His wit could illuminate the bleakest of days
On the Saturday of the 2010 Open, St Andrews’ famous Road hole bunker separated Miguel Angel Jimenez from the 17th green. ‘If he gets this within 15 feet, I’ll buy him one of those cigars,’ said Peter Alliss, referring to the giant Cubans Jimenez would smoke while playing.
Alliss then explained that from Jimenez’s position it would be very possible to thin the ball and end up in an even worse position, maybe out of bounds.
So we watched as Jimenez played his shot, thinned the ball, flew through the green and came to rest in a terrible lie, just about in play.
Alliss let the silence ride long enough for reflection. ‘You see, I know a lot of people think I’m an old fool,’ he mused, as if to nobody i n particular, ‘ but I’ ve been watching this game for 50 years.’ And playing it for rather longer.
that is what made Alliss special. It wasn’t simply that he could describe a round of golf, its many moments of triumph and disaster, so exquisitely; but that he did so from a position of knowledge, from having lived the game since his earliest years, the son of Percy, a leading professional in the 1920s and 1930s.
So while Alliss was never one to unload a blizzard of statistics, or to break down the physics of tiger Woods’s swing, he knew golf. he knew the perils of the Road hole just as he knew the lunacy of Jean van de Velde wading into the Barry Burn to play a shot on the 18th at Carnoustie in 1999.
Alliss’s horrified reaction as the Frenchman surrendered a threeshot lead on the Open’s last divided the nation, with some arguing t hat he had been curmudgeonly and disrespectful.
In fact, he called it both perfectly — ‘What on earth are you doing? he’s gone ga-ga. to attempt to hit the ball out of there i s pure madness’ — and poetically — ‘more Jacques tati than Jack nicklaus’ — and later described Van de Velde’s collapse as one of the saddest spectacles he had witnessed. his feel for sport was close to unmatched. he commentated with personality and colour at a time when both are in short supply. he made the odd faux pas. he was plainly a man of his time.
Golf is not, to many, the most compelling sport, yet Alliss entertained. he offered not just insights, but asides. he mined the fun in Jimenez’s warm-up, or nick Faldo’s caddie being dispatched to marshal a crowd, or a kid with his first golf set taking wild swings at the ball.
And when Faldo overturned a six-shot deficit on Greg norman to win the 1996 US Masters, it was Alliss’s description of the two men as they walked Augusta that sweetly encapsulated the upheaval taking place. ‘Look at that,’ Alliss marvelled. ‘Faldo looks a young man again, and poor old Greg, well he looks ready for his bus pass…’ norman did not win another major or PGA tour event.
‘the most sane and comforting voice I ever heard,’ wrote John Cleese yesterday. ‘I always thought that I could cope with the ending of the world if only Peter was commentating on it.’
And, yes, that mellifluous tone, that wit, could illuminate the bleakest afternoon on the links; indeed, his sense of humour may yet be needed.
Alliss once watched as a player conspicuously crossed himself before entering a bunker to play what transpired to be a rather lousy shot. his ball remained determinedly on the sand. ‘Ah, you see, you can’t trust anyone these days,’ Alliss murmured.
Let us hope wherever he is now, they can take a joke.