Vincent Hogan: Golf and its anoraks need to get over themselves
Admit it. You have a picture in your head of the busy-bodies who 'shopped' Padraig Harrington last week. Not terribly attractive, is it? Weasel face, probably a comb-over, pleated trousers that run two inches short.
Anyone with a fetish for golf rules instantly springs to mind as downtrodden, vertically challenged (possibly bullied at school), single most likely and equipped with the social skills of a root vegetable.
No doubt, they are never short of an instant ruling in the Sunday morning fourball. That childhood spent as effete nancy boys who never got asked out to play has given them abundant time on their own to be so anally knowledgeable about groove dimensions, loft angles, spike-mark deflections and permitted ball velocities for there never to be confusion.
These people don't get invited to dinner parties. And, if they did, everyone would soon gravitate towards the odorous tramp with that unpleasant disease on the other side of the room.
Of course, Andy McFee was compelled to follow up their emails last week. It's just a pity he didn't do so with an AK47.
precious
Honestly. Golf needs to get over itself with all this solemnity about playing guardians to a precious heritage.
When someone cheats deliberately they are, rightly, disqualified. But why attach the same stigma to a player who innocently and unwittingly falls foul of technical gibberish?
Harrington's gentlemanly response to being escorted off the premises in Abu Dhabi was typical of the man. But I'd hazard a guess his inner voice was mumbling something about a three-iron being carefully lodged in a dullard's colon.
Golf's rules are great, but a bit medieval. The game is venerated for its sense of honour because so much of sport today, professional sport especially, is a cheat's bazaar by comparison.
But the idea that some unctuous Little Lord Fauntleroy, who probably cleans his clubs every Thursday and has, in his irredeemably dull life, spent more on graphite shafts than on home décor, can put in train last week's events is -- frankly -- comical.
Harrington's crime was to miss the fact that his ball moved the kind of distance probably routine for an exhibit in Madame Tussaud's when the heating comes on. We're talking dimples, not inches here.
Trouble is, the European Tour operates under the jurisdiction of the Royal and Ancient and the R&A, frankly, still thinks America is a long boat trip away.
Harrington is universally recognised as a sportsman of the highest integrity, yet his professional CV now shows two disqualifications.
Probably no golfer tries harder to abide by the letter and spirit of the game, yet he might as well have been twice found kicking his ball in the rough for all the distinction officialdom is willing to make.
There is an iron law to the business of signing for a wrong score, irrespective of the circumstance. The use of discretion is, thus, deemed impossible. You abide by the intricate mumbo-jumbo of the rule book or go take your stuff to the car-park.
It's staunchly, defiantly Old Testament in outlook and no one in authority has the nerve to call it what it is. Pathetic.
As a breed, golf's anoraks will approve the Abu Dhabi farce, just as they approved Dustin Johnson's humiliation at Whistling Straits and, indeed, Harrington's previous disqualification for failing to sign a card at the 2000 Benson and Hedges International.
But anyone with a life won't actually give a monkey's for golf's plodding small-print.
Did Harrington knowingly cheat? No. Did his error, even unwittingly, give him a competitive advantage? No. So why was he disqualified? Because some willfully dull dingbat, sitting in front of a high definition TV set, had taken time out from his ironing. And golf's stuffiness invited said dingbat to play God.
When McFee investigated the complaint, he should have had the confidence to recognise it as a technical breach so flimsy, so patently insignificant, as to warrant nothing more than a polite thank you to the sender.
But Andy's just European Senior Referee. That may sound grandiose, but he hadn't the authority to make such a call. No one had.
So, Harrington got the same penalty he'd have got if caught using a tee in the rough.
And somewhere some sad Billy-No-Mates will have been telling anyone who cared to listen that he'd taken "little pleasure" in sending off that email to the European Tour. Deep down, though, this will rank as the towering achievement of his grey little life. That and the train set in the attic.
Golf needs to get over itself. It might start by alerting its TV anoraks to the charms of Jeremy Kyle.
- Vincent Hogan
Irish Independent
