INJURY TIME
“THE ONLY THOUGHT…”
One other aspect of ‘white privilege’ - you know besides claiming you’ve completed your law degree when all you have is a matric certificate - is stealing the spotlight from black people. Step forward, Wayne Player. Son of Gary, who collected a medal from Donald Trump earlier this year, Wayne decided that the celebration of the first black player, Lee Elder, to tee it up at the Masters in Augusta, was a good chance for him to flog golf balls. So as Elder, who was escorted to the first tee in a wheelchair and also needed help breathing from a ventilator, posed for a picture with Player snr., and Jack Nicklaus at the ceremonial start of the Masters last week, Player jnr., snuck a box of golf balls into the photo, by holding them up over Elder’s left shoulder. “The only thought from that point was that it would be cool for fans to know what ball my dad was teeing off with,” said Wayne. “The only thought,” Nah Wayne, there was no thinking beyond your own selfishness, proof that the apple indeed didn’t fall far from the tree.
PLAYING THE FOOL
Not that we should have expected it, given how Gary Player has attempted to re-configure his past attachment to the apartheid government, but Wayne could have done with some reading about Elder’s first time playing at Augusta in
1975. A black man, in America’s south, playing golf - at the time and still until recently, a conservative, white pasttime - at a venue, where women weren’t admitted as members until 2012. Player jnr might have noted that Elder, considered not attending so vile were some of the letters he received about his presence at the tournament. He consulted with friends and family, who urged him to play and then having decided to do so, rented two houses near the course, so that people who may have wanted to kill him, wouldn’t know where to find him. When he ate dinner, during the week and over the course of the tournament, he did so surrounded by as many people as possible - for his safety. If Player jnr only knew, but perhaps he didn’t want to. Why would you, when all you see is a black man as a prop, for you to flog daddy’s golf balls.
LACAZETTE
Well done to Arsenal striker Alexandre Lacazette - not for the two goals he scored Thursday, although those were bloody brilliant - but for the stance he helped initiate before Arsenal’s match against Slavia Prague in Prague. Lacazette had asked and was given permission by the club and Uefa to ‘take a knee’ before kick-off. While that has become the norm for football in the last year, it held particular resonance against Sparta Prague after one of their players was banned for 10 matches for racially abusing Glasgow Rangers’ Glen Kamara in a previous round of the Europa League. Arsenal’s stance was a powerful one, as is the picture of Lacazette kneeling in front of the Prague players - who were all standing.
A NEW ONE
Polish tennis player Hubert Hurkacz, found himself in a bizarre situation when he faced a press conference after his Monte Carlo Masters clash against Italian Thomas Fabbiano.
World number 16 Hurkacz beat Fabbiano 6-3, 3-6, 6-3 to advance to the next round of the competition. After his victory and being requested by journalists, Hurkacz was expecting to get a few questions, in his native Polish and in English when he arrived for the postmatch press conference. However, when prompted by a press officer for questions, nobody spoke up.
“A press conference with no questions, that's a new one,” said the 24-year-old Pole as he walked out of the press area.
COMPLAINTS ABOUT COMPLAINTS
Not to do with sport, but the BBC has received a record number of complaints for the ‘wall-to-wall’ coverage of the death of the chap who was married to the old lady who lives in a palace and 14 other castles in the UK. But the best of those complaints came from 116 folks, who complained that “(the BBC) was making it too easy to complain about its coverage.” We’d like to meet those people for a drink, they sound like fun.