Why do golfers get upset if someone takes a picture or coughs or sneezes while they are swinging or putting? I know they are concentrating but aren’t they just being big babies? They are hitting a stationary object. Mark McGwire doesn’t demand silence when someone is throwing a hard object at 90+ miles an hour and he has .3 seconds to decide whether to swing, not swing, or duck!
My WAG is that it’s a, “It’s just always been done that way” type of thing.
Within the past year I was channel-surfing and paused for a moment on a Pro Bowler’s Tour event. I can remember when that was a total-silence thing, too, but now they scream and yell and hoot and holler all throughout the bowling. (Yes, I know. Some people are easy to amuse.)
I think as golf moves away from elitism and more toward a “people’s sport” (a movement kind of started, or at least revived, by Tiger Woods), there may be a relaxing of these strict golfing protocols.
More tournaments will become like the Phoenix Open, which is more like a football tailgating event than a golf tournament.
This goes for any sport; any sudden noise will disturb a player.
But if there’s plenty of ambient noise, that can be ignored. Mark McGuire tunes out the stadium noise. But if at the last moment the catcher yells, “Whosyerdaddy!” that’d trip up MM.
When I bowl, the alley’s plenty noisy. But someone yelling during my approach will @!#?@! me up.
In golf, most sound dissipates quickly, so the course is fairly quiet to begin with. That’s why any sudden noise is all the more disturbing.
I suspect it’s a custom that just evolved. What really gets me, though, is on televised golf games where the announcers are speaking in hushed tones – they’re 300 yards away in the broadcast trailer. They could scream and it wouldn’t bother the golfers. I know they want to give the impression they’re right up there with the action, but c’mon. Give us a little credit…
“It’s a sunny little doomed planet, inhabited by a number of frisky little doomed animals.”
At televised golf tournaments, the announcers in the towers usually don’t whisper. However, there are reporters on the course and they whisper.
Sometimes, the announcers in the tower may start to whisper for dramatic effect however or because they are talking to the reporter on the course who is whispering. The tower announcers may also be whispering when golfers are on the 18th green because that is where the tower is normally located.
As for golfers needing quiet, it’s just a tradition. Golf, probably more so than any other professional sport, has a strict code of etiquette. Golfers are supposed to penalize themselves for rules infractions, something you don’t see in any other sport.
So, whether you are watching or playing golf, just keep it down, all right. The rest of us appreciate it.
We have a golf club in our hands and we’re not afraid to use it. Now, then, who was it that coughed?
(Actually, you could probably set off a small warhead when I’m teeing off and I wouldn’t notice it. I’m too busy praying that my hook won’t magically appear again.)
These things change over time, too. For example, if you ever watched professional bowling on TV even a few years ago, the crowd got silent whenever the bowler strode towards the lane.
If you watch the pro bowling tour on ESPN now, you will see people screaming loudly throughout the entire match, even when they’re on the lane getting ready to approach the pins.
Who knows? Maybe in a few years, the etiquette in golf and tennis will make a similar change as well…
I HAVE BEEN SMOKE-FREE FOR:
One week, three days, 17 hours, 7 minutes and 45 seconds.
428 cigarettes not smoked, saving $53.57.
Life saved: 1 day, 11 hours, 40 minutes.
TIME ELAPSED SINCE I QUIT SMOKING:
One week, three days, 21 hours, 24 minutes and 45 seconds.
435 cigarettes not smoked, saving $54.46.
Life saved: 1 day, 12 hours, 15 minutes.
Golfers get used to quiet during a shot because most golfers learn and play the game with at most three other persons in their vicinity (the rest of the foursome), making any noise from those people quite annoying. Bowlers, on the other hand, regularly bowl in an environment that is rowdy; I always thought it quite unnerving to watch tour bowlers competing without the requisite calls for beer in the background.
Each network has a different approach to golf broadcasting. ABC generally sets up a tower near the 18th green and has all its tower broadcasters stay there, rotating in on a schedule (thus we get Jim McKay for some of the time, Peter Aliss for the rest), and then uses on the course roving reporters. The rovers will talk quietly when they are near the players attempting a shot; trust me, some of those players have bionic ears and can hear someone 40 yards away talking normally. CBS on the other hand has towers at each of the last several holes, with a commentator in each tower. Those commentators stay quiet when there is action on the green below them; on several occaisions I can remember seeing golfers glare up at the tower when they heard the commentator talking at what they considered the ‘wrong’ time.
And there is NOTHING like the sudden roar from three holes away when Jack makes a birdie on a charge… guess I’m gonna have to get used to Tiger’s army doing those roars now.
What got me started on this was during the Masters when Els was putting on the 18th. Somebody took a picture and he got all huffy about it and had to start over. Of course he missed anyway, that was the funny part…
I also heard a sound byte of Tiger complaining about a camera during one of his drives… I guess he can run around and pump his fists and hot dog it when he sinks a big putt but everybody else best be quiet when Mr. Woods is up.
Golf is hard enough when it is quiet much less when you have any distractions. I would say that when Mark McGwire is up he isn’t worried about hitting a fade over the water. Hitting a 90 mph fastball isn’t easy but a foul ball is a mulligan for the batter. If you hit out of bounds in golf it’s a stroke.
In the case of most spectator sports though I would say that the crowd gets tuned out. From playing High School sports many moons ago i can say that 99% of the time I wasn’t even aware of the crowd. The active nature of football, basketball and baseball gives you more things to focus on, like what the other guy is doing. Golf is solitary, realistically man against the course. Disturbances have a greater effect is this situation.
Golf has incredibly small margin of error, especially when you’re a pro. It doesn’t take much to hit a bad shot (at least for me), but I would have a hard time hitting a ball to within 6 feet of the cup from 180 yards out knowing that if I did so, I would have a chance to make close to $1,000,000.
A lot of people complain that golfers aren’t athletes and aren’t in shape (many aren’t, but most of them now are in very good shape), but their mental concentration is probably greater than athletes in the other professional team sports.
I’m always amazed at how close everybody stands along the fairways when pros tee off. If I were at the tee, you would want to clear out a 50-yard radius to be safe as straight tee shots are the exception, not the norm. I’m even worse if there’s another group waiting behind me or a group standing in the fairway in front of me, but presumably out of range.
Mark Mcgwire might not be worried about hitting a fade over the water but Tiger Woods isn’t worried about the .3 seconds he has to decide to duck if the ball is coming at his face either.
If I were to tee off at Augusta with those crowds, they better watch their shins…
Concentration is very important. For a pro (and even some amatuers) the golf swing is practiced for hours, every single day, and there are so many things you have to do to make that swing perfect: a consistent grip, set up, back swing, timing, etc. Golfers work very hard for this routine. If someone makes a distracting noise at any time during your swing, your concentration is broken, consistency goes down the drain and it throws the whole thing off.
This may not be applicable to the weekend golfer who goes to the local public course on a Saturday and drinks beer all day and hacks away, but for people who take their golf serious, respect for other golfers is proper etiquette and considerate.
“Words fascinate me. They always have. For me, browsing in a dictionary is like being turned loose in a bank.” - Eddie Cantor
It’s the folks with flash cameras that really get to him (and the others on the tour) - and remember, the gallery stands a lot closer to a pro golfer than it does to a baseball batter.
People seem to think that a golfer at the peak of his backswing and just starting his power stroke represents a fine opportunity for popping off a flashbulb from twenty feet away…
The other reason is that it is a sudden, unexpected noise.(eg: cell phone ring) These tend to cause me more problems compared to a constant, louder noise, (eg a mower or a crop dusting plane).
Keith
I think the size of the crowd also has something to do with it. If you’re being watched by 10,000 noisy people their chatter turns into a “wall of sound,” but golfers are traditionally watched by only a handful of people at a time (the large crowds at the Masters were an exception). When you can make out individual words, cell phones, and camera clicks, it’s a lot more distracting.
Well, while tradition states that golf galleries are quiet, I don’t think thats the issue at hand. I don’t forsee a time when, tradition or not, golfers would be forced to play under a curtain of noise. The course is too big, and the action to slow, lasting a 4 day weekend.
The point you must notice is that, as has been mentioned, most spectator sports are viewed by massive numbers of people, emitting a low frequency roar that is easily filtered into the background.
Golfers are playing in a fairly quiet surrounding, and 90% of them will have no trouble playing as well in a environment with a steady low frequency roar.
The disturbing point is the sudden high pitched sounds at the most critical point. One could compare the camera flash and click on the downswing, to a fan blowing a whistle or shining a laser pointer in the eye during a B-Ball players free throw (has happened and gotten a number of fans thrown out), or a fan blowing a air horn during the release of a Randy Johnson fastball. McGuire would definately make a point of seeing that that didn’t happen on a regular basis.
Golfers aren’t tyrants on the course, most players get the loud singular yells from the gallery of “Go Tiger” or “Knock it stiff” during their address, or as they are gathering themselves. This isn’t a problem for them. Its those sharp, irritating breaks in silence at the most critical times. Its not a person being a fan at that point, it is an unruly person who doesn’t respect the event they are viewing.