By the time he arrived on the tee at the 71st hole, it was clear that
David Duval wasn't going to win the 2000 Open Championship over the Old
Course at St. Andrews. Chances were, however, he was going to claim
second place behind his playing companion, Tiger Woods.
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The answer lay in murky depths of the Road Hole Bunker, perhaps golf's most fearsome sand trap. Four shots it took Duval to escape from beneath the newly vertical and higher-than-ever-before face that some guy in a blazer had apparently thought appropriate in order to maintain the 'integrity' of what was already the game's most difficult par figure.
Watching as one of the game's best players flailed away unavailingly - at one point he was forced to play one-handed and backwards away from the sheer cliff in front of his nose - the golf-savvy Scots lapsed into embarrassed silence, all too well aware that their game's most important championship was being demeaned rather than enhanced by a hazard that had crossed the line from severe to silly.
Sadly, the same is true of the 17th hole at Sawgrass. This island green; this marketing tool has no place in any serious golf competition, a fact that was made obvious - yet again for those of us who remember the unfortunate Len Mattiace- by the traumatic experience endured by the gallant and talented Sean O'Hair in the final round of the 34th Players Championship. While I am no fan of the edict of 'fairness' espoused by those who will never understand that golf was never meant to be a game where the punishment necessarily has to fit the crime, the harshness of the penalty inflicted on the young American was too wildly removed from that he would have suffered on a proper golf hole. Like Duval's fate eight years ago, it was cringe inducing.
This isn't how the game is meant to be, folks. The island green is tabloid golf, a novelty item that appeals only to the lowest common denominator, to our basest instincts, to those for whom the WWF represents real sport.
Call me a snob, but when it comes to golf's biggest events, champs, not chumps, are what I want to see. I don't want what sells necessarily; I want what produces challenging golf, interesting shots and, to an extent, 'fairness.' I want the very best players to encounter an environment in which they can separate themselves from the rest the vast majority of the time (amidst the occasional shock result that can never be eliminated from a game that, even in these technologically-enhanced times, will thankfully never be an exact science). So leave the gimmicks to 'regular' tour events, those that history does not care about and whose results are almost instantly forgettable.
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Even the new - and deserving - champion, Phil Mickelson, was moved to
comment on his playing companion's watery and unmerited fate in the
immediate aftermath of a tournament that will never attain major
championship status until the inherent nonsense that is the penultimate
hole is removed forever from what is otherwise a terrific and testing
course.
"Sean executed his tee-shot perfectly," said the still three-time
major champion at the trophy presentation, even before officially
accepting congratulations for his well-earned victory. "From the tee it
felt like we were hitting into the wind, but it must have switched up
at the green." In other words, that O'Hair should walk off with a
quadruple bogey seven after failing to hit anything other than solid
shots was stupid, stupid, stupid.
"I got kicked in the teeth today," confirmed the victim, after
digesting how second place turned rapidly into eleventh (shades of
Duval) and how as much as $747,000 had suddenly disappeared from his
bank account. "I thought it was a perfect shot. I thought it was good.
I'm posing. When the crowd screamed, I thought it was going to be a
cheer and it was a groan. That's when I knew. I was a little bit
shocked and deflated."
O'Hair surely spoke for every real golfer, if not the alcohol-fuelled
yahoos who typically congregate around Pete Dye's daftest-ever
creation. That his score should be so ridiculously inflated by shots
that travelled maybe two yards more than they were intended to, can't
have sat well with anyone who has any real understanding of the
greatest sport ever invented.
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Oh, I know, it will never happen. Following the premise that there is a reason for everything in life and that the reason is usually money, there is no chance that anything will be done to remove a hole that annually attracts hordes of high-paying customers to the Sawgrass resort. But Finchem should also know that, as long as it exists, the lucrative 17th hole will also serve to deny his organisation what it craves the most - a seat at golf's top table alongside the green jackets of Augusta National, the blue bloods of the USGA and the R&A and the red necks of the PGA of America.
That's another of life's financial truisms, of course: everything has a price.
