What we need these days is a Chris “Boomer” Berman to do for golf what he did so beautifully for other sports and seed the modern landscape with clever nicknames like Oddibe “Young Again” McDowell, Bert “Be Home” Blyleven and Mark “Bay City” Wohlers. We’ve simply got to do better in golf than JT, DJ, G-Mac and X-man. It’s frankly a crisis situation akin to fans who can’t think of anything more creative to scream out than “Get in the hole!” or “Mashed potatoes!”
Golf used to be filled with characters the world knew by their nicknames. Some became brands while others at the very least the first item on Wikipedia bios.
Arnold “The King” Palmer. Jack “Golden Bear” Nicklaus. Gary “The Black Knight” Player. Gene “The Squire” Sarazen. “Lord Byron” Nelson. “Slammin’ Sammy” Snead. Ben “The Hawk” Hogan (aka the “Wee Ice Mon”). Harry “Lighthorse” Cooper. “Sir Walter” (“The Haig”) Hagen. Lee “The Merry Mex” Trevino. Tom “The Towering Inferno” Weiskopf. Doug “Peacock” Sanders. Craig “The Walrus” Stadler. Greg “Great White Shark” Norman. Freddie “Boom Boom” Couples. Ernie “The Big Easy” Els. “Long John” Daly (aka “Wild Thing”). Phil “Lefty” Mickelson.
Golf stories used to sing with colorful references to players even if they weren’t always that colorful. “The Hershey Hurricane” (Henry Picard), “The Joplin Ghost” (Horton Smith), “Buffalo Bill” Casper, “Fuzzy” Zoeller, “Gentle Ben” Crenshaw and “Tiger” Woods won Masters while “El Maestro” Roberto De Vicenzo famously did not. There was “Little Poison” (Paul Runyan), “Champagne” Tony Lema, “Chi Chi” Rodriguez, “Duffy” Waldorf, Mike “Radar” Reid, “Jumbo” Ozaki, Loren “Boss of the Moss” Roberts, “Lumpy” Herron and Retief “Goose” Goosen. Some tags could be a little mean and might warrant a 2-iron upside your head for saying it like Steve “Volcano” Pate, Glen “All” Day, Scott Hoch “as in Choke” or Hal “Halimony” Sutton.
(Chris) Berman’s creative gift at ESPN was not taking the obvious route to name-tagging. When he sees Xander Schauffele, he doesn’t take the easy out with “X-man.” It’s Xander “Killing Me” Schauffele (with his song).
The LPGA had “Babe” Zaharias, JoAnne “Big Mama” Carner (fka “The Great Gundy”), Michelle “The Big Wiesy” Wie West, and Paula “Pink Panther” Creamer. Heck, every great caddie had a nickname: Stovepipe, Pappy, Skillet, Cemetery, Grits, Burnt Biscuits, Squeaky, Pepsi, Bambi, Bones, Johnny Long Socks, Last Call … “It’s almost like you haven’t made it in the caddie world until you’ve got a nickname,” Mike “Fluff” Cowan once told Golf Digest.
When I belonged to the gloriously shabby nine-hole Greene County Country Club that everyone affectionately called “The Rock,” everybody in the dogfights had a nickname: David “Doc” Thornton (his dad was a pharmacist), Darren “Crack” Davenport (as in plumber’s), “Flea” (I only just learned his given name is Franklin Marchman), Larry “Elmo” Moore, Jimmy “Deano” Hudson and Ed “The Captain” Walker. It took all of about five minutes for them to brand me as “Bobby Boucher,” not because I had anything in common with Adam Sandler’s stuttering Cajun character in “The Waterboy” but because that’s how they suspected our small-town high school radio guy might butcher my name during a halftime interview later that week. “We welcome Augusta Chronicle columnist Bobby BOO-shay to the show…” Not sure half the people at The Rock knew my real name.
Tiger came to golf with a ready nickname already attached, but Eldrick Woods did not share his father’s knack for giving labels. His idea of a nickname was calling his friend Mark O’Meara “Marko.” The rest of us have gotten no better at it with such gems as “Rors” and “Poults” and “J-Day” being the best we can do. We tried “Captain America” out on Patrick Reed but he ultimately didn’t live up to the character standards.
Berman’s creative gift at ESPN was not taking the obvious route to name-tagging. When he sees Xander Schauffele, he doesn’t take the easy out with “X-man.” It’s Xander “Killing Me” Schauffele (with his song).
Maybe the world has gotten too politically correct to call Tyrrell Hatton “IED” for his improvisational explosiveness but perhaps the “Marlow Madman” or “Don Draper.” Viktor Hovland could be the “Nordic Fiddler” for his excessive tweaking and Brian Harman “Wags” for his excessive waggles. We could get ironic and call Patrick Cantlay “The Flash.” Jordan Spieth might be “Gollum” or “Precious” for the way he always talks to himself. Cam Smith could be the “Wizard of Ahs” for his dazzling short game. Too bad Adam Scott is not from Tasmania, but he could be “the Handsome Devil from Down Under” (or as my wife simply says, “Hot Adam Scott.”)
Something, anything, needs to be done to bring back the golden age of sobriquets before a generation of golfing greats goes by and all we can remember them as is “Scottie.”
Scott “Bobby Boucher” Michaux
E-MAIL SCOTT
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MICHAEL MACOR, THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE VIA GETTY IMAGES