GREAT DEBATE: Is it fair to whip up the crowd?
YES, says Mark Townsend.
WEEK in, week out the golf fan doesn’t get an awful lot back. Perhaps a tip of the cap, maybe an open palm, both of which will have been pointed in no particular direction, and, if you’re very lucky, and still a small child, you might be rolled a (used) golf ball.
Yes, yes, I know we’re not there to interact with the players, only to marvel at how they launch their drives with such apparent ease and feather bunker shots to a matter of inches yet, unless you are within a few yards, you only really get a snippet of the process involved to produce such magic.
At a Ryder or Solheim Cup there are, for two days, four matches out on the course and, for another day, 12 at the most.
Not many of the 40,000 or so fans are going to get many close-ups of any action and are therefore reliant on an electric atmosphere to make their day. Players simply tipping their cap isn’t going to make this happen.
But a Sergio Garcia bounding down a fairway to see where his approach has finished, or a Boo Weekley galloping off a tee with his driver between his legs, is.
Where’s the harm in this?
The home crowd loved it, the television camera loved it and any European fan with a sense of humour will have done likewise. And if you think Weekley was trying to gain a quick psychological edge over his opponent then Oliver Wilson didn’t even know about it until after the match.
Obviously the timing of this is everything. Gesturing to the crowd to ‘make some noise’ when your opponent is still to putt is probably best avoided but, at the same time, if you drain a 50-footer, whether on home or foreign soil, you should feel free to react.
This is sport and, once every couple of years, it’s a team sport so passions will run high. You’re playing for your team-mates, the fans and anyone European with a passing interest in the game.
Take American Solheim Cup star Christina Kim (pictured) – there is unlikely a more vocal, more excitable, and to some golf fans, a more annoying figure in the game.
Yet if you ask any of her opponents, the ones who supposedly are being distracted, who they have a problem with and it is anyone but Kim.
How often does golf make the headlines? Pick up pretty much any newspaper and, unless it’s a Major or Ryder Cup week, you’ll do well to find a couple of paragraphs.
Switch on the news and, again, pretty much nothing
These are the weeks for golf to show itself to be the exciting, dramatic and enthralling sport that it is.
Nobody is looking for the players to start acting in a forced, unnatural manner but only to show that there is a spark, and an obvious enjoyment, behind the endorsed cap every couple of years.
Part of sport is to follow your heroes. Personally speaking I have only ever had three in this sport and, quite likely due to the passing of years, none are still contending on either the European and PGA Tours. Everyone appears so media savvy it is a difficult business to warm to too many yet, during Ryder Cup week, you take very quickly to all 12 of your team.
There are more smiles, more fist pumps, more hugs, more high fives, more mind games, more controversies and it is, from start to finish, sensational whatever the final outcome.
And while we’re at it, let’s not be so quick to jump all over the Americans.
Very generally speaking they do things differently, they are louder and more outgoing. So when they celebrate with some hoopin’ and hollerin’ let’s not go down the grating, irritating route (while it is always ‘unbridled joy’ in our case) but just accept it as part of the team game.
NO, says Dan Murphy.
IT doesn’t pay to be overly smug when comparing the values of your favourite sport with that of others, as rugby union fans have recently discovered.
But even so I think I am on – relatively – safe ground when I say the behaviour of players and fans alike generally portray golf in a favourable light among sports.
By and large, golf is an individual sport and for the vast majority of the time in the professional game it is one man (or woman) against 100 or more others.
As a result, only in exceptional cases does it become a case of a large partisan crowd cheering on one player at the expense of another.
It happened to Jack Nicklaus in the early part of his career when Arnold Palmer was the King and nobody wanted this chunky, (comparatively) charisma-free upstart to take down their hero.
More recently, Colin Montgomerie would be able to tell you that American galleries are generally happiest when one of their own is leading the way.
While the 20,000+ fans that gather in the bleachers around the 16th green at the FBR Open in Phoenix each January certainly, shall we say, like to express themselves.
But these are exceptions, and the issues of crowd involvement and overly raucous player behaviour in golf only really come into play at team events like the Ryder and Solheim Cups.
The most infamous example came at the 1999 Ryder Cup at the Country Club in Brookline, although curiously it was the USA team rather than the more excitable elements of the galleries who eventually disgraced themselves the most.
All week, the support had been partisan, to put it politely, with Monty on the receiving end of such fearful abuse that his father could no longer bear to follow his singles match and the Scotsman’s opponent, the gallant Payne Stewart, being moved to apologise on his countrymen’s behalf.
Then, on the 17th green of a pivotal singles match, Justin Leonard holed a putt down the length of the green and most of the American team took leave of their senses and galloped across the putting surface.
This would have been bad enough and excessively triumphalist had it settled the match. But since Jose Maria Olazabal still had a putt to halve the hole, and the match would go down the last regardless of whether it went in or not, their actions were unforgivable.
All week – and in truth since 1991 at Kiawah Island – the Ryder Cup atmosphere had threatened to turn distinctly un-golf-like. And now it had.
Afterwards came the recriminations and, eventually, apologies of a kind.
But more importantly was a realisation that things had gone too far and that the Ryder Cup was sport and not war. The delaying of the 2001 match because of 9/11 certainly played a part in adding this much-needed dose of perspective.
So when we saw the American Solheim Cup stars acting as cheerleaders in September, it struck a nerve.
It’s not that there is anything wrong with engaging the crowds, or in the home team receiving the benefit of home support. This is a feature of every spectator sport.
But an integral part of golf is respect toward your opponent. The players (almost without exception) appreciate that.
But the fans do not. When whipped into a frenzy by the excitable likes of Christina Kim they were unable to distinguish between hoopin’ and hollerin’ to encourage the Americans and behaviour that was simply off-putting to the Europeans.
This is not part of golf. You can intimidate your opponent and excite the galleries with your scintillating play, but that’s as far as it should go.
So please, ladies and gentlemen, let your clubs do the talking in future.
YOUR VIEW
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