Johnson column: The red mist hits us all eventually

by Martin Johnson

The opening scene of a soon-to-be-released new movie is, by any standards, a heart-rending one. It takes place over a kitchen breakfast table, and the dialogue goes as follows. “You’ve been assigned to which match?” asks the golf photographer’s wife. “Colin Montgomerie,” comes the croaked and barely audible reply. “But Jim, do you have to go?” “’Fraid so Molly.” “But think about me. Think about your family. Think about… oh Jim! What if you don’t come back?” “Sorry Molly, but a snapper’s gotta do what a snapper’s gotta do. Say goodbye to the kids for me if I don’t make it.”

They’ve done re-makes of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde before, without improving on the original, but in this adaptation, the transformation takes place without the leading character being required either to drink from a test tube or spend several hours in make-up. Just the sound effects’ boys letting rip with a volley of motorised camera clicks.

For those who’ve never played golf, it must be hard to believe that such a gentle looking pursuit has the capacity for turning otherwise sane individuals into potential serial killers, or candidates for a private nurse and plastic cutlery. Unlike tennis, for example, which has the advantages of being both more energetic and having a referee in the equation. Let’s face it. Bernhard Langer getting a ruling on a rabbit-dropping from an old boy wearing an R&A tie was never as likely to provide as interesting a next ten minutes as an umpire inviting John McEnroe to accept his call of “out” and get on with it.

Of all the contenders for the greatest tantrum in sport, there would be more than a few votes for a 1984 Davis Cup match in Stockholm when McEnroe, returning to his chair after a spat with the umpire, eschewed the custom of sitting down for a rest in favour of assaulting any inanimate object within range of his racket.  A superb forehand demolished his chair, another removed a couple of refreshment bottles and the coup de grace – a double-handed backhand which destroyed the drinks table – left the King of Sweden, looking on from the royal box, dripping with lemon barley water.

Golf hasn’t seen anything quite like that, and it’s hard to imagine a golfer duffing his opening tee shot and then doing something so unspeakable to Ivor Robson’s microphone that the poor chap’s voice shoots up a couple of octaves from its current soprano to a shrill falsetto.

The strangest behaviour most of us have witnessed following a dodgy opening tee shot was exhibited early in his career by Sergio Garcia, when he curiously opted to blame the whole thing on his footwear: ripping off his left boot and hurling it into the gallery behind the tee. Someone kindly threw the boot back, by which time you might have thought that Garcia had calmed down a bit. However, the sight of it coming back again merely prompted Garcia to take a run at it with his other boot and hoof it down the fairway.

This, though, was something of a one-off and Garcia soon graduated to throwing clubs rather than shoes when the kettle started coming to the boil.

Which is why Garcia, and others like him, spend more time on the PGA Tour in America than in Europe. Most people think it’s because there’s more prize money and extra pampering in the US, but the real reason, I can exclusively reveal, is because there is so much water on American golf courses.

This, it hardly needs explaining, makes hurling the club away, preferably with a swing more closely associated with watching the Olympic discus final than a few hours on the range with Butch Harmon, all the more satisfying. Because you not only get the whirring noise of the club flying through the air, but the splash as it starts the journey to Davy Jones’ locker.

Not every golfer, though, decides to dispense entirely with a golf club’s services after a poor shot. Others choose to punish the offending implement by beating it, Basil Fawlty style, against some more durable object: a tree or a wastebin or, in extreme circumstances, their own person.

There is a highly entertaining clip on You Tube, involving some unknown American (well, it doesn’t tell you he’s American, but the shirt is so loud it has to be….) getting so upset about a missed two-footer that by the time he’d finished beating himself over the head with his putter it had assumed the shape of a croquet hoop.

Another thing about golf rage is that it is no respecter of national stereotypes. Which is why Henrik Stenson has quite a bit of previous as the antithesis of an ice-cool Swede: to the extent that a large proportion of Henrik’s equipment now lies at the bottom of American lagoons, doubtless turning it into a kind of Barrier Reef and attracting scores of tropical fish. Although he once found himself too far from the ocean to consign his driver to a watery grave at the 2007 Open, so he trashed the tee box with it instead.

Stenson, though, was the epitome of calmness compared to a Texan named Lefty Stackhouse, who once, after hooking a drive, ran to a rose bush and dragged his right hand through it so violently he more or less tore it to shreds. At which point he held up his left hand, roared “don’t think you’re going to get away with it either,” and gave it the same treatment.

Golf is the kind of game that gets to everyone from time to time, and in the end it’s merely a matter of degree.

Steve Pate was known as the “Volcano” and when mild mannered David Duval was asked in an interview whether he ever got mad, he paused before seeking clarification. “Do you mean regular mad?” said Duval. “Or Steve Pate mad?”

*This article was originally published in TGP on 12 August 2015.

Tagged Sergio Garcia