I’ve reached the conclusion that writing a golf column is a bit like playing golf in the sense that both writer and player are sustained by the dream that, next time, it will all come good. The bloomin’ wait goes on, eh?
I think it was the celebrated American poet, Emily Dickinson, who said something about reading a book that, “makes my whole body so cold, no fire can warm me.”
In a way, I understand what she was getting at because the sports editor often says to me that the mere thought of reading this Tuesday twaddle sends a shiver down his spine.
Shiver away, boss. Here we go again. This week, it’s the Canadian Open. How the times flies.
That’s a whole 12 months since Robert MacIntyre won his first title on the PGA Tour with his dad, Dougie, beside him as caddie. It was one of the most heartwarming tales of the golfing year.
It was a triumph that also produced a predictably dizzying frenzy on social media. I remember being particularly tickled by one post in the build up to the final round as MacIntyre sat on a sturdy four-shot lead.
The radio broadcaster, Georgie Bingham, was so excited at the prospect of a Bob breakthrough, she stated on the Sunday morning that, “I’m literally going to hold my breath for him all day.”
Given that MacIntyre wasn’t teeing off until about 7:30pm UK time, Georgia was going to have to perform one heck of a feat of respiratory endurance.
Young MacIntyre is pencilled in for his defending champion’s press conference today. Rory McIlroy, meanwhile, is also on the interview list at some point and could face such an inquisition, they’ve probably wheeled a rack into the media centre.
McIlroy, of course, didn’t speak at all during the four days of play at the US PGA Championship as the Masters champion remained as tight-lipped as a Trappist monk sooking on a woodbine.
That was a week in which news emerged that McIlroy’s driver had failed a random legality test. Given equipment is regularly tested to ensure it conforms, that wasn’t an unusual occurrence, but the vacuum created by McIlroy’s silence was inevitably filled with wild speculation and fevered assumptions.
Before you could say, “there’s nothing much to see here”, the molehill had become a snow-capped mountain.
McIlroy has always been wonderfully obliging and candid with the media down the years so his no-show at Quail Hollow was somewhat out of character.
Some would say, however, that his prolonged snub was an abdication of duty and responsibility, just weeks after completing a career grand slam which resonated beyond the game and confirmed his status as a golfing great.
As for another golfing great? Well, Jack Nicklaus gave his own thoughts on media duties last week at the Memorial Tournament that he hosts.
“I’ve always felt that you guys and gals have a job to do, and for you to do your job you need to talk to me,” he said. “And whether I played well or whether I played poorly, if you still want to talk to me, I’ll talk to you. And I always have.”
Unlike in certain other sports, golfers don’t have a contractual obligation to speak to the press after a round.
Imagine if they did? There probably would’ve been a clause etched in the small print of Colin Montgomerie’s terms and conditions stating that, “glowering, seething silences after a missed two-footer on the 18th still speak volumes.”
In many ways, they did. Good old Monty was still a story even when he said nowt.
Compared to more frenzied sporting arenas, golfers, by and large, lead a charmed media existence. There has, however, been evidence this season of a straining of relationships.
After losing out on the Arnold Palmer Invitational title, two-time major champion, Collin Morikawa, side-stepped the media then, a couple of weeks later, gave a reason. “I don’t owe anyone anything,” he said.
In this money-soaked land of milk and honey, where mollycoddled golfers have never had it so good, Morikawa’s assertion did little for the perception that elite performers are an entitled bunch of so-and-sos.
Forget cocking a snook to the media, such shrugging self-importance was hardly a good way to woo a watching public who have become wearied by the riches and ramifications of the arms race that has split the men’s professional game.
Of course, a couple of media snubs here and there is hardly a new phenomenon. In this hysterical age, though, it’s often portrayed as a complete breakdown of the player and press relationship.
I’m sure everyone will kiss and make up. If, that is, the agents and managers of said players allow us to get close enough in these days of increasingly limited access.
Making a guest appearance in his father’s book, ‘Golf in my Gallowses’, many moons ago, the dearly departed doyen, Jock MacVicar, wrote about his engagements with a variety of golfers at the time.
Of the former Ryder Cup player turned BBC commentator, Ken Brown, Jock noted that, “he rarely talks to the press, even on occasions actually running away from a man with a notebook and pencil.”
Not quite ‘Ken on the Course’, as he would become known on the tele in later years, more ‘Ken’s ****ed off from the Course’.
Now, what time is Rory doing his press conference again?
