Not content with a string of obscenities like the rest of us when we hit a bad shot, or hurling the club into the Atlantic, Rory McIlroy is golf’s true good guy, says Dr Garrett FitzGerald.
Wee Mac can astonish you. He can throw birdies at his card same as if he was shelling peas. He can win majors by record margins.
He could chip Titleists into a washing machine when he was only two-months old. I believe there is an early pregnancy ultrasound in the archives which records a huge golf-brain at 14-weeks’ gestation. He has just become Europe’s top golfer again while spending half the year in a plaster. Then he goes and spoils it all.
The sad occasion was in Dubai very recently. He’s two shots ahead of the field with two to play and arrives at the tee box on the 17th, a par three. The beautiful swing as per usual and the ball goes miles astray and into the water, which almost surrounds the green.
The crowd is silent. Rory is shown with his club around his neck in the full follow-through position, taking in the enormity of this disaster. Thousands, nay millions, are witnesses to what happened next. He said it!
The Editor has given me full permission to repeat it here — in this upstanding medical (and family!) weekly. Rory said, out loud and clearly: “Oh my goodness!”
I kid you not, dear reader. Incredible, unlikely, never happened, you can’t be serious, pull the other one, I hear you say. “Oh my goodness”— hereinafter OMG.
How many golfers out there have been in tight matches with normal people (or even doctors) when something similar occurred? Millions. How many have heard such an expletive in similar circumstance? I thought so — no one.
Next question: please answer honestly or incur a two-shot penalty. Did you ever shout the OMG thing when your shot went astray or nowhere? Right again; ‘no’ is correct. Have you ever whispered it? Have you ever thought it or even seen a player think it?
Silence, head-shakes, none-of-the-above. Does your committee have sanctions for such verbal outrage or is it too unimaginable for your local blazers?
PIc: Getty Images
The people I play with would be rightly ashamed if it were reported that they had made the OMG utterance. Apart from the historic, perhaps creed- or class-based, distaste for such verbals around here, there is the pragmatic aspect of what happens next when the ball is heading for the water, bushes, car park, suburban garden, clubhouse bar or wildlife enclosure nearby.
It has long been established that there are only two shots in golf; ‘good shot’ and the other. There is no need for verbal intervention when the shot is good.
The other requires a firm calling out to. The expressions used, which have been known to alter the flight and path of the ball, are usually delivered loudly, immediately and succinctly, with a minimum of one key word and a maximum of three.
The one ‘key’ word is always present and is the active ingredient in ball-flight intervention. Some attest to miraculous results. A case of hyperbolics probably, but solid outcomes are often sworn to.
It can be heard all over the course. Players at other holes, who may not be having a great day of it, are consoled and heartened at its hearing; “at least I am not alone” being the attendant thought. In the Rules of Golf as issued by the Royal and Ancient with the USGA, the ball-call described is NOT ‘an outside agency’ so one can assume that its use is legal and even clandestinely encouraged.
The recommended expression is less pious ejaculation than a tried and true formula for golfing success. The ‘key’ word likely has its origins in armies of old, particularly amongst squaddies from a nearby island, possibly related to non-golfing recreational activities. Whatever its pedigree or provenance, it is nowadays firmly established in the wide world of golf.
Like many quality items these days, cheap imitations are freely available out there and can be found in the more upmarket pitch-and-putt clubs favoured by clergymen, men of little faith. But, take it from one who knows, the simulations are inferior and do not do the job required.
Recently, I had the good fortune to play a course in the county of Mayo. On the fourth fairway, my opponent shanked (I have composed a Limerick about it). His ball headed for the nearest hazard, an oil-rich roaring ocean. He shouted “Feck it anaways!”. As expected, his ball paid no heed at all.
On the 13th, my tee-shot gained the afferent limb of Boston. I got the non-OMG word out at great decibelity. The wild Atlantic wind gathered itself up to its full height in response and hurled the yellow Srixon to the green. QED.
In Dubai, Rory sank a marvellous putt for bogey on seventeen, then went on to win. Such heroics would not have been necessary had he used the full weaponry at his disposal. Instead, he put himself under serious pressure by the useless and disproven OMG method.
Augusta in April should be in for a surprise, in the unlikely event of his hitting a bad shot.