Please excuse the all-sports day here today, but newly-crowned Master’s champion Zach Johnson has seemingly been everywhere over the past couple of days and he is proving to be a refreshingly normal fellow amidst all the attention. Here is the Damon Hack/NY Times profile, but this Joe Posnanski/Kansas City Star profile captures how Johnson’s Midwestern roots define the man. And if you are really into Johnson, check out the Des Moines Register’s wall-to-wall coverage of Johnson’s Masters victory and the aftermath.
Meanwhile, Geoff Shackelford passes along the following interesting thoughts about the mindset of those who enjoy watching professional golfers struggle on tricked-up courses:
On the news that ratings were actually up for this hardly satisfying 2007 Masters, I’ve heard from a number of people that they argued with friends over the weekend about the setup and the joys of watching great players suffer.
There is a sizeable audience of the viewing public that enjoys watching the best players struggle. They like seeing them humiliated and brought down to a lower level of skill.
“They know how I feel now.”
This mentality has been around a long time and many of the games lesser-informed writers have celebrated the notion of pro golfers serving as modern day gladiators served up for the people to devour in humiliating spectacles.
So I’m wondering if championship golf is going to go the way of everything else in our society. Will it have to become “relatable” (as the marketing folks like to say) for big-time golf to succeed? In other words, will professional golfers eventually serve at the pleasure of the people, with major events played to publicly humiliate millionaire golfers on overcooked layouts in order to make the average man feel better about his lousy game?
Personally, I find it to be an incredibly selfish way to view golf. It’s a lot more fun to see the talent of these great players exposed, celebrated and savored. But maybe that’s old school?
By the way, a number of folks have asked me about my observation in an earlier post that Zach is a classic one-plane swinger along the lines that Houston-based teaching professional Jim Hardy (see also here) has written extensively about over the past several years. Here is a short video clip of Johnson working with his teaching pro, Mike Bender:
Finally, in case you didn’t catch it on Sunday, make sure you catch the video below of Rory Sabbatini’s incredible putt on Augusta National’s 8th hole. Sabbatini — who has been a jerk at times while on the Tour — has a fun-loving response to the crowd’s reaction:
