A lot of really important, significant and scary things have been happening in the world lately, things that certainly require our attention and consideration.
I'm not going to talk about any of them.
Instead, I'm going to hone in on a story you might have caught earlier, even if you're not a 24/7 devotee of ESPN and/or the Golf Channel. It seems that one Rory McIlroy, a young golfer of some repute, didn't exactly perform up to his very high standards on a shot during a tournament over the weekend. In the aftermath of that under-performance, young Master McIlroy reacted in a manner which, while ill-advised, is not particularly atypical of the way many golfers react to similar moments of under-performance.
He helicoptered his club into a water hazard. Yep, Rory McIlroy's 3-iron sleeps with the fishes.
Now, right off the bat, let me say what McIlroy did was totally uncalled for. It was childish. It was petulant. It was, literally, a grown man throwing his toys.
And if he'd bent his legs a little more and fully released his hips, he could have gotten a lot more distance on that club. Torque is the key. That, of course, and not being so close to a tree you hit it and the club bounces back at you. Not that I'd know anything about that.
At least he didn't take a running start, lose his balance, fall and rip the crotch out of a perfectly good pair of khakis. That would, I imagine, have been really, really embarrassing.
Or he didn't throw the club up into a tree, get it stuck up there, storm off in anger, come to his senses, realize he couldn't possibly afford to replace it, get his best friend to drive him back to the course in the middle of the night, climb the tree in the dark, fall out of it on the way down, sprain his ankle, get stopped while on the course by the local police department and have to explain the whole thing to his father. His father then would have told him he was going to call the hospital in the morning on the off chance there had been one of those "switched at birth" deals and some people with a really, really smart kid were wondering how they got so lucky.
Of course, I'm not saying that actually happened. But if it did actually happen, it's important to note I was just driving the get-away vehicle. If, of course, something like that had happened. Which again, I'm not saying one way or the other.
What I am saying is that, while I don't necessarily condone the action, I most certainly understand the impulse. Golf is the singularly most infuriating game ever invented. It's harder to figure out than the Middle East and involves only slightly fewer explosions.
It's made even more infuriating because of one salient but exasperating fact. Namely, that the ball ... doesn't ... move. It just sits there, providing you with absolutely no excuse for why, after years of practice, lessons, expensive equipment and the actual wearing of some really funny-looking shoes, you are about to snap-toe your drive so far into the trees the FBI couldn't find it if it was wrapped in bacon and they had a team of bloodhounds.
Now, I have a little bit of a temper (seriously, I was just laying the cellphone down on the bed and the wall got in the way), so I could have developed into a club-throwing champion if it weren't for steadying influence of my father. My dad, who had overcome his own club-tossing impulses at an early age, cautioned me against the affect losing my head would have on my game. He also mentioned that clubs tend to break when you throw them, and I should feel free to toss anything I could afford to replace.
I mean, it's not that we were financially challenged, but my dad had grown up dirt poor in Oklahoma, and it's more likely he would have shown up for work riding a unicorn than that he would have gotten into his own pocket to replace a putter his idiot son broke when he threw it against a water cooler. At least that's the gist of what he said. Might have been more colorful.
And finally, as I was preparing to loft a 7-iron easily farther than I had managed to hit the ball, he pointed out something that has tended to put a damper on any of my potential hissy fit-induced club hurling.
"You know," he said, "you're really not good enough to get that mad."
Spring, it appears, is upon us, which means even the most fair-weather of golfers (that would be me) will be heading back to the courses soon. And while there are so many things about Rory McIlroy's game I'd love to duplicate, his club throwing isn't one of them.
I mean, really, you call that throwing a club? More wrist, Rory, more wrist! These kids, don't know how to do anything.
Gary Smith is a recovering journalist living in Rogers.
Commentary on 03/13/2015