GOLF: TIPPING POINT:Yes, Suh, it's Masters time, and good 'ol corporate boys the world over have Georgia and uncool millionaires in bad polo-shirts on their minds
IT’S THAT time of year again when lambs gambol, rabbits fornicate, adolescents moan about exam pressure and golf rears its head from the wintry tundra of satellite coverage: Yes, Suh, it’s the Masters later this week, that annual visual feast from Augusta National, home of the “suuuthurn gennelman” and assorted other wealthy redneck good ol’ boys.
Those of us confined to terrestrial coverage will have to make do with live coverage of just the final two days but although some coverage may end up delayed, the promised feast of colour will no doubt be as dazzling as ever. Those pink azaleas, blue ponds and lime green fairways never fail to make that corner of Georgia look as beguiling as a Mint Julep on a warm day.
How appropriate it is then that those ponds are dyed and some of the grass has been known to be painted. How wonderfully golfish that is: a supposedly picture-postcard tableau of taste being interfered with by men wearing clothes only a mother could pick out: managing to make nature unnatural.
Golf is a fundamentally unnatural act anyway. In the whole wide sporting universe, is there anything that goes more against the physical grain than the position required to strike a golf ball?
Hand anyone a tennis racket and the simple act of making contact with a ball is self-explanatory. It’s the same with a hurley: even visiting American presidents have been known to make a sliotar move. More and more Irish people are discovering a cricket bat is less an instrument of British oppression and more a device to propel a hard piece of cork.
But golf: I guarantee you, even Jack Nicklaus, the first time he tried to hit a golf ball, missed. In fact he probably missed hitting the ground. And earth is a pretty big target to miss. With golf, you’ve got to learn the rules of standing upright all over again: head forward, legs apart, arse out, like a pole dancer, but without the heels.
In fact, I would argue golf is an actively dangerous sport. Cyclists can seem on the verge of grisly extinction pushing themselves up various Alps, and steeplechase jockeys know it’s a matter of when, not if, they get hurt.
But never in the history of human-kind has a sport turned so many otherwise normal, functioning people into arse-licking, clubhouse-stalking, tuppence ha’penny peeing down on tuppence, polo-shirt-wearing inadequates.
It’s like joining some weird, mind-altering militia, but without the fun of shooting guns. Golf club membership does something to individuals who are capable of operating perfectly well in ordinary civilian life but are reduced to a naff uniformity in front of other members. And they relish it. That’s the real mind-bending part. They pay fortunes to rub shoulders against a better type of inadequate, all in a desperate urge to fit in.
It is a long time since yours truly stalked a golf course but it ended with being asked to leave for wearing the wrong shoes.
I won’t embarrass the club by naming it – it was Bandon Golf Club in Co Cork – but a senior gentleman who had been buzzing us for a number of holes in a golf buggy with “Ranger” emblazoned on the front finally pulled up and announced that some otherwise unremarkable brogues were verboten and could I kindly go take a running jump for myself.
A grown man taking such interest in the footwear of another grown man is not healthy: even less healthy is that every golfer I’ve told the story to over the years sides completely with buggy boy.
It is little wonder then that the coming week is anticipated by golfers with all the sweaty, back-slapping, faux camaraderie usually reserved for the appearance of a Moriarty Tribunal worthy in the members bar. Augusta is to golf what Sach Khand is to Sikhs, a sanctuary where the full colourful spectrum of humanity can attain a divinely corporate ecstasy and fit in perfectly.
It’s that corporate sensibility that truly distinguishes golf. Only in golf could Ian Poulter’s trousers lend him a faint whiff of rebelliousness. It is also what makes the Tiger Woods saga just so damn pathetic.
Think back to that cringingly embarrassing press conference of just over a year ago when Woods oozed public relations sincerity, placed his hand on his heart and apologised – eyes to camera, Tiger, always look to Nike, sorry the camera – for having lots of sex with many willing young, attractive females.
Playing away from home is not particularly admirable or edifying, and the whole story has been undoubtedly painful for the Woods family. But if the worst that can be thrown at a person is an accusation that they possess a penchant for extra-marital sex, then they’re hardly doing too much wrong.
Even now it’s hard not to look back at Tiger’s self-flagellation at that press conference and wish he’d recognise how ludicrous the situation is: play it for the laughs it deserves and just look up and say: “Where the white chicks!”
But Woods has learned the importance of fitting in just as well as he learned how to play the game. Faint murmurings about race were quickly reduced to deafening silence, even as he began to dominate an event organised by a private club that has been at the centre of persistent racism accusations for decades.
Even when the Augusta chairman Billy Payne came out with that jaw-droppingly stupid statement last year – “our hero didn’t live up to the expectations of the role model we saw for our children” – Woods said nothing, instead of extending Payne the invitation to go interfere with himself that such prurience richly deserved.
If he had, I reckon Woods would enjoy a much more favourable public profile than he currently does. He’s still golf’s big story, though, the world’s media praying he returns to winning form this week instead of having to scribble about some God-fearing, baseball cap-toting, colourless Iowan, a la Zach Johnson.
But there’s one thing Woods has never possessed and that’s a certain cool charm, of a type Ali and Pele managed to exude while dominating their own particular sports. Golf and cool though: not a natural fit.
