Gods Of Golf

photos courtesy Matt Cleary

It’s Thursday; Day One of the Presidents Cup at Royal Melbourne.

Crowds line the length of the first fairway, five and six deep, standing on tippy-toes to see the Amazing Men Of Golf. The Presidents Cup - as the mayor of Parkes says of pretzels in The Dish - is “a world event”. These players are golf’s Super Men. They’re the elite, the top golden bricks of a pyramid with base the size of Queensland. To be this good at golf, the most difficult of Earth’s sports, you have to be committed like a head-banging zealot. From the age of 12 you will know not of movies, skateboards, women, beer nor the capital of Nigeria.

There’s Ernie Els, an over-sized human with soft hands and the rhythm of Gershwin. He’s an Honourary Aussie this week like Botham or Nicklaus or pavlova. Els’ golf swing is so languid and powerful, it’s like Tony Lockett pulling off a perfect waltz; like an act of sexual congress between two giant sloths. It’s a very fine golf swing.

We follow Ryo Ishikawa with a couple of dozen Japanese media types who stalk the wunderkind around the world. Alas, our Ryo – the heartthrob with the tight buns, good skin and clear gaze of a Manga comic hero called Golf Boy – is playing like a dud. He’s attracted a torrent of criticism for only turning up on Tuesday for his first tilt at Sandbelt golf, much less Royal Melbourne’s “composite” course, rated the world’s eighth best. Still, he doesn’t look like he gives a shit.

On the par-three third, Ishikawa is short of the green by a good 30 metres. Els’ recovery (they’re playing alternate shot “foursomes” against Bubba Watson and Webb Simpson) is a master-stroke, scooting up past the flag to the back of the green, then slowly rolling and rolling towards the flag, settling to tap-in.

The greens are quicker than laser-skates from the future. They’re hard, black and baked; rolled into a bowling-alley sheen. They appear to be of marble. If they were out on the MCG’s centre wicket, it’d be a juicy, seaming green-top. For golf, the Stimpmeter is off the charts.

There’s Watson on the tee, a big chunk of Bagdad (in Florida), who smashes the bejeezus out of it, finishing with a flourish at the top end; like a wristy whip, a matador’s killing stroke. It’s exciting, funky stuff, and the ball soars into the ether like a flaming comet.

On the seventh, Watson loads up with his giant pink whacking stick and tries to cut the ears off the dog-leg left. The ball goes straight at a group of Melburnians who duck like they’re being attacked by a malignant magpie. A security man strides out to find Watson’s ball, eager to complete this Important Task, arms slightly wide, sports watch chunky, fingers twitching itchy like a gun-slinger. He probably wishes he did have a gun just in case any of these golf fans get rowdy and he could shoot them. Security types are so often like this; there should be a study: what does it do to a man when he’s given an ear-piece and Batman’s utility belt?

On the ninth, Simpson hits out of a fairway bunker from 180m and lands his ball a metre from the hole. It’s an unbelievable golf shot for anyone above a handicap of about two. Pure and at the flag, a five-iron, clipped off the sand with the fluency and timing of Mark Waugh lofting over mid-wicket. Some shot.

Shark sighting! It’s the Great White Shark, Greg Norman, with his slim, snaky hips and bull-shooter’s eyes and Nordic shock of blond hair. In his wisdom, Shark has brought the Fanatics with him, literally renting a crowd by shouting them tickets. Shark wants Lleyton-at-the-tennis “atmosphere”. Yeah ...

And so to lunch and we’re into the massive Media Tent for shop-talk with the reptiles. Coming into the Cup, I had half an idea I could be like Hunter S. Thompson going “gonzo” at the Kentucky Derby, getting loaded up on amyl and roving around the place, all-access. But any sign of aberrant or even just off-kilter behaviour could literally get you killed. There are men here with guns and a mandate, particularly around Shark and Tiger. Rub against the grain and you could be black-banned forever, put on an international shit-list. The larrikin is dead, replaced by bomb threats. Good one, Osama. Prick.

photos courtesy Matt Cleary

Back onto the short, downhill par-four 11th hole and there’s tennis starlet Ana Ivanovic; tall and spunky and Euro-cool. She’s knocking around with KJ Choi’s wife, who’s no taller than a medium-sized cactus. Men gaze at Ivanovic with binoculars, doing their best drooling Homer Simpson: Aaarggh – tennis.

By their 12th hole, Adam Scott and Choi have wiped the floor with Woods and Steve Stricker, seven and six. The American TV man on the portable telly thing tells us it’s “quite a surprise”. A journo mate remarks: “More like an unlubricated fisting”. But when Aaron Baddeley and Jason Day conjure to square their match after leading by two with two to go, the first momentum shift of the Presidents Cup goes the United States’ way and dominates Friday’s papers.

DAY 2 – The nor-wester of God

It’s hot and blowy, and I’m out to see Woods and J-Day and his caddy Col Swatton, who I went to school with in the ‘80s. Swatton’s been living in Golf World for a while, a peer of PGA Tour types. On the 17th the day before, Shark placed two hands on Swatton’s shoulders, fixed him with his gaze and gave him a meaningful look that could’ve said: “Don’t fuck this up or I’ll have you killed. I have that power, you know. Don’t think I don’t.”

There’s David Feherty and his sing-song Irish accent like the father from In The Name Of The Father, Pete Postlethwaite, a fine actor. “I wonder if this putt is easier to read in Korean,” remarks Feherty of a KT Kim three-metre assignment. It’s a line he uses in Tiger Woods’ computer game. I know television is show business, but can you really recycle all your gags?

A large contingent of American journos are here, their shirts loud and billowing and tucked into khaki Bermuda shorts, Florida chic. Several smoke Cuban cigars which seem to grow ever-bigger, aromatic and pungent, smouldering leaves of Cuba’s prime export, incongruous here in suburban Melbourne off the highway to Frankston.

Woods rolls in a curling four-and-a-half-metre putt on the fourth, requiring more touch than Tchaikovsky. He knows how good it is and celebrates, in that way of his, by punching an imaginary dwarf on the top of the head. Cop that, Grumpy.

The galleries are large if a little muted this early in the piece. They roar for fine golf, but there’s no American-style whooping or hollering. Shark and his rented Fanatics will later contend that they “got the crowds going” with their humorous ditties. The Australian’s Patrick Smith will contend that it was the golf that did that and that the Fanatics should be locked out. I tend to side with a mate who observes that, “In the old days they’d have been pelted with tinnies.”

Woods waves flies away. No one yells out like Yabber from The Hill to Jardine, “Leave our flies alone!” Australian sporting crowds have lost wit and replaced it with sing-a-long types in love

with being celebrities by association. Or I could be getting old.

After five holes one thing is clear: Woods is hitting greens and shaving cups, his putter simmering. When he starts making some of these six-metre putts, as he routinely did in those orgasmic dwarf-bashing days of yore, then he’ll be back to winning Majors like he never went away. Take it to the bank via Centrebet.

There’s Fred Couples, 52 and probably cooler than you. There’s Frank Nobilo, whose ancestors, according to the PGA Tour guide, “were Italian pirates who after running out of things to pillage on the Adriatic, resettled in New Zealand in the early 1900s”. Nobilo is the Internationals’ vice-captain. It’s hard to deduce what his role is other than “Be Frank”. He pulls it off, though.

Christ, it’s hot. Thirty-three degrees with a blustery nor-wester cooked over the bad-lands of the Hay Plains and rolling across RM like the hot hand of God. The greens are trampolines. The players struggle to make par. Most of us would struggle to break a hundred.

After Woods and company finish 12 holes in a nudge over five hours, I decide to rack the cue. For all the golfing goodness, it’s painful stuff. Jason Day plays slower than a palaeontologist fossicking about in a labyrinth for the dusty bones of Cro-Magnon man. The wind isn’t going to stop the more you wait it out. You can’t have hectopascals to order. Not even Shark has that power and he could have you killed.

DAY 3 – Having cake and eating it, too

It’s flogging down in St Kilda, so I eat some vanilla slice on Acland Street, where cakes are a specialty. Out to Royal Melbourne after lunch and I’m on the par-three third hole, where I stand behind three Scotsmen drinking whiskey and smoking cigarettes, dressed in Fanatics’ garb, the world a madman’s joke.

I’m out to see Tiger Woods again because he’s Tiger and showing Tiger tendencies. Grrr. He’s playing with Dustin The Long and two Koreans you wouldn’t have heard of had one (YE Yang) not hit the greatest hybrid in history and beaten Woods in the 2009 US PGA. His mate KT Kim is also a fine player, jamming in putts like a schoolie’s tongue. The Koreans win one-up.There’s Phil Mickelson, who may be a very nice man, yet annoys me, as he does many Australians, with his seemingly confected “aw shucks” sugar-cane, candy-floss grin. “That’s kinda nice,” he’ll say, touching his cap, his cheeks like Alvin The Chipmunk’s. And every time he does a puppy dies. It’s a stone fact.

Mickelson’s wife is wearing silver gumboots. The weather is cold and wet and blacker than Guinness in a cave; weather like your first taste of a lemon, weather like a punch in the face. The wind ratchets up and it’s wet and slimy and nasty. But still the Melburnians hang on, knowing it probably won’t last, that there is still Great Golf and that they could yet cash in. Not me. That’s stumps on day three.

DAY 4 – Denouement

No “gimmes” in the match-play singles today, the greens are slick and it’s “game on” for the sheep station. I sit at the back of the fifth, a cracking uphill par-three with a sucker pin right that lures American balls into the bunkers like a vortex. 

Photos courtesy of Matt Cleary

The Internationals claw their way back. After five groups go out, all bar Jason Day has the lead. KT Kim goes on to win as predicted. Geoff Ogilvy, Charl Schwartzel and Ryo Ishikawa record wins. Adam Scott flogs Phil Mickelson. The crowd senses a shift, that something’s building. Only Day is battling, down by four in his match with Hunter Mahan. And here come the Fanatics, rallied

by Shark.

On the eighth hole, Day goes five down when a putt from off the green comes up three metres short. A Fanatic yells out, “Good effort, mate.” But Day knows it was rubbish. And no amount of happy-clapping from the green-and-gold malaria can change his numbers.

Perhaps Shark thinks otherwise. Wearing a Fanatics’ beret, he places his hands upon the youngster Day’s shoulders and fixes him with a stare, looking into his eyes, smiling. Don’t worry. Be happy! Day looks like he wants to bolt or throw-up, maybe both. A Fanatic yells out: “We got your back, Jase!” And somewhere, another puppy dies. Day will lose five and three.

And so to the 15th hole of the Ernie Els-Jim Furyk match and it’s all America here, too. He mightn’t look it, but there’s steel in Furyk; he’s of barnacle-encrusted quartzite. People have mocked his wacky swing, his bony face, but Furyk hits the golf ball pure and scraps like a fighting dog. He rolls in a birdie and kills off Els four and three. The Americans are all-but.

And here comes Tiger Woods, leading Badds “dormie” four-up with four to play. Surely this is the denouement. Woods’ third shot from the bunker rolls up to tap-in, a superb golf shot. Baddeley needs to chip-in to stay alive ... but isn’t close. The Presidents Cup is America’s.

And so the Americans get jiggy. Dressed in red, white and blue, it’s like a melange of advertisements: GAP and Ralph Lauren. It’s Vanity Fair and rich, polo America: clean-skinned and pure of pore, corpuscles rich and bubbling with densely oxygenated red blood cells. Or something like it.

Furyk hugs his wife for a long time in a manner Craig Parry, say, or Peter Lonard would not. There are back-slaps and fist-bumps and toothsome smiling. Photographers get snap happy. A kid in a chair gets a signed ball. American flag-wearing, face-painted types chant “U-S-A”. It’s an all-American keg party.

And it’s here I think: the Presidents Cup may not be the Ryder Cup nor a Major golf championship. It’s hard to support the Internationals in a tribal sort of way. We’re not Europeans. But the golf

– man oh man, the golf – is as good as the game can be played on Planet Earth. This is Super Golf. And reason enough to be in Ohio come 2013.

‒ Matt Cleary