With more selfies than birdies, golf shouldn't need Paige Spiranac
They will be far too dignified to say, at least without going through the chair, that ‘we told you so’, but they told us so.
Buoyed by this belated acceptance in the corridors of power, the dreaded ladies have taken just over a year to make a mockery of the sport.
This week’s headlines signalled golf’s greatest indignity yet; “Instagram sensation makes pro debut at Dubai Masters.”
In a slight twist on the idea of playing a bit of social golf, San Diego’s Paige Spiranac — a reasonable college player — has recently become a ‘social media star’, aided by a wardrobe of eye-catching attire and more selfies than birdies.
Her Instagram profile has half a million followers, her YouTube trickshot videos millions of views.
The much coveted ‘Hottest Athlete in the World’ tag — awarded thousands of times daily — is hers to lose.
Cursory use of your eyes and Google Images will inform you why some of Spiranac’s work might be of interest to sponsors.
‘Connecting with the millennials,’ they call it, out of politeness.
And so Spiranac was granted an invitation to the Omega Dubai Ladies Masters this week, an offshoot of the ‘European’ Ladies Tour where its members may recognise locally some of the attitudes to women they have grown familiar with back home over the years.
In Dubai, Spiranac missed the cut by eight shots and left in tears and shame, telling us this, naturally, on Twitter.
“There was some throwing up and tears. Last night and today were the hardest days of my life to get through,” she tweeted, as though she’d just endured an interview with Ray D’Arcy.
It seems Spiranac also endured a little sniping on the range.
“It’s really embarrassing for women’s golf. Social media narcissism is not a criteria,” sniffed English pro Henrietta Zuel.
And the international media — overlooking the interesting irony of a woman making a lucrative living through wearing whatever she liked in the UAE — was quickly on her case, illustrating how she had unfairly profited from her social media presence by stealing photo after photo and video after video from her social media presence. (Note to Digital Ed: Video from Paige’s social media presence shouldn’t, ideally, go here).
Thankfully, however, just as many were beginning to despair for golf’s age-old values of deference and horrific clothing, Peter Lawrie was on Off The Ball to reassert how the invitations business works, under the civilised framework that has always been observed.
A framework which, incidentally, has stood this country in good stead in many other areas too. Pull.
Lawrie, as we know, has slipped out of form in recent times, losing his European Tour card and so has been reliant on the odd invitation to take part in some of the game’s more valuable events.
And he was good enough to take Joe Molloy through the process involved, which may be vaguely familiar to anyone who has ever needed their bank manager to vouch for them down their local club.
“I needed a few more invitations. I had to push my way there and I can be quite pushy.” Pushiness, in Peter’s case, involved dialling a number many pushy men would like to have stored in their favourites.
“I phoned up Denis O’Brien, who’s been a great supporter for me. He contacted a few people and coming from such a high profile person, you know, he did pull a few strings.
“Dermot Desmond, as well, did me a favour.”
It was a timely restoration of standards, an avowal of first principles, a strong reassertion of the ethos that made this game great long before ladies started sniffing around top tables.
“Lucky enough to know a lot of people and am well thought of,” concluded Lawrie, helpfully enshrining this framework in a motto and noting that Paul McGinley had also stepped up for him.
Captaincy and capitalism in his corner.
Sweden’s Pelle Edberg, on the other hand, must not know all the right people, or else the right people don’t think much of him.
“Invites to the final series is quite interesting,” tweeted Pelle, last month when the well-connected McGinley was preferred for the BMW Masters, despite a world ranking around 800 places lower than the Swede.
It has always been the golf way, to protect status quos, a way that ensures its most prestigious event, The Masters, is stuffed with men who haven’t a hope of winning, but are there because they’ve always been there.
And as the internet still struggles to monetise itself, Lawrie’s words were also a resounding vote of confidence, too, for cash in the bank rather than clicks on the profile.
The democracy of Instagram and YouTube is not wanted or needed here yet.
It’s not yet all about what you wear, but who you know.
Some of us with shorter attention spans don’t so go in so much for Book of the Year prizes. Foreword of the Year will have to do. As author Colin White puts it, of Dalymount Park — The Home of Irish Football, “deliberating on who should write the foreword for this book wasn’t a lengthy process”.
John Giles.
So a beautiful book of photographs gets the perfect kick-off. Gilesy writes lovingly of the “true historic home of Irish football”, recalling the lure of its great roar and watching men like Tommy Eglington and Peter Farrell at a time when Dublin football people were regarded as “corner boys” and something less than Irish.
He recalls his own perfect introduction to the stadium as though it were yesterday: His Ireland debut, aged 18, against Sweden. Nervous, “a twinge of worry” playing alongside his heroes. Sweden 2-0 up early. “Then the moment that changed everything”: On the volley from 30 yards. “A contact that felt so perfect I could hardly feel it at all.”
His mother, listening at home on the radio, heard the roar first. “It travelled all the way to the Navan Rd.” Ireland won 3-2 and a great career was up and running.
From there, the pictures tell the story, spanning 125 years of internationals, cup finals, and League of Ireland games. It’s alarming to think this might have been an obituary, that Dalyer was almost lost. Instead it’s a celebration.
The first man to take a ref’s spray to write a message to his mammy on the pitch makes it to Stairway to Heaven, the second will go in Hell in a Handcart. Fair warning.
The Croydon councillor forced to apologise after being caught watching Crystal Palace-Everton during a debate about the future of a local theatre.
Gilesy used to lose interest when the score got to 3-0, but you suspect those magical occasions when the likes of Malmo rock up at the Bernabeu for a hiding are truly the nights Cristiano lives for.
