On Friday, on the seventh tee in Akron, Spieth hit a drive he didn’t like, spun around and looked at the gallery, and plaintively said, “Dude!” For Spieth, “dude” is a curse word. (You wonder why journalists who drop F-bombs on deadline are granted a luxury over someone who’s trying to a win a million-dollar prize.)
It’s also a strange moral universe that says a Tiger fist pump is a sin against Ben Hogan, but dropping your club after a bad shot or lecturing your ball in midair (both Spieth faves) are lovable eccentricities. “The Tiger stuff bothers me because anything he does, especially now that he’s down, gets portrayed in a negative light,” said Alex Myers. “Anything that a Rory or a Jordan does on their way up — when they’re young, when everybody likes them — they’re being charming.”
I’m
not ready to say there’s a whiff of racism involved here, but the rush
to bury Tiger Woods even further by proclaiming Jordan Spieth as some
sort of purist Boy Scout cum perfect angel can only backfire – when
Tiger was 22 years old everybody thought he was a ball of innocent
wonderment too; nobody was sitting around saying “no no, in a few years
he’ll be history’s greatest monster.”
No comments:
Post a Comment