Monday, July 30, 2007

There is no "clumsy" in golf?

After hearing the Golf Channel commentators declare that an LPGA player had just hit a "clumsy" shot to, possibly, eliminate herself from a win, I thought: "Does golf, being the wicked bitch she is, really allow for clumsy shots?"

To be honest, we all hit "crappy" shots. Even more, those shots are expected--a 64 by some red-hot pro involves a double bogey somewhere. "Clumsy", even stupid, shots, happen all the time, even on a good round. Obviously golf is a game that derives a lot of its results from luck--otherwise, duffers would be making millions on the Tour. So, being that golf is a game that seems to derive its basis in the subconscious, and that we, the golfers, have the goal of hitting every shot dead perfect, can you really say that we're "sloppy"? I posit that we, the golfing masses, do not have an extraordinary amount of conscious control over our swings, and that the designation of "clumsy" is, in itself, clumsy. Of course, the offending commentators were Australian, and as it's been proven time and again that the best commentators come from the U.S.A. It's no surprise that Aussies provided the gaffe. And, no, I don't believe Aussies are inherently "anything," but they do have considerably less experience in big-time commentating. Give them a few more years, and "clumsy" might fall from the lexicon.

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