Author: JP Bouffard

One of the most talked about aspects of the last two Masters tournaments has been the effect of the recent, dramatic architectural changes on the nature of the competition. Golf fans, like those of any sport with perhaps the exception of boxing, aren’t generally thrilled to see their champion determined in a war of attrition, stumbling over the corpses of their competition and limping across the finish line.

So it is no surprise that with the last two Masters Sundays (and perhaps the last several years’ worth of “toonaments”) featuring very few birdies and heroic charges among the eventual winners, many have concluded that the Augusta National Golf Club course has been changed for the worse. I’m not sure if there’s any merit to that argument, but I do know I’m pretty sick of hearing the whining. So for this week’s Thrash Talk, I decided to take a few vital signs on the tournament and today’s golf fan.

Continue reading “The Pornification of Golf”

As I read my last Thrash Talk it occured to me that maybe it would be interesting to focus on the historical standing of a player other than Tiger Woods… or Jack Nicklaus, or Arnold Palmer, or Ben Hogan. It is a common theme in all sports to view the retired generations of stars as the gold standard of excellence, their career achievements standing like monuments on the top of a hill. Monuments which remind us of the great moments, ignoring the failures along the way.

Active players, in contrast, have incomplete careers, and generally no monuments. We are far better acquainted with both their successes and their failures, often causing us to rank them below the illusory image of the flawless champ of yesteryear. Certainly this is not true of all players; anyone watching Tiger Woods, or Roger Federer, or Michael Phelps, cannot escape the historical significance of their achievements, even in young, incomplete careers. But what about Tiger’s top competition? Could Tiger’s domination lead us to perhaps miss something truly great, right under our noses?

Continue reading “Turning Up My Collar to Honor a Great Champion”

As I reckon most of you already know, The Streak (the latest one, anyway) is officially over. Someone beat Tiger Woods, finally, by two whole strokes, at last week’s CA Championship at Doral, ending his run of official PGA Tour victories at five. Past Tiger streaks have ignited fiery discussions over Sir Eldrick’s historical standing in golf, so to extend the Tiger theme of last week’s Thrash Talk, I’d like to give you a few additional things to chew on. Read on to get my take on the matter.

Continue reading “The Streak is Over, but the Beat(ing) Goes On”

In his February 8 Globe and Mail Column, virtuoso golf writer Lorne Rubenstein makes an interesting observation about televised golf: there is very little attention paid to architecture.

While I am not sure this characterization is accurate in the literal sense – every telecast of big tournaments I can remember has at least some segment on the course, either with flyovers and commentary, or the omnipresent telestrator commentary – I would certainly agree that compared to, say, swing analysis, golf viewers are indeed starved for good content on architecture. Is there anything to be learned from this sort of thing, other than the difference between tifdwarf bermuda and zoysia? I think there is, although I suspect the expert commentators would reach different conclusions than would I.

Read on to learn what I think you’d be missing.

Continue reading “Modern Marvels”

While I’m sure most people would be happy to have heard the last of the Kelly Tilghman Affair, after mulling the situation over for several weeks I’ve decided I would be remiss not to give it the once over in The Sand Trap‘s op/ed space. Let’s face it, January is a slow news month in golf (Tiger romps at Torrey Pines… why am I not surprised?), and this is a political issue in an election year (here in the U.S., anyway). Pass up reading this and just visit the forum if you will, but if you read on I can promise to give you a thing or two to chew on.

To briefly review, Golf Channel‘s team of Kelly Tilghman and Nick Faldo were engaged in some light-hearted repartee on the subject of Tiger’s dominance of professional golf. Faldo asked rhetorically what other players might do to possibly compete with golf’s version of a Superhero, said “gang up on him for awhile.” In the joking vein of their exchange, Tilghman suggested that other top players “lynch him in a back alley.” The racist overtones of this comment were too much for Golf Channel executives, who suspended Tilghman for two weeks, after which the anchor issued a public apology and resumed her duties as lead anchor.

Continue reading “Kelly Tilghmangate: A Seventy-Eighth Look”

At the risk of alienating those readers from tropical climates (lousy, spoiled, warm-weather wussies playing golf on 70° January days…), I thought this week’s Thrash would be a good place to give you an update on how the long, dark winter is progressing. If you’re similarly frozen out of golf, perhaps the following can give you a constructive suggestion or two on how to survive the final few months before the spring thaw.

Continue reading “Golf on Ice, 2008”