Thought for the Day:
A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking
Augusta antipathy
Loathe though I am to write it, and delighted as I am to see Bubba Watson win for the second time, this year’s Masters was disappointing, especially the final round. The cliché, which has become such because it is also a truism, is that the tournament doesn’t start until the back nine on Sunday but this year it was all over by then. From pretty early on it became clear that this was a two-horse race between Bubba and the astonishing Jordan Spieth but a two-shot swing on two consecutive holes settled things in Watson’s favour. Standing on the 8th tee, Spieth was two ahead; walking off the 9th green he was two behind and that was that.
Even more disappointing was the almost complete lack of excitement coming down the stretch, on a sequence of holes that usually produces more drama than a season at the Royal Shakespeare Company. Of the serious contenders – Watson, Spieth, Jonas Blixt, Matt Kuchar and Rickie Fowler – none made more than one birdie on the back nine and no-one made an eagle. That simply isn’t what happens at Augusta National in the second week of April, but for some reason, this year it did. Miguel Angel Jimenez, Lee Westwood, Bernhard Langer, Rory McIlroy and Jimmy Walker (the remainder of the players to finish in the top-10) all made more than one birdie, but most were offset by bogies, and in their case they were hauling themselves up to respectability rather than mounting a serious challenge.
We don’t often get to say it but sadly, this year’s Masters was just a little bit dull.
My kind of golfer
As for the winner, if you’re a G&T drinking golf club member from the home counties who believes that golf is going to hell in a handcart, and that the length of a golfer’s socks should be strictly measured before he be allowed to grace what you no doubt call the ‘hallowed turf’ of your club, you probably hate Bubba Watson and all he stands for. But if, like me, you think that golf is a fabulous game that is occasionally strangled by petty-minded bureaucracy, administered in the form of clubhouse edicts telling you what you cannot do posted on every available bit of wall, then he’s your guy.
He’s a free spirit, unconstrained by someone else’s vision of what can, should or ought to be done, and he marches along through golf and life very happily, quite clearly impelled by a different drumbeat than most of us hear. He goofs around with his pals, having one heck of a time, has no idea where his extraordinary ability to hit a golf ball comes from and is the last golfer in the world who would be afflicted with the disease known to some as paralysis by analysis. He looks every inch the banjo-playing good ol’ boy who escaped from the set of Deliverance. While most people in the public eye develop a persona for wider consumption, a carapace of protection from a celebrity-obsessed public and media, Bubba remains a wonderfully disingenuous free spirit. There can be few, if any, well-known people about whom it can be so accurately said that what you see is what you get.
He is a simple man, and this is not meant be pejorative. He is not simple as in dumb (although he would never claim to be one of the world’s great thinkers), but simple as in straightforward, unadorned and effortless. But when he started to develop a fanbase he took stock of himself and his life and realised that, for many young people in particular, he was becoming a role model. So without telling family or friends, he re-enrolled at the University of Georgia in order to complete the degree course (in consumer economics) that was cut short a year early when he decided to turn pro as a golfer and later described the final paper he had to submit as ‘the hardest thing I’ve ever done.’
Like most of us he can appear to be a mass of contradictions – an extraordinarily gifted man-child, full of naïve wonder and yet street-smart and savvy. He appears all-macho male but plays with a pink-shafted driver and could give crying lessons to Roy Orbison. He has even admitted to crying during the movie Expendables 2 and embarrassing admissions do not come more uncomfortable than that. He is capable of attacking a golf ball with frightening violence yet his power on the golf course is matched by a delicacy of touch that would do justice to an Italian superstud seducing a blushing teenager. He is restless and fidgety and both he and his wife are pretty convinced he suffers from attention deficit disorder (ADD), which partly explains why he gets so mad at the glacial pace of play in pro golf.
I, for one, am delighted to celebrate his success.
Final thoughts
Paul Azinger was a great addition to the BBC commentary team – insightful, analytical and honest. Less refreshingly, we kept getting statistics up on the screen that told us nothing. For example: ‘13 of the last 21 champions have birdied the 2nd hole.’ Translation: ‘The 2nd hole is a downhill par five, so most of the field will make birdie.’
Quote of the Week
“They don’t do comedy at the Masters. The Masters, for me, is like holding onto a really big collection of gas for a week. It’s like having my buttocks surgically clenched at Augusta General Hospital on Wednesday, and surgically unclenched on Monday on the way to Hilton Head.”
The inimitable David Feherty