Sun, April 13, 2003

As a native of Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida (home to the TPC and now the World Golf Hall of Fame), it may come as some surprise that I've never really followed golf. My sister was on the golf team of her high school and I have played a few times but I still wouldn't consider myself a golf fan. There are plenty of pastimes I engage in more often but never watch people do on network television.

A friend and fellow pedant once corrected me for using the phrase "the TPC," likening it to "PIN number" because the T stands for "the." My defense was so excellently stated that I have no choice but to reprint it here:

TPC the event is short for THE PLAYERS Championship while TPC the location stands for Tournament Players Club. (Both, quizzically, lack a trailing apostrophe on "Players.") When it began in 1974, THE PLAYERS Championship was actually named the Tournament Players Championship and wasn't renamed until 1988 (six years after it found its permanent home at the TPC), so I can see where we locals might still have it wrong in our minds.

Also, it's gay for any acronym to actually abbreviate "the."

Anyway, no disrespect to golf, but it's like baseball, more fun to have on in the background than it is to watch, but with less of the action of baseball it's really just pleasant background noise. That said, it's not like I completely disregard golf. I think Tiger's fun to watch, and I have an inexplicable soft spot for Phil Mickelson. So, it's not unheard of for me to switch golf on for a few hours and chill out.

This year, of course, the Masters has a little bit of extra visibility. Women's groups are protesting the fact that Augusta National Golf Club, host to the Masters, still has a policy that prohibits women from joining. I find Augusta National's policy to be ridiculous, not because they don't have the right to set their own old-fashioned patriarchal rules – certainly, they do – but because of the relationship between the club and CBS.

It's one thing for Augusta National to have an antiquated boys' club policy, but I'm more disturbed by the way CBS hypocritically supports these policies through their silence. A club and a corporation are two different things. I think Martha Burk is rightly concerned about the members of Augusta National and what their membership says about the policies of the corporations they run, but in fairness it's just a club and plenty of them may disagree with the policy but just want to play golf. Willingness to compromise their values for such a status symbol is the kind of thinking that made them CEOs, so we shouldn't expect any different. (The fact that Augusta National is led by a guy named Hootie simply adds to the inane spectacle.)

CBS's complicit silence causes me greater concern. So concerned are they about jeopardizing their decades-long relationship with the Masters that they are not only ignoring the issue of protests, they are airing their coverage commerical-free to avoid exposing sponsors to bad press. Here's hoping both decisions result in bad press for CBS. (This is the same network that eliminated commentator Gary McCord from Masters coverage after Augusta National complained about his comment that the greens were "bikini waxed.") The Tiffany Network is steadfastly conservative when it comes to the cash cow of the Masters, but has no problem airing naked chicks in the Amazon on Survivor. Seems like their credibility would be worth more than the (zero) advertising dollars.

Not that I'm all that passionate about any of it. I'm still watching, after all. Just silly. Golf is still good for what I get out of it. I love the name Olazabal, because when you say it, it sounds like you're talking with your mouth full. I love Tiger Woods's pants, because they appear light and comfortable while still being stylish and casual. I'd love a job where you wore pants like that all day and walked around in the pleasant weather.

I find the technical aspect of the telecast rather impressive, too. Not only is it astonishing how well the cameramen follow a speeding ball in the air, but over their years of experience, they've developed a remarkable ability to predict just where a putt is going to stop. If you watch, they follow the ball to a certain point and then stop, allowing it to roll to a halt, perfectly within the static frame. Spectacular! Beyond that, they're cutting around between so many pairs of players which is a little hard to follow if you're actually paying attention. And, they have little microphones all over the course so you can hear it when the clubs strike the balls.

The other thing that always grabs my attention watching golf is course design. The holes, you see, are redesigned every year when the tournament comes to town. And, on a daily basis, the cup is moved around the green. It seems like it would be an interesting job. You can come up with all sorts of challenges for the players because they're all playing the same course so it's a level playing field. And there are so many things you can change, moving the sand traps ("bunkers") around, re-shaping the green, placing hills, and re-grading things. It would be pretty awesome to come up with a new shape idea and then a bunch of guys move dirt around and make it happen. One of the clients we had at the first Web company where I worked was a company that did golf course design, which was fascinating. I think in their case it was miniature golf, but it has to be about the same. I guess you don't have to take things as seriously in mini-golf, but it's still all about thinking of ways to challenge the basic geometric tenets of the game.

Poor Jeff Maggert, by the way. He's leading for now, but with the British accents of the commentators and the southern accents of the tournament staff, so far there's only one guy who's pronouncing the 'r.'

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