MIND / THE NEXT ONE’S GOOD M Golf’s Four Letter Word Have we become %$#@*!& numb to the use of profanity? By Jerry Tarde
M y old boss Nick Seitz used to tell the story of going to lunch with Ben Hogan at Shady Oaks Coun- try Club in Fort Worth. When the club manager came over to their table, Hogan introduced him to Nick. “This guy has 15 kids,” Hogan said. Inscruta- bly, he added, “ Effed himself right out of a seat in the station wagon.” I always liked that story. It said so much about Hogan and his saltiness. There’s a similar one about Bobby Jones, who was negotiating a book deal with his publisher, which had offered him an insulting advance fee. “ Ahhh wouldn’t walk across the effin ’ street for faaahv thousand dollaaahs ,” Jones famously said in his languorous Geor- gia drawl. Of course, neither man actually used the euphemism. They said the word and probably said it often among friends and confidantes but not in public, not in the final round of a major with crowds of young people around them and certainly not on television. It was a different time, you might say.
a round of golf. It’s the most versatile word in the language of sport. An ex- pert on the international game, Peter Dobereiner once told me that no golfer ever became great until he learned to swear in English, or maybe Anglo- Saxon. However, there has been a noted uptick in the use of the word on the PGA Tour. Sometimes it can be used colour- fully or even dexterously. After a hor- rendous round in the year’s first major, Tommy Bolt was overheard fuming: “ Eff the Masters. Eff Augusta National. And eff the crippled son of a bitch who built this effin ’ place.” Offensive in so many ways, the sheer universality was breathtaking. Jim Dent exhibited a particular cleverness that followed him from the PGA Tour to the seniors. After flushing an approach shot that appeared to be flying over the green, he yelled, “Get down, mother f___er.” A tour official was dispatched to discuss what used to be a violation of the code of conduct. When interrogated, Dent said that he had been misheard. “What I said was, ‘Get down, mother-father!’ ” Then ex-
tantrums were once described by the Financial Times as “louder and more richly worded than many of Lenny Bruce’s best performances.” Most of the time now on the PGA Tour it’s used as a substitute for cleverness. It’s banal, just plain crude, and, when said within earshot of family television, shameful. Does it raise your brand val- ue? Is your agent proud of you? Would you want your kids to hear? I remember taking my 11-year-old daughter to the 2006 US Open at Winged Foot where we watched Ian Poulter badly pull his drive into the left trees and shout the word at full volume. I looked down, and Lauren’s eyes were like dinner plates. The Saudis can have him. Tiger Woods might hold the TV record, but then again he has logged more minutes of air time, and lately he has been on good behaviour, so he gets a pass. Arnold Palmer was discreet if nothing else, and he was a lot else. I’m not saying Jack Nicklaus is an angel, but I’ve got recordings of more than 20 hours of one-on-one interviews I did with him from over the years and, goodness gracious, he didn’t use the word once. I’ve been told it’s a generational thing. Am I offended or angered? No, I’m just saddened that another stan- dard has been lowered. I look at sepia pictures of old tournaments, and every man in the gallery is wearing a coat, tie and fedora; the women are in dresses and pearls. They weren’t all rich folks either. Adults wore leather shoes, not sneakers or flip-flops. I know I’m out of touch, but nobody looks good in those silly jogger pants and flat-brim caps. We need to attract younger and more diverse audiences, but is this the way to do it? When Harry Styles plays golf, he wears a collared shirt. What tipped the balance for me and makes it a subject with currency is the
I don’t know about that. When I play in PGA Tour pro-ams these days, the thought invariably occurs to me that the language has become looser, to put it mildly. You almost don’t see a missed shot played with- out the obligatory f-word being muttered or some- times clearly stated.
plained: “In my family, it’s appropriate to honour both parents when you’ve hit a good shot.” Our recollec- tion is that his sentence was commuted. Phil Mickelson’s use of “scary mother-fathers” in reference to the Saudi tour
Jerry Tarde is on the board of a new museum in Washington, D.C.,
that promotes literacy called Planet Word.
seemed to be unabashedly published in every media outlet and has contrib- uted to this normalising of the word. I think it was his actions more than his language that caused Phil to be suspended, but at least he claimed it was off the record. Nor is the LPGA Tour exempt. My longtime favourite was the Swede Helen Alfredsson, whose legendary
The word is still vulgar slang accord- ing to the dictionary. It means to have sex with someone or damage some- thing or, evidently, miss a putt. It can be a noun, a verb, an adjective, an ad- verb or a gerund invaluable with a golf club in your hands. It’s an interjection signifying pain, pleasure or self-loath- ing, which on the PGA Tour sounds like
ILLUSTRATION BY MICHAEL BYERS
22 GOLF DIGEST SOUTH AFRICA
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2024
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