Mascots, music, and mayhem: will GolfSixes catch on?
English pair are the stars of the show on an opening day of GolfSixes that rolled out the razzmatazz
This most bizarre of golfing days began with Andy Sullivan enacting a chest bump with a giant pink foam mascot and ended with the young Englishman leading the home charge into the knockout stages.
It was everything the European Tour could have hoped it would be. And just perhaps, slightly more.
A crowd of approximately 5,000 bought into all the innovation and razzmatazz of GolfSixes, the inaugural staging of the 16 two-men national team event, and made this a memorable opening to what the Tour prays will be a sporting revolution.
The teams played six-hole matches of greensomes matchplay. They were split into four groups of four with the top two teams from each group progressing to the knockout stages today.
The unashamed mission is to devise golf ’s version of Twenty20 cricket and while it obviously has so much ground to travel, this was a rousing beginning.
It was vital that the England pairing, of Sullivan and Chris Wood, came through the group stages and advanced to the knockout finale. They did so courtesy of a defeat of the Netherlands and inevitably earned the biggest roars in the process.
If this format is to flourish then it needs to strike that balance of proper sport and enjoyable entertainment. Between them, Wood and Sullivan, the Ryder Cup duo, managed to achieve this as valiantly as any of their rivals.
There were teething problems; namely they need to wire the teeth together of a few of the announcers, who screeched their undesirable presence across this leafy Hemel Hempstead layout. Yet in the main, it all worked.
Saying that, the American Paul Peterson had his own gripes, claiming to have been penalised on the shotclock just because he is left-handed. While the right-handers had the countdown in their eye line on the right of the fairway, Peterson, the world No 256, had his back to it and after encroaching over the 40 seconds, heard the crowds roar as he was hit with a one-shot sanction.
“I really don’t know what’s going on,” he said. “It would have been nice to have the shot-clock in front of me. I had no clue. I feel like I let the team down.” Peterson, the world No256, sounded crestfallen.
In truth, the “shot clocks”, positioned on the fourth, have been one of the undisputed triumphs here, and could well prove the answer in the sport’s battle to end the scourge of slow play. The galleries entered the spirit, shouting “10, nine, eight …” as the clock ticked down. Sullivan embraced the madness, taking it right to the wire, pretending to consult his yardage book, with a big smile on his face as the seconds went by.
He was, undoubtedly, the day’s main star, acting the clown between and sometimes during shots, but, ultimately, having the control of a ringmaster. Sullivan is a natural entertainer, and Wood, his more reserved partner, could only look on and shake his head.
“I suppose I’m the straight man in the duo, but that’s just my personality,” Wood said. “To be honest, I could do without the music and the flag-waving and all that, but I totally get it.
“I think this really worked and going forward, I could envisage these events taking place on courses in big cities and bringing everyone out. Imagine it in Manchester or New York? They’ve promoted this really well and I think, with the odd tickle, it will go from strength to strength.”
Sullivan’s meeting with the mascot, in the shape of the No6, on the first tee, set the tone. “It was the good the first time we did it, but the second time he nearly knocked me over,” Sullivan said.
The 30-year-old had planned for England’s walk-on track to be I Predict A Riot by the Kaiser Chiefs, but at the 11th hour the European Tour discovered that the rates for the Performing Rights Society would be too prohibitive to play anything other than generic music.
No matter, Sullivan would not be silenced. Alas, neither would the announcer, a local DJ who did not seem to know any of the players’ names and just introduced them as their countries. What is palpably not needed were the “celebrity presenters”. If Keith Pelley – the European Tour chief executive who championed this concept – has any qualms it should be that the experience of those on the ground seemed so much more enjoyable than for those on their sofa.
For those in attendance, the accent was firmly on the golf, despite all the shenanigans, but on the Sky broadcast, Vernon Kay and Denise van Outen were too keen to talk about other matters. As Sullivan was playing the second hole of the crucial decider, Kay approached him and, after a few inane golf queries, said: “Some people might not know you collect tropical fish, Andy?” No and some people might not care. A little later Van Outen was talking salsa dancing with Richard Boxall, the golf commentator whose Latin connection amounts to once winning the Italian Open. It was unnecessary and detracted from the action, which is there to be sold. Of course, an English victory today would help in that regard. “This now gets serious,” Wood said. And all the while, the player he calls “my little friend” stood there and giggled himself silly.
‘Sullivan embraced the madness, pretending to consult his yardage book with a big smile on his face’