Getting involved in slagging bouts not the way forward

As the dust begins to settle on Sergio Garcia's remarks concerning Tiger Woods and what century the head of the European Tour is stuck in, it might be worth looking at why golfers are prone to churlish behaviour.

Despite the gentlemanly conduct of most professional golfers and the sportsmanship that genuinely exists amongst these fearsome competitors, the fact is they are trying to beat the best and the rest of the field.

Winners don’t like losing. The reality in golf is that you are not going to win very often unless you are an exception like Woods, who has a phenomenal strike rate for tournaments played.

There is always an element of discontent after most rounds of golf and particularly the final one when you don’t win, despite teeing it up thinking you have a good chance.

So when players are interviewed after another failure there is a good chance of some unguarded emotion and a high probability a disappointed golfer may say something he’ll regret in the future.

Garcia got involved in such a spat in the The Players a few weeks ago, when Tiger won the event and Sergio crumbled on the penultimate hole. In a very simplistic and old- fashioned way, there is an easy way to make a big impression for a golfer, and that is with your golf clubs. That works both ways.

Instant comment
I know we are in a fast-moving and more instant-comment-media era, but there are a few top golfers at present who could probably do with some mentoring from some more experienced and successful campaigners. Their advice, amongst other things, would be to spend more time on the range and less in the media room.

Let’s face it, this recent spat between Woods and Garcia has nothing to do with racism. However, it has everything to do with competitive golfers and their egos. To be able to play and win at the highest level, unfortunately you have to have a self-assured air and an ego bigger than a 36-hole exclusive country club.

Many of these superstars have been held in a state of arrested development. They have been groomed from the cradle to the course for undisputed supremacy.

They have been surrounded by an entourage who are there to serve and feed the egos. The handlers’ prompts have to be what they want to hear not what they need to hear.

Last week at Wentworth it was the head of the European Tour’s time to take a hit for an ill-judged remark.

George O'Grady felt he needed to step in on behalf of the tour and give Sergio some diplomatic assistance. To defuse the row, he suggested that Sergio had a lot of "coloured" friends in America. As he admitted himself afterwards, it was not the most judicious choice of words.

Wrong reasons
Instead of boosting the image of a somewhat flagging European Tour, golf was really making the headlines for all the wrong reasons.

The Golf Channel’s Steve Sands must have been pretty happy he made the trip in order to fuel a superficial ego-clashing incident that started about 15 years ago and was rekindled in Sawgrass a few weeks ago.

Such is the difficulty of making a dedicated golf channel serious. We have dumbed down even lower with this recent name-calling episode.

And I can't see much changing in the future. I remember being on the range at Augusta about 20 years ago with Anders Forsbrand when Sam Snead came strutting up behind us, asking who Anders was. He told him that he was from Sweden. Snead replied that he had been there to play a game with Sven Tumba. He bragged that he gave him two shots a side and still beat him. This, in general, is what we are dealing with in elite golf, a lack of humility even with age.

Strong etiquette
It is a gentleman's game with a strong etiquette where you have 150 guys trying to beat you every week. I understand how difficult it is to stay at the top but getting involved in slagging bouts is not the way forward.

Perhaps we all need to try to get back to basics and focus on these players’ skills. It’s a rare exception to be able to like the player and the person.

The more we keep slopping about in the undergrowth of golfers’ personalities the more disappointing it seems to get.

Let’s get back to watching golf and appreciating their amazing talent, instead of probing the characters of people who have never been fortunate enough to develop their personalities as well as their skills.