Golf: Sport or Entertainment?
Is there room in pro golf for both pure competition and sports entertainment?
Should Paige Spiranac have received a sponsor’s invite to play in the Ladies European Tour season-ending Dubai Ladies Masters, or not?
It’s become a persistent and pesky question over the past two weeks. Dame Laura Davies seems to have sniffed a negative when she said she wouldn’t know the Instagram sensation from “a bar of soap.”
And why would Dame Laura Davies, with her 85 victories world-wide but without a Twitter account or a Facebook page, be familiar with a rather mediocre collegiate (San Diego State) golfer who’s managed to accumulate half a million Instagram followers.
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Davies, however, equivocated in a more elaborated statement, even as she alluded to dissent among the players:
"“Everyone needs a chance and if she’s a good player, then it’s great she’s here. If she’s here for any other reason than she’s a great golfer, then it’s a little bit pointless. But we have to give her a chance. She might go and win the tournament and then it’s the best decision ever made.”"
Clearly, the Dubai Ladies Masters sponsors and organizers disagreed with the doyen of women’s golf.
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Speaking for the tournament organizers, Mohammed Juma Buamaim, vice chairman & CEO of golf in Dubai, explained the corporate reasoning that informed the Spiranac invite:
"“I think for us, there’s been a big impact, especially in the United States. This is why we brought her. The girl didn’t make the cut, but I did not expect her to make it because it’s her first tournament, and with so much pressure on her. But I’m very happy to have her and we’ll have her back if she wants to come back.”"
LET executive Ivan Khodabakhsh, distilled the controversy to its essential problem: Golf is a “competitive sport, but entertainment is a big part of this, too.”
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And so Spiranacgate becomes a debate between the golf purists, who want the sport to be protected at the pro level from the splash of media hype, and the tournament organizers, who want more sponsors, more fans, and bigger purses, which can be generated by adding some spice to golf tournaments that the uninitiated often regard as slightly more exciting than watching grass grow.
From the little league playing fields to collegiate to pro competition, sports fans – loud, rowdy, vocal, frenetic – are a part of the American cultural landscape.
In 1963 the Mets were still a young team and at the bottom of the standings; and yet their fans were loyal. The Philadelphia Phillies aren’t what you’d call a winning team, but the Phanatics don’t seem to care. The Phillies are their team and the Phanatics are right there supporting them.
And then there are the Cheeseheads. What kind of adults express their support for a football team by wearing foam swiss cheese replicas on their heads? The loyal kind, the fans the team relies on through good seasons and bad.
Aside from some isolated cases of fan frenzy – the Furyk Fhanatics being a good example – since the days when Arnie’s Army marched down the fairways behind the ropes, golf has lacked this sort of broad-based fan support.
To be sure, Tiger Woods brought people to golf who had never been interested in the game, but Tiger’s star is fading and one player alone can’t sustain a fan base for an entire sport.
Golf needs more Page Spiranac’s, not fewer. More Pebble Beach Pro-Am type events,, not fewer. Let’s enjoy those party holes, and add a few more, because golf is a game worth playing at every level of performance.