TriumphAnt

Golf is just flog spelled backwards - 1

(After returning with my brother-in-law Bob from the Bell Canadian Open 2004 at the Glen Abbey course, Oakville)

My father-in-law’s generosity had resulted in our having tickets whose perks included access to a canvas-topped patio called the Centennial Club. It overlooked the 18th green and was equipped with a bar and concession stand, plenty of tables and, most important of all, a vast space of blessed shade on what turned out to be two unseasonably hot, sunny days. They could quite accurately have called it The Oasis.

Some snapshots (because when you’re actually there, those are the only impressions you can glean):

Anyone holding claim even distantly to all or part of the label “golf fan” is already aware of the result, but if not: Canadian Mike Weir led through all four rounds until the very last hole when he finished tied with the world’s number 1, Vijay Singh. On the third hole of a “sudden death” playoff (although so far as can be determined, no one in fact was actually killed), Mike’s approach to the green hit very close to the pin. This particular Glen Abbey pin, however, was in its traditional Sunday position very close to the edge of a large pond into which, after one small bounce, went Mike’s ball, along with (if media reports are to be believed) an entire nation’s hopes for prosperity, world peace, a cure for AIDS and a resolution of global poverty.

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At a major tournament, the pathways travelled by the pros are well fenced and, very early on, well staked out by autograph hunters of all ages. The more seasoned pros – and consequently the more popular and thus the players confronted with many more such requests – have their routines down pat. They stride purposefully along, grabbing one of the dozens of proffered hats, programs or souvenir pin flags, sign it as they walk, and then hand or toss it back vaguely in the direction from which it came.

Those new to the tour are usually more amenable to longer, stop ‘n’ chat sessions. I watched one of the younger pros, unfamiliar to almost everyone but family and close friends, pause when a boy no more than 8 or 9 years old held up a pennant festooned with scrawls and beseeched the pro – “Do I have you yet?” The pro and everyone within earshot just burst out laughing. After confirming that no, he had not yet signed this particular bit of canvas, he signed it, the boy’s hat and a golf ball for his new young (and no doubt future) loyal fan.

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I can’t possibly imagine working with 50,000 people around me watching every single tiny move of everything I do, and applauding even the most mundane of actions. But that’s the “office” of a leading golf pro in mid-tournament.

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Sweden’s Jesper Parnevik actually had a great tournament this year. And he’s a character. At home, his father, Bo, is acknowledged to be “Sweden’s most famous comic”. (Although in the land of Ingmar Bergman, that might be somewhat akin to being hailed as Bora Bora’s best hockey player.)

But Jesper is a bit of a clown himself on the golf course. His wardrobe is always a source of comment and on Sunday, “sporting sea-foam green pants with a lime-green shirt, white shoes and a white belt with a chrome buckle the size of a toaster” (you had to see it), he kept the stories alive. His trademark is his hat. He wears a standard baseball cap, but bends the front brim up at such a sharp angle that his canny sponsor actually imprints his company name on the underside of the visor, bringing it fully into view every time Jesper’s face appears on camera.

His very first tee shot on Sunday, however, was anything but funny. It actually soared so far off track that it was last seen – at least temporarily – bouncing off the canvas roof of one of the corporate tents set well back from the first fairway. After a search, he declared a lost ball – normally an event that draws a penalty stroke. But when the tent that everyone saw it hit was deemed to be a “temporarily immovable impediment”, he won a penalty-free drop and so on he played. (His ball, in fact, was actually found only much later. It had bounced into a distant sand trap next to an adjacent fairway. Had it been found there at the time, that’s the spot from which he would have had to play it.)

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The show stealer on the final day was an utterly fearless great blue heron whose home territory obviously included the greenside pond at number 18. He wasn’t about to let the surrounding presence of tens of thousands of fans interfere with his routines. At one point, he strode leisurely to the edge of the green, and released an enormous stream of… well, bird poop. The resulting burst of laughter and applause (it had been a long wait between finishing groups of golfers, OK?) startled the bird to the point of causing him to flare his wings in alarm, but not so much that he took to the air. The overall visual effect was one of taking a bow for what turned out to be an especially prescient and accurate synopsis of nearly every Canadian’s perception of the Open’s eventual outcome.

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And surely one of the most unusual snapshots I saw was in the Centennial Club’s canvas-covered patio lounge at the end of the tournament. The space was so packed, even the crowd along the railing overlooking the 18th green was pressed 10 people deep, the rearmost perched on chairs to give them a view over the heads of the foremost ranks. But one fellow, standing at the end of the patio space well back from the crowd at the rail and a long distance from the television screens at the patio bar, was focused intently – with binoculars – on those same TVs, while the very action being covered live by the television cameras was unfolding barely 200 yards to his left.

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For the record, both Bob and I thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. But we also were present for rounds 3 and 4 last year, and we agreed that last year’s Canadian Open course, the Hamilton Golf and Country Club in Ancaster, was just plain cosier and friendlier to the fans.

Glen Abbey was designed as a stadium course for big tournaments, big hitters and huge mobs of fans. That’s not necessarily a bad thing when the tournament is the Canadian Open.

But at Glen Abbey this year, I was standing by the patio rail overlooking the green, and a question driven by several glasses of beer came over my shoulder – “What hole is that?” A few minutes later, half his next can of beer wound up on the back of my leg, my socks and my shoes. When Vijay was standing over the putt that would put him into the playoff with Mike, my bleary questioner had shifted his position and, with several equally well-informed colleagues, began a vigorous chant of “Miss! Miss! Miss!” loudly enough that a Halton Regional police officer, a few minutes later, came up to the patio and asked these fans to display the courtesy that golf fans are supposed to be noted for.

The bottom line is those people weren’t in Ancaster in 2003. Or if they were, they were fewer and much farther between. Ancaster’s course was designed for people who play golf well, using the full range of clubs in their bags and the full scope of their game skills. The necessarily smaller number of fans in 2003 seemed to be made up of a higher ratio of knowledgeable followers of the game, who like to watch good golf being played with skill and finesse, and who know it when they see it. On every shot in the 2003 Open, Ancaster challenged those who play well, and challenged them not just to hit the ball many yards farther than their opponents.

And yes, there is a difference.

But for all of that minor rant, I wouldn’t have missed 2004. It’s a different experience being there, and golf can occasionally be every bit as electrifying as a much faster game like hockey. Mike and Vijay provided the voltage this year. When Mike’s final approach shot was in the air on the third playoff hole, there wasn’t a breath of oxygen going into one single pair of the tens of thousands of lungs surrounding that green. Holding our breath? You wanna believe it!

And while the end result was not the one that Canadian golf fans were hoping for, the consolation is that the man who won had overtaken Tiger Woods just the week before to be declared the number one golfer in the world.

Finishing second to Vijay Singh after three playoff holes is nothing to be ashamed of.