at least would have given the tournament a quasi-homegrown champion around which you can build a decent story.
Even so, watching Cink break through and capture his first major still strikes me as more relevant than Watson choking, cheating, farting and crying.
While the latter made for an interesting side show for one weekend, the former will have a more of a say in golf’s future.
And it’s about time the golf establishment gave “new school” players their due.
Rob Parker is just the latest cornball to spout off on ‘First Take’
Last Thursday, ESPN suspended commentator Rob Parker 30 days for referring to Washington Redskins rookie quarterback Robert Griffin III as a “cornball brother.”
I was surprised Parker didn’t get a raise. There’s so much hypocrisy surrounding the episode that it’s almost impossible to decide where to start. For those unaware, Parker, a sports columnist and often irreverent commentator, made his comments on ESPN’s “First Take.”
Rob Parker
“First Take” is the network’s highly criticized, highly rated sports debate show that puts less of an emphasis on substance than it does on insisting its hosts having a confrontational, if not controversial style. The bolder, the better, and as much as the viewing public despises Skip Bayless, his job likely never has been safer.
He and his employer relish his role as public enemy No. 1 in the sporting view, and the show, like professional wrestling, is done with a sort of implied wink and nod that suggests the network won’t disclose the degree to which the theatrics are staged, so long as the audience doesn’t complain.
Robert Griffin III
Parker, who is black, essentially called the football player an Uncle Tom. Of course, this is inappropriate. However, the show makes its living by crossing the line on a regular basis. Parker likely has been encouraged to be bold and uninhibited, and probably thought he was just doing his job.
How can ESPN repeatedly spit in the face of its viewers, then, when Parker made his unfortunate comment, tell them it’s raining? The double-standards here are astounding, and they include the fact that other employees have done the same thing without consequence – hello, Jalen Rose – and that the words spewed by hosts Bayless and Steven A. Smith often are just as disparaging as what Parker did.
The difference is that the comments from Bayless and Smith are like a series of rib-crunching body blows, whereas Parker went for the first-round knockout.
But first, let’s start with the network’s most blatant example of a double-standard in regard to the words of Parker. Last year, Rose, a basketball commentator who sometimes appears on “First Take,” directed a film about the “Fab Five” teams at Michigan, where he famously played alongside Chris Webber and others in the early ‘90s.
In the film, which appeared in ESPN’s “30 for 30” series, Rose spoke of his hatred for Duke. He said he despised its white superstar, Christian Laettner, and also resented the school because, “it only recruited black players who were Uncle Toms.”
This prompted a written response from Duke alum Grant Hill, who is still in the NBA:
http://thequad.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/16/grant-hills-response-to-jalen-rose/
Rose took some heat for the comment, and spent the next few days doing a series of cringe-inducing interviews in which he alternately tried to defend what he said or gratuitously backtracked, depending on who was doing the asking.
It was far from a satisfying response but, within a few days, the furor basically had died down, but ratings for re-runs of the “Fab Five” movie had gone through the roof. I don’t remember anyone calling for the firing of Rose, though he was a trailblazer for calling another man an “Uncle Tom” on ESPN.
The rules aren’t the same for “First Take” stalwarts Bayless or Smith, either. Perhaps the biggest knock on Bayless – deservedly so – is that his criticisms and insults of athletes have a distinct vitriol to them that suggest a personal vendetta or agenda on his part.
This perpetual lack of professionalism could be a fireable offense, but you can bet it won’t be so long as “First Take” keeps drawing viewers.
For example, Bayless for years has referred to Miami Heat forward Chris Bosh as “Bosh Spice.” In one fell swoop, Bayless is questioning Bosh’s determination and heart, his manhood and – as a bonus – making a juvenile word play on the player’s surname.
Bosh, to his credit, confronted Bayless on the show, and showed more class than Bayless ever has.
If you’ve ever listened to one of Smith’s rants, you’ve likely come across his preferred pronunciation of Slava Medvedenko, the Ukrainian former basketball player who spent several years with the Los Angeles Lakers. Smith’s contemptuous, shameless treatment of Medvedenko – Smith has inexplicably defended it many times – turns the player’s four-syllable last name onto about a 10-syllable insult.
While not overtly racist, Smith’s derisive delivery of “Med-vuh-DANK-Oh!” smacks of sophomoric ethnic ridicule, mixed with a needless mean-spirited touch.
In fairness, Smith has toned down his obnoxious alter-ego over the past few years, and his commentary is much more palatable because of it. Even so, when you compare the body of work of Smith and Bayless over the past five years, you could argue ESPN not only cultivated, but encouraged the environment in which Parker blurted out his “cornball brother” comment.
And although I can’t speak to Parker’s motivation, I wondered if his issue was less about the quarterback’s race as it was an underhanded allusion to resentment toward the media treatment of Griffin, who some believe isn’t held to the same standards as others in his position.
I think Griffin is a great player who, like fellow rookies Andrew Luck and Russell Wilson, have performed beyond expectations and made this one of the most exciting rookie classes in NFL history. I also believe Griffin has escaped criticism for some immature behavior that some of his contemporaries, such as Cam Newton, have taken heat for.
For example, I thought Griffin’s public plea for the Heisman Trophy in a nationally televised interview after his last regular-season college game lacked humility, but I also believe he wouldn’t have won the award without it.
Newton was widely panned for suggesting, before his rookie season, that he wanted to be an entertainer and a showman, in addition to a great athlete.
By comparison, Griffin suggested that his celebration – which he termed “Griffining” – should be patented and marketed. This came after his first NFL touchdown pass, and yet it seemed nobody pointed out that such a boast might have been a bit premature. Conversely, Newton has been criticized for his “Superman” routine when he scores a touchdown.
Moreover, when it was announced Griffin would be held out of a game against the Cleveland Browns because of an injury, the quarterback went on Twitter to emphasize that the decision wasn’t his.
This is far from a crime in this age of social media, but perhaps a tad immature. Still, Griffin seemed to get a free pass, whereas if Newton or someone else had done the same thing, they probably would have a taken some heat for it.
I think it’s important for the media to always have an awareness of whether they are treating people and situations fairly, regardless of who is in involved, and whether the coverage is positive or negative.
If we regularly pan Cam Newton for the same behavior Robert Griffin gets away with, then there’s a dilemma of bias at hand: Either Griffin deserves more scrutiny, or Newton more slack, but we can’t expect to have it both ways without anyone taking notice.
The same holds true for media accountability for comments such as Parker’s. He deserved consequences for his actions, but instead of making an example out of only him, ESPN might want to look at the environment “First Take” has created in which such commentary can hardly be considered shocking.