Booze, Boos and a Broken Spirit
Did the Ryder Cup sum up everything that is wrong with America?
I used to play golf with my dad when I was in my teens. Neither of us were very good, but we enjoyed the games we played together. My father had recently got remarried after the death of my mother, so our time together was now more limited.
Those golf matches were important for both of us. For an afternoon, we could just be together, and afterwards we would go and have a bite to eat in the golf club bar. It wasn’t a posh club, just a council-run course where you paid to play. No snobs or membership fees or guys on buggies.
Whenever golf was on TV, we would watch it together. In the early 1990s, only the British Open Championship and the Ryder Cup were on TV. But we would always enjoy watching the final rounds together at the weekend. Even my stepmum enjoyed it, and it became a family tradition.
One thing I learned from playing and watching golf was the importance of etiquette. There were rules and then there were unwritten rules: rules that weren’t written down, but opponents respected, just like in other sports.
For example, in the Tour de France, if one of the leaders gets a puncture or crashes, everyone slows down to allow the rider to catch up. It’s not written down anywhere, and the riders are under no obligation to obey it, but it happens in the spirit of the sport.
In golf, one of the absolute no-nos is speaking or moving when your opponent is about to strike the ball from the tee or putt the ball on the green. It’s just a given.
It’s called being polite.
So I was shocked — but not surprised — to watch the Ryder Cup at Bethpage (NY) this weekend and see the crowd, not just heckling when a European player was taking a shot, but actively abusing the players. Jeered on by some moronic MC cheerleader called Heather McMahan, who thought it would be a cool idea to get the crowd to chant: “Fuck You Rory!” [Rory McIlroy]
Well done, Heather, and a fucking good day to you!
I used to watch a lot of football (soccer), either at the grounds or on TV. Football is cynical. Always has been. It’s got worse as the years have gone on, but it’s always been a mean, unforgiving sport where even unwritten rules are often broken and etiquette is optional.
When I used to go to the stadiums, especially Elland Road in Leeds, where I’m from, it was a bear pit. The atmosphere was always febrile, as though violence could break out at any time. And often did. Then there were the chants and baiting of players, which, unfortunately, were often full of hatred. No place for the faint-hearted. But you expect it. Whether for good or bad, it was part of the game. Part of the drama.
This doesn’t happen at a golf course.
I’ve been to the UK Open golf tournament twice, and while there’s cheering and shouting, when a player takes a shot or a putt, it’s as silent as a funeral parade. Obviously, the clowns at Bethpage this weekend didn’t get the memo.
So what went wrong
I’ll tell you. They let a load of children in wearing their USA painted babygrows and waving their MAGA rattles and flags in the air like babies. Then when they got in, they drank a bit too much orange squash and, after seeing a great big fat blob in the form of Donald Trump, mistook him for Santa Claus. They got excited when they saw their leader, so they started shouting at innocent bystanders who weren’t from the same hellhole they were.
Does that sum it up?
Pretty much. Hundreds of years of golfing etiquette swept away because their leader doesn’t like Europeans (or anyone). So everyone gets blown and throws violent abuse at a couple of Irishmen, Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry.
Some suggested McIlroy provoked the crowd by raising his middle finger. Yeah. And? I would have raised more than my middle finger, that’s for sure. How heavy is a driver iron?
I don’t know why it bothers me that much. Both Shane Lowry and McIlroy are rich men, and now they have won (HAHAHA!), I’m sure victory tastes even sweeter. But there’s something nasty about this. I expect it at a football match. I expect it in the street. But not at a golf tournament.
It upsets me.
It brings back memories of my father and the times we had together, and how so much has changed. Not only have my father and mother passed, but the world is ruled and supported by really bad people. People who have little regard for anything or anybody apart from their own worthless selves. Insular, greedy people who enjoy nothing more than causing misery for others.
Even on a golf course.
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"One thing I learned from playing and watching golf was the importance of etiquette. There were rules and then there were unwritten rules: rules that weren’t written down, but opponents respected, just like in other sports."
Do you know why this is? It's because the game was invented by elite people FOR elite people, in the land of your birth. It reflects desires, strategies and, above all, comportment that are elite values far more than proletarian ones. That becomes quite clear when a proletarian American golfer like Palmer or Nicklaus cleans up tournaments, or if they breach the North American bastion of the sport, the country club.
Think Rodney Dangerfield in "Caddyshack"-and the way Ted Knight reacts to his behavior...
The big American PGA tournaments like the Masters have entry qualifications based as much on social status (entry fees) as they are on athletic ability. International tournaments like the Ryder are even more so. So sometimes proletarian golfers rebel (Scottie Scheffler getting arrested by the police for assault and then winning the tournament he was in after his release; the Saudi-backed Lift tour meant to undermine the PGA's authority) and the judges don't like it.
In an increasingly proletarian-run world, the upper class and bourgeoisie are increasingly limited in the ways that they can legally regulate their "lessers", and golf as an establishment is one of those ways.
At the end of the day, when all the vitriol together with hate, disrespect, lack of decency & humility is the only thing left in you, what remains is to put on your maga hat and flip the finger to portrait to the world who you truly are.
America. The beautiful.
Land of the free (no taboos) $ home of the brave (…….).