Take Me Out to the Ball Game, Take Me Out with the Crowd...
This little column addresses something I've wondered about for years: the absurdity that professional golfers feel entitled to dead silence when they take a swing at a non-moving ball.
If a baseball player can make split-second decisions with a ball hurtling toward his head at 100 MPH as the crowd screams and camera flashes go off, why can't a golfer handle the distractions?
No real reason, I think. It's simply tradition to which the golfers have become accustomed.
I'm not advocating wholesale changes to the way golf is played and viewed, but I do think golfers could stand to get over themselves a bit when it comes to crowd noises. :)
posted by Laura @ 9:26 AM
5 Comments:
Golf has always been considered a gentlemen's sport (much like tennis) and attracts a decidedly upper-class, Waspish audience that's known to repress its emotions (at least in public) and act respectfully. On the other hand, "slob sports" such as basketball, football, hockey and baseball appeal to the unwashed masses who go to ballgames to seek the attention and hurl the ridicule that they're denied in their subordinate, anonymous everyday occupations.
I guess that makes me an attention-seeking member of the "unwashed masses"? LOL.
Laura
The crowd watching the U.S. Open tennis matches must have been unwashed, too. They were very noisy.
You make an excellent point, Laura. Golfers have delusions of grandeur.
"The crowd watching the U.S. Open tennis matches must have been unwashed, too. They were very noisy."
Love it! :)
Thanks, Laura
In general, golf began as an individual sport, and wasn't meant to be watched by other than the people a person was golfing with. All those other sports are definitely spectator sports. You didn't really need to have golf competitions to begin with, because you were competing against whoever you chose to play. Thus you can see how quiet when your buddy's teeing up morphed into everyone in the gallery SHADDAP!
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