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This is golf’s moment.
More than two months into a pandemic that has changed almost everything, golf finds itself in the rarest of places – an enviable spot.
It didn’t take seeing Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Peyton Manning and Tom Brady mic’d up and squishing around Medalist in a televised match on Sunday to put golf in the speed slot, though the match was surprisingly entertaining thanks to – of all people – Brady.
Golf put itself here.
Chapter 1 in the next Silver Linings Playbook.
When the country, no, the world, was forced inside, golf never left.
It stayed around like that baby back ribs ad jingle we couldn’t shake. Like too much garlic. Like Tony Bennett.
It was taken away for a time in many places. It’s just coming back in Scotland, the motherland, and just reawakening in spots around the United States, but its heartbeat has remained, thumping along.
Among the many lessons of this pandemic – keep a small bottle of hand sanitizer in your car, give your barber a bigger tip next time and “why couldn’t there be a shortage of cauliflower rather than beef?” – is how good golf is at its essence.
Clubhouses are closed. There are no more bowls of grill-room peanuts and that spicy snack mix with Cheetos. The popcorn machine has been furloughed.
Sunday afternoon in South Florida, four of the biggest sports stars anywhere were playing golf because they could. They did it for charity, they did it for fun and they invited us along – so long as we stayed at a proper social distance which was easy from our couches and recliners.
But golf, repackaged and stripped of its frills, has not just endured, it has thrived in spots.
Walking 18 has returned. Push carts are in style, finally. Leaving footprints in a bunker can be excused.
As we edge evermore slowly toward normalcy, golf hasn’t so much rediscovered its roots but used them, practically putting them on display like the logo on your favorite golf shirt. Seeing Rory McIlroy, Rickie Fowler, Dustin Johnson and Matthew Wolff toting their own bags two weekends ago with no grandstands, no gallery ropes and nowhere better to be, was refreshing.
That’s how we play. Maybe not at Seminole but at our places. A little something at stake. And, until three of them tried to drive a 410-yard par-4, the game looked familiar.
The truth is the action tends to fall a little flat in these matches because they typically have more announcers than they have drama. Whether it was the weather or it was adding the quarterbacks, the Medalist match got what it was after – fun and funds raised.
Watching Brady wrestle with the game accomplished the near impossible – he became empathetic. When Charles Barkley is calling you out and offering shots, there aren’t enough Super Bowl rings to hide the obvious. Brady being Brady, he hit the shot of the day when the noise around him was getting the loudest – and he split his pants. For a match built around betting odds, what were the odds of that happening?
These matches beg for chatter and this one delivered. Think about this: Does anyone ever use the word “banter” other than when they’re promoting one of these golf events? The word has gone out of style like naming daughters after gemstones.
There was some genuine banter Sunday. Tiger likes to talk about the banter and fancies himself good at it. Phil is a master of banter. Peyton Manning is made for banter and Brady doesn’t have to say a thing, just show those six Super Bowl rings. As soon as he holed the wedge shot from fairway on the seventh hole, Brady turned as chatty as Howard Stern.
As sports tiptoe back toward competition, golf is near the front of the line. NASCAR is back to actual racing again, minus the fans of course, and the PGA Tour is less than three weeks from bringing the gang back together again at the Charles Schwab Challenge at Colonial.
With no baseball, no basketball and no football for the foreseeable future, golf can practically own the sports stage, particularly if America’s need for live action is as desperate as my buddies (and I’m assuming yours, too) suggest.
We live in a world full of compromises. Six feet apart rather than close. Half-full restaurants are now at capacity. No one asks if you’d like the flagstick removed when you putt.
The U.S. Open won’t be truly open this year with no local and sectional qualifiers. That’s not ideal but it’s better than no Open Championship at all. We’d all rather see the Masters in April than in November but if that’s what it takes this year, we all understand.
To many, golf is just a strange game played by old guys on courses that take up too much space and use chemicals that hurt the environment and, how can it be a sport if almost everyone rides in little carts?
Whether it was watching Phil, Tiger and the quarterbacks on Sunday or wrangling a spot on a crowded tee sheet to play with your group, there’s something there. Wonder if people who don’t know golf know what they’re missing?
Maybe some of them tuned in to a few minutes of the Medalist match to see Brady struggle or maybe they’ll watch at Colonial because golf is what’s happening. Maybe they drove by a golf course one of these spring days and saw a foursome marching down a hill toward their tee shots.
It’s tempting to welcome golf back but it’s been there – in hearts and minds and tee shots – all along. The past couple of weekends have reminded us – like a Christmas card or a note from an old friend – of what and who we’ve been missing.
And how it’s still right here.
E-Mail Ron
Top: Phil Mickelson and Tom Brady