Don’t fall for the Southern charm
Golf’s got a nasty side like no other sport
TO enter Augusta national each day is to run a beaming gauntlet of polite Southern hospitality. Every other step a good morning, a how are you, a have a wonderful day.
Golfers love it. They love that they can bring their wives and children along for the informal par three competition; they love the way they are welcomed and made to feel special; they love the cabins, the perfection of the surrounds, their drive each morning along Magnolia Lane. They love the beautiful little bubble of the US Masters.
And that is strange, really: because golf’s not like that at all. Golf’s nasty. Golf’s mean. Golf dishes and bitches more viciously than any office bonding weekend, and any other sport.
Reigning Masters champion Bubba Watson arrived this week to discover he was the latest to top golf’s Most Hated list. Other sports don’t have a Most Hated list — not even individual ones, like tennis. Others sports work hard to give the impression that the locker room is a happy, supportive place. They have sanctions for dissent, and breaking ranks can bring the game into disrepute.
Golf isn’t like that. Watson, golf’s most hated, follows a long line of outsiders that includes Phil Mickelson, nick Faldo, Paul Azinger and Rory Sabbatini. Augusta’s public face may be smiling, but underneath? Other sports don’t poll the participants on who they wouldn’t help in a fight — the vox pop that placed Watson as the golfer most likely to end the night alone with a fat lip in the parking lot.
‘Politeness, n. The most acceptable hypocrisy,’ wrote Ambrose Bierce in his Devil’s
Dictionary, and in this way anticipated the mood around modern Augusta by more than 100 years. This may be the 79th saccharine-drenched Masters, but golf is still the sport in which Lee Trevino used his Mexican accent to get under the skin of his great rival, Jack nicklaus. ‘nice shot, Dickless,’ he would say, and then blame it on pronunciation problems.
Watson doesn’t pull stunts like that, but, like with Trevino, there would appear to be a disconnect between the public perception and the private individual. The crowds love Watson, the players do not. Going back to the 2011 Open at Royal St George’s, the veteran
Sports Illustrated columnist Dan Jenkins tweeted: ‘Gossip from the caddie yard: Bubba Watson is a lot more popular with the fans than he is in the locker room.’
That was even before broadcast microphones revealed Watson’s darker side, catching him rounding on caddie Ted Scott at the Travellers Championship. ‘ Water,’ said Watson. ‘It’s in the water. That club. So you’re telling me that’s the right yardage? There’s just no reason for me to show up.’
Of course, Watson wouldn’t be the first to blame the staff. Seve Ballesteros was also famously hard on his caddies. After a similar incident related to poor club selection, he assailed his hapless bag man. ‘It’s not your fault, it’s my fault,’ he told him. ‘It’s not you, it’s me.’ Long tense silence. ‘It’s my fault for listening to a f****** idiot like you.’
So Watson would be left to take a pounding because he’s a phoney. That seems to be the reasoning. The same was said about Mickelson, too. Another huge crowd favourite and, to most casual observers, one hell of a guy, Mickelson earned the nickname FIGJAM long before England’s cricketers gave it to Kevin Pietersen. The letters are an acronym: F*** I’m good, just ask me.
Certainly, Mickelson’s remarkable post Ryder Cup press conference — in which he laid waste to the captaincy of Tom Watson, who was sat at the same top table — suggests there is more to him than a ready smile and a thrillingly gung-ho approach to course tactics. It was every bit as excoriating as Pietersen’s attack on England’s Ashes regime, but without the softening distance. Pietersen at least waited a few months before taking England’s management out in print — Mickelson did for Watson while still wearing his Team USA blazer.
Yet if the worst that can be said is that Mickelson, as a younger man, fancied himself a bit, and that as an older one he feels entitled to his opinions, is that really so terrible? This is a guy who factors 20 minutes for signing autographs into his schedule every day and invariably overruns, even in the pouring rain. Every request is met with a word of appreciation. If it’s an act, it’s a good one. His charity work is famous, much of it anonymous, and not one of the little people — those whose job it is to say good morning, and have a nice day, and marshal the course, and refresh the towels in the locker room — speak negatively of him. He is, apparently, also a massive tipper.
WATS On? Yes, beyond the Bible belt, it wouldn’t be hard to take against a man who provides cloying answers for the ‘Who is Bubba Watson?’ link on his website. ‘Larger than life personality — has not met a stranger,’ writes Bubba. ‘ Christian — loves Jesus and loves sharing his faith. Huge heart — loves doing charitable work and giving back to the community.’ Yeuch.
And yet, he’s basically harmless. If, in reality, he was hanging around street corners looking to mug old ladies, one could see why the rest of golf would want him to get a righthander. But if he is trying to be this nice, good, friendly person — but occasionally shouts at caddies or moans on a golf course when he dumps one in the drink, it is hardly just cause for a beating. There are quite a few in Augusta this week who have never been mistaken for a ray of Georgia sunshine.
It is a singular game, golf. Certainly the way America plays it. Golfers are selfish, golfers look after no 1. ‘The social life was a disaster,’ said nicolas Colsaerts of the year he spent on the American circuit. He recounted the standard tale of rows of room service trays lined up outside the firmly closed doors of hotel bedrooms. The European Tour has a greater sense of camaraderie, he said. Perhaps that it why they don’t conduct polls indicating which player most deserves a slap — and why they tend to win the Ryder Cup.
There were, naturally, exceptions. Here’s Azinger on Faldo, from their days as Ryder Cup captains. ‘nick Faldo has tried to redefine himself, both who he is and who he was. Some people have bought it, some have not. But if you’re going to be a p**** and everyone hates you, why do you think that just because you’re trying to be cute and funny on air now that the same people are going to start to like you?
‘The bottom line is that the players from his generation and mine really don’t want anything to do with him. He did what he did as a player and there are relational consequences.’
It all stemmed, apparently, from Faldo’s comment to Azinger, on winning a head-to-head at a tournament. ‘Tough luck, old boy,’ he sneered, politeness being golf’s acceptable hypocrisy.
But still no match for a smack in the chops, as Watson’s contemporaries would no doubt confirm. Anonymously, of course.