The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Tee to Green Steve Scott All that matters is the money
When it all comes down to it on the PGA Tour, all that really matters is the money. The vast sums paid to participants on the world’s most prominent golf tour are what counts, nothing else.
Not the responsibility for being the primary shop window for the sport worldwide. Not in setting standards to be followed by the next generation.
None of that stuff. It’s all about “independent contractors”, that depressingly corporate phrase many golfers refer to themselves as being, and making money. To hell with everything else.
Indeed, to hell with anything that causes even the mildest inconvenience to the accumulation of these riches. Anything, in fact, that does not indulge these people and embolden their undoubted sense of entitlement.
We’ll start with JB Holmes, who won the Genesis (former LA) Open after Justin Thomas’ rather dispiriting collapse, but ran into a storm of wholly deserved derision afterwards for his dreadful pace of play.
Holmes is not only the PGA Tour’s new poster boy for slow play, he’s also the most unabashed and defiant of them.
As we know the Tour has a large number of well-established “methodical” golfers, and some of them are of very well-known, major-winning quality.
Yet few are prepared to defend themselves with quite such arrogance as Holmes when their slowness is criticised.
Again on Sunday, the former Ryder Cup player justified his funereal pace of play on the fact that he was playing for millions of dollars.
Even allowing for some slight leeway to be given for players in the final round and on the cusp of a potentially careerchanging win – not remotely the case with Holmes, who has career earnings of nearly $24 million – this is a hugely flawed justification for anything.
Holmes, nor any other golfer, is not entitled to that money and it is not in his right to change conditions of play in order to protect his assumed entitlement to it.
Which is exactly what he does when he slows play to a crawl. He’s enhancing his chances against the rules: effectively, cheating.
I give limited credence to those who point out that the fault is not that of Holmes but the officials who are letting him get away with it.
For a start, most of those who do this are simply deflecting blame for slow play from those actually doing it; more of this inexplicable deference to players, which many of them feel is their right.
If social media is any guide, lots of people believe criticising top players for anything is tantamount to heresy.
Sure, the officials could be far more stringent about applying slow play penalties; indeed, they could even impose one from time to time.
But Holmes and others are materially affecting their playing partners. Golf is supposed to be a game of honour and sportsmanship before it is anything else. They shouldn’t need to be strong-armed by officials into doing the right thing.
I’d like to think that Holmes is blinded to indifference by the money – he certainly quotes it every time he gets mildly rebuked. And it had a benefit for one colleague at least; Matt Kuchar, who must have welcomed a deflection of the derision coming his way.
Kuchar’s slithering in the face of widespread criticism for “stiffing” a Mexican caddie after winning a tournament last year was another
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If social media is any guide, lots of people believe criticising top players for anything is tantamount to heresy
example of the way excess money is tainting the game.
Kuchar, thought to be one of the Tour’s unimpeachable nice guys, won the Mayakoba Golf Classic picking up a tidy $1.3m cheque.
Having employed local looper David Ortiz that week because his own caddie wasn’t available, Kuchar paid him $5,000 for his services – miles short of the accepted 10% of winnings that goes to the winner’s caddie.
Once that became public – and he actually had a voice – Ortiz asked for $50,000, less than half that 10%, but was offered $15,000. Kuchar even said publicly that $5k was “a good week” for a Mexican caddie.
Having ducked and dived the issue for a couple of weeks, Kuchar came in for some serious on-course heckling from rowdy fans at the Genesis Open.
Almost immediately after that he made a complete climbdown, a long (and well written) statement of apology to Ortiz and everyone else, and paid the $50,000.
But the very fact that Kuchar’s original payment and his initial reticence to realise that he had done anything untoward illustrates how far the excessive riches available to Tour players have skewed their perspective of reality.
The Kuchar mess served to allow Sergio Garcia to return to play in LA without much incident, although it appears the Spaniard copped some heckling for his various gardening escapades in Saudi Arabia.
But this is what we’re reduced to; hoping that Holmes is the next target of the trolls in the crowd and it might spark him into some face-saving action.
The court of public opinion – virtually the mob – is the only thing stirring the conscience of selfish millionaires.