Bad Shots and Stupid People

I watched with interest the Deutsche Bank playoff tourney over the weekend, and saw Billy Horschel hit a shot on the 18th that will haunt him for the rest of his career, a really fat iron from 212 yards that came up at least fifty yards short of the green and into the front hazard. All he had to do was hit it on the green, two-putt, and go into a playoff with the eventual winner Chris Kirk. The only other truly ugly shot I can think of is that wedge that Fred Couples hit on the 18th in a Ryder Cup match at the Belfry in 1989. He and Christy O’Connor Jr. were tied going to this last hole and smooth Freddie hit it forty yards right of the green to lose to O’Connor one-up. That’s what pressure can do to a golfer, and Freddie showed it in 1989 and Horschel showed it on Labor Day 2014. Oh, yes, and lest I forget, there was that double-hit pitch shot by T. M. Chen in the 1985 PGA, in which poor Mr. Chen lost to Hubert Green by three strokes. Oh, my, was that an ugly shot. The other thing I noticed in this week’s Fed Ex tournament: the truly stupid things one or two spectators would scream out whenever a golfer hit a shot—“Bobalooie!” “Mashed potatoes!” “In the hole!” “Bombs away!” “Yabbadabbado!” “Barracuda!” and my favorite in light of the winner Chris Kirk, “Captain Kirk!” It seems that these truly stupid people are taping the tv coverage, and to make sure they win their five or six seconds of fame, they scream out these nonsensical phrases so that they can later point themselves out to friends and relatives. “Yeah, hey, that’s me you’re hearin’!” Golf security should escort these stupid ones to the gate and send them on their way. They fall into the stupid category along with the guy who ate thirty worms, thirty cockroaches, and a hundred millipedes,

the guys and gals who thumb their noses at world hunger by shoving down a hundred or so hot dogs in a gluttony contest, the young woman on welfare who thinks it’s just wonderful to produce twelve or thirteen children by a wide variety of fathers, the young man who just has to play video games with his car, zipping back and forth from lane to lane and then screaming through a red light, just to gain ten or twenty seconds on the field,the parents who give an Uzi to a nine-year-old for her to play with at the gun range. I’m sure I’m missing a bunch who could go on this list, but you get the idea. I wish there were some hex we could put on them to have male genitals wither away and drop off or have female genitals mysteriously sewn shut. I’d even scream “Yabbadabbado!” when that happened.