Strokes gained: Laughing
TROON, SCOTLAND | Laughter has become a serious topic in Japan as the authorities work on their citizens’ mental health. Instructions have gone out for people to laugh at least once a day. Not only that, but the eighth of every month has been designated a “day of laughter.”
Since the eighth of July had come and gone long before the Open Championship here at Royal Troon, there was no point in following their homeland hero, Hideki Matsuyama, to see if he had switched from his serious self into a laugh-a-minute guy. Nor could anyone be sure that he was going along with the once-a-day laughing practice.
Yet if, as is so often the case, the Japanese are right with their latest theory, it could affect all those professionals who are looking for that extra something which could shoot them to the top of the money list.
Americans Patrick Cantlay and Cameron Young, who were eighth and 25th, respectively, in the Official World Golf Ranking at the start of last week, are just two guys who might want to sign on with someone who could school them in the art of laughter. Mind you, it is maybe worth warning the expert in question that he would be ill-advised to tickle his charges while they are practising their 6-footers.
Hinako Shibuno, the Japanese woman who won the 2019 Women’s British Open at Woburn Golf Club in England, could coach the coaches. She laughed her way ’round that woodland course and, when she was talking over her shot to the 72nd green with her caddie, she burst forth with a cheerful, “What if I shank it?”
For anyone else to have uttered the word “shank” in that context would have resulted in the inevitable. As it was, this star of the East caught the green and hammered home an 18-footer to win by a shot from America’s Lizette Salas.
Though Shibuno was playing in what was her first major, thousands of locals had fallen into step with this bright-eyed visitor from the moment she high-fived spectators as she walked from the first tee.
Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner who attended the Association of Golf Writers’ annual dinner at Troon last Wednesday, saw Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy and Robert MacIntyre as three more tour players whose happy attitudes do more than anything else to encourage people to play golf.
“The game needs characters like them,” Monahan said.
Blake Smith, Scheffler’s manager, said it was not just a matter of his man being happy in his work; he had the good sense to surround himself with a selection of happy helpers, all of whom would pass Japan’s laughter requirements with flying colours. Judging from what Scheffler was saying, it was as if he saw Royal Troon’s minuscule par-3 eighth hole, known as the Postage Stamp, as a member of his team.
The moment he had arrived on its elevated tee for the first time, he had given a knowing chuckle. Why? Because this little beauty of a hole was asking for the very thing he loves best about the game: the opportunity to be genuinely creative.
“He’s crazy about creativity,” Smith said with a chuckle.
To go back to Matsuyama, word had it that one among the British contingent of photographers had hit on a way to elicit the smile they needed when this talented player was holding his latest trophy aloft.
Since a plea to “smile for the camera” never got them anywhere, one of them went behind the backs of the rest to learn an equivalent message in Japanese.
“Waratte kudasai!” he yelled, gleefully, when the next occasion arose.
At that, everyone laughed – and that included Matsuyama.
Lewine Mair
E-MAIL LEWINE
Top: Hideki Matsuyama
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