Good Morning.
Some people make the comment that watching golf on television is like watching grass grow. They find it incredibly boring, a sentiment I've pondered for some time now considering the fact that I love to watch golf on television.
I do not play golf but I played a fair amount of tennis until I had back surgery when I was thirty-nine and turned into a first-rate wimp about doing further injury to myself. With no personal participation, I started watching golf and some tennis on television. I also watch the Super Bowl, the World Series, and the Olympics as a loyal American citizen but for regular viewing I particularly like golf because the participants still act with a certain amount of dignity, although occasionally a player will indicate his frustration with a little body language. There's none of these skirmishes, however, where an entire dugout of grown men rushes onto the field to attack the other team, and of course, you don't have to get into the mess of whether the players should take a knee during the National Anthem and worry about whether someone's brains are getting scrambled underneath a football helmet.
I have previously indicated my sensitivity to sound and perhaps that's a factor with my preference for watching golf. I like the sounds of a volley in tennis but not the pre-historic grunts and squeals that started accompanying it a couple of decades ago. The sound of a hockey puck being whacked, the dribble of a basketball, and the unmistakable crack of a home run are all fine, but not the crunching during a football game, the punches during a boxing match, or the slams and thuds during what is misnamed professional wrestling. The sound of a putt with its muffled clunk into the cup is more my style.
The crowds at golf events aren't quite as well-behaved as they used to be, but the biggest problem is getting them to shut up when someone is trying to drive the ball off the tee or hit an impossible shot out of a clump of trees. Keeping order at tennis tournaments has the same sort of challenges, but at Wimbledon, for example, the chair simply says Thank You to get the fans to settle down, sort of like a parent who uses a word to control an unruly bunch of seven-year-olds: Enough. It's the tone of voice. In golf a course official raises his arms or a sign to silence the onlookers and it seems to work quite well. The crowd roars when someone chips in, but other than that, a golf tournament is pretty quiet compared to other sports, although a baseball game that ends in a 1-0 score isn't exactly a three-alarm fire. Golfers also extend a gesture of gratitude when they sink a putt and I like that. Phil Mickelson is wonderful at it; he tips his cap like a gentleman out of the early twentieth century, but all of them do something to regularly acknowledge their fans.
The Master's is the best. Augusta is a particularly gorgeous course with azaleas and other spring flora, its own pounding theme music, and the green jacket that's the equivalent of an Oscar for best actor. We need a few traditions, a few rules, and a good dose of civility, something that's gone completely haywire in our current culture, and maybe that's why a Sunday afternoon of watching people actually behave themselves while they do something with great skill works for me.
Best regards,
Elisabeth
Comentários