by G. Rennie
A business commitment brought me to the birthplace of the American Revolution on Sunday night and my travel plans caused me to me miss much of the last round of The Players Championship. Such is life but I figured that I could catch all the highlights later on the Golf Channel’s follow up shows be it Live From The Players or Golf Central. And if I got delayed or waylaid by colleagues in the hotel bar then I could surely get my dose of golf news and film on Morning Drive a 7:00 am Monday morning. I was a fool! I got none of that since the Boston Park Plaza Hotel cares not for its golfing patrons and doesn’t carry Golf Channel on its TV service. This is twice in the last month that hotels I’ve been booked at disappointed on this score. I’ve either got to stay off the road or check in advance on Golf Channel availability.
The swing stutters that bedeviled Kevin Na this past week at The Players were painful to watch. Imagine how much it pained poor Kevin Na? Still, he played some great golf for three days, striping woods and darting irons all over Pete Dye’s Ponte Vedra obstacle course. The magic left on Sunday, however, and the stress that had been corralled by those waggles, hitches and utterances turned toxic and Na’s game came undone.
That was a shame for Kevin Na but the shame for golf was the incredibly crude and boorish behavior of a number of fans on the course. Hecklers were all over the place, some singing him around the course with a chorus of that old rock anthem that repeats his name several times before the Good Bye.
My recommendation is that the PGA TOUR supply all officials and marshals at each tournament with a few handy items that could be used to, shall we say, suppress and render quiescent patrons that violate the code of conduct. If a few DB’s were jolted by a taser or perfumed with pepper spray I bet that we would no longer have to endure the endless “go in the hole” shout outs that we get on every telecast. And no other golfer on tour would be heckled for a twitch, a poor wardrobe choice (where to start?) or just being a DB (there are a few, like JD).
Then the only boorish and vacuous things we hear on golf telecasts would be uttered by some high priced talking heads. Where’s Dan Hicks?
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