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Bring on the noise Silence can be an athlete's worst enemy
Sports Illustrated senior writer Jack McCallum touches on a Hot Button issue each Monday on CNNSI.com. After you read Jack's take, give us yours. The following is not one of these off-the-cuff, wiseass sportswriter ideas thrown out there just to stir the pot. Well, even if it is, here's my notion: Next year the PGA Tour should designate one tournament as a gallery-go-wild event. Let all those younger-generation aficionados who are allegedly "changing the face of golf" kick up the jams and go bananas for their guy. Tell all those button-down types who follow Tom Lehman and Paul Azinger to pretend it's a Republican convention and start waving banners and American flags. FOUR MORE HOLES! FOUR MORE HOLES! Send Gary McCord out there in some kind of absurd mascot costume, hand him a megaphone and tell him to do a Vitale, stoke the masses, raise the roof, pump some atmosphere into those green temples of doom known as country clubs. I reached this conclusion Sunday while watching two unfortunates named Stewart Cink and Retief Goosen stride up to the gallows, drape a black cloth over their heads and say, "Take me, I'm here." Oh, it was cruel. Even if you don't like golf, it was cruel. The gimme putts they missed on the 72nd hole of the U.S. Open were instantly identifiable to hundreds of thousands of duffers (like me) who make that same nervous push-jab stroke at any putt of less than six feet. But here's my point: It's likely that neither would have missed had the gallery been acting like a sports crowd normally acts. See, according to golf logic that's grown up over the centuries, a golfer can't concentrate if fans are noisy. In fact, the converse is often true. Silence, certainly the deathly hold-your-breath silence that prevails at golf tournaments, is the enemy of the athlete. You get a crowd going bonkers, yelling and screaming, and you'll see most golfers lock in, marshal all of their inner strength, tune out the distractions. That is, you'll see them do what every other athlete (besides a tennis player) is asked to do. This bold move would benefit the Tour in other ways. Golfers would become more like other jocks, regular, everyday, put-upon gazillionaires who can feel righteous when they grumble about the rotten treatment they got from the ungratefuls in Phoenix. Delightful new post-round commentaries would replace the mundane "6-iron-to-eight-feet-made-the-birdie" litanies offered up now. Imagine David Duval stomping into a press conference, ripping off his Oakleys and saying, "That whole gallery was dissin' my butt, but, yo, check it out, I stuck it IN THEIR FACE with that wedge on 18!" Pooh-bahs of golf, this is an idea whose time is past due. If the Lakers' Robert Horry can come off the bench and drain three-pointers and free throws while 20,000 76ers fans are screaming for his scalp, your guys can see what it's like to hit a golf ball in something other than the high-church ambience that defines a golf tournament. Let's see which of the collared shirts can drain an eight-foot knee-knocker while looking into a sea of fans holding up the July centerfold. My guess is, most of them will respond. Best of all, we'll be able to see if Tiger Woods can deal with noise. As it stands now, Woods thinks nothing of flying a 5-iron 230 yards over a pit of alligators onto a green the size of an omelette pan, yet becomes unglued when someone in the clubhouse stirs a gin and tonic during his backswing. My guess is, he'll hire a noise coach and continue to kick butt, but it would be interesting to find out. Sports Illustrated senior writer Jack McCallum writes about a Hot Button issue every Monday on CNNSI.com. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer. |
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