Golf gets louder — and dumber
Speculation, believed to be very well placed, that the 2024 Ryder Cup and the 2019 US PGA Championship will be played on the feared Black Course at Bethpage Black will be enough to keep this thriving species alive for years to come.
After all, the irritating minority who seek their five minutes of fame by bellowing the latest fan catchphrase as a player launches a drive down the fairway have been around for years now and not just since “blue collar” style heroes such as Bubba Watson or US PGA champion Jason Dufner.
Of course, there’s a difference between shouting golfing cliches and good, old-fashioned banter. But it was at Bethpage Black in 2002 that we saw how golf’s genteel image was exploded for all time when the People’s Open took place at Bethpage in a city that was still in mourning for the thousands killed in the September 11 terror attacks 10 months earlier.
The 2002 US Open will go down in history as one of the most unforgettable golfing events of all time. “Mashed potatoes” and “Baba Boey” had yet to be invented but, apart from those screaming “You the man” and “Get in the hole”, there were others whose merciless slagging of anyone who offered a juicy enough target turned one of the game’s Majors into something that would have made Caligula blush on a visit to the Coliseum.
Most of the incidents now form part of golfing lore, giving them sort of an unofficial seal of approval that contrast hugely with the general opprobrium reserved for the “Mashed potatoes” and “Baba Boey” shouters that marred Dufner’s US PGA win. It’s part of the changing face of golf since Tiger Woods, the world’s best known athlete, made it appealing to football, baseball, basketball or even NASCAR fans.
In a New York Times piece, excellent golf correspondent Karen Crouse penned 2,000 words on the phenomenon under the headline “Golf Gets Loud.”
“Golf tournaments are generally quiet affairs, where fans are expected to be fluent in the etiquette of a sport that affords silence as each player pulls his club, swings through the ball and follows its path,” she wrote.
“That moment of silence, however, is increasingly being breached.”
The advent of the “Baba Boey” brigade is lamented by veteran Jerry Kelly.
“It’s kind of a shame because golf was the last bastion of decorum,” he said, “and now it’s not.”
Kelly missed the cut in the 2002 US Open at Bethpage, as did Jim Furyk, who can laugh now at the abuse he took from fans that week.
“They let me know how bad that round really was,” Furyk said. “I think it had something to do with, ‘I sucked,’ if I remember. And I’m proud that I did not fight back because I realised how worthless it actually would be for me. It would have just made it worse. You know what, they were pretty much right. I did suck that day.”
The Furyk incident was just one of many. Woods got a round of applause as he emerged from a portaloo, Sergio Garcia gave the finger to fans who taunted him with shouts of “Waggle Boy” and Colin Montgomerie regretted giving into a persistent spectator who’d been trying to get his attention all day.
Having ignored shouts of “hey Monty, hey Montgomerie”, he finally caved when the fan said, “Mr Montgomerie, sir!”
Finally swivelling to face his inquisitor, the portly Montgomerie was offered the pearl, “Nice tits!”
Phil Mickelson remembers some great banter that is a far cry from the meaningless stuff shouted regularly today. The diminutive Japanese golfer Hidemichi Tanaka, who would go on to finish tied for 37th at Bethpage that week was one to suffer at the hands of fans.
According to former CBS golf writer Steve Elling, Mickelson said: “I remember Tanaka hit a shot over No. 9, over the green, a TV microphone was in his way, he picks it up to move it out of the way, and a guy yells out, ‘Hey, Tanaka, how about a little karaoke?’” Mickelson added: “I just think stuff like that is funny, very quick-witted. And that’s why I enjoy playing golf in New York, is some of the quick wit and humour that you hear.”
Liberty National is not a million miles away from Bethpage State Park, just across the Hudson in Jersey City. Yet the tolerance for the more inane fan outbursts has now reached an all-time low.
According to the New York Times, “Jim Furyk, at the Barclays on Thursday, said a fan distracted him on the 16th tee during the third round of the PGA Championship. At roughly 5:30pm, Poulter stepped to the first tee [at Liberty National], and as soon as he hit his drive, a shout of ‘Baba Booey’ rang out from the half-empty stands.
Fans were ejected for shouting at Liberty National but, as the New York Times points out, the sport changed forever when Arnold Palmer gave pro golf an air of legitimacy in the eyes of the country club set and Woods took it to the masses.
The man who first shouted “Mashed Potatoes” in 2011, a former member of the golf team at exclusive Pepperdine University in Malibu, explained his motivation.
“I don’t see this as being a ‘look at me, I’m ridiculous’ thing,” Andrew Widmar told the paper. “No one is going to do it to get any kind of national or global recognition for shouting something absurd.” He added, “The cameramen aren’t ever going to spin around and focus on the ‘mashed potatoes’ guy.”
Widmar had heard the expression in a Youtube video and said it to get a laugh from his friends.
“The shift in golf fans’ behaviour is not unlike the transformation of the rock ‘n’ roll scene in the early 1970s,” Crouse writes, “when the intimate concert experience gave way to the impersonal stadium spectacle.”
Quoting author Michael Walker, who explores the evolution of rock stars, led by Alice Cooper, Led Zeppelin and the Who, “from high-minded performers who were happy to eke out a living to highly paid entertainers with entourages and private jets and security staffs,” it appears that fans are merely reaching out for more attention.
“Golf stars now are like rock stars then,” Walker said. “There’s an increasing isolation from ordinary people. Tiger’s feet don’t touch the ground very often, and I think when there’s that remove from your audience it breeds a kind of thinking of, ‘I paid for this ticket, you’re not paying attention to me, so I’m going to do something to get your attention.’” Kelly almost put his back out when a fan yelled “Mashed potatoes” at him in Dallas this year and then apologised to him, explaining that he had done it to win a bet with his friend, who was standing next to him.
“I feel like John Daly was the first to cross genres, and Tiger’s brought in a whole lot bunch more fans from other sports,” said Kelly, who joined the tour the same year as Woods.
He added, “It’s a tough call and a difficult one for me without alienating people who are probably a lot more like me than I’d like to admit.”
He laughed. “I don’t condone it, I don’t like it, but I understand people have finally started coming to golf from other sports and so it’s difficult when you cross-reference all these other sports, which encourage fan interaction, to kind of understand what goes on here.”
Little did we think that the people who shouted “Waggle Boy” and “Nice tits” at Bethpage in 2002 would be missed so much. Still, there’s always the US PGA in 2019.
Hopefully by then “Mashed Potatoes” will be off the menu.
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