Will The World's Best Golfers Ever Learn

Will they ever learn? I am not talking about the naivety of the world’s best golfers, although we will return to that later. No, I am referring to the torrent of foul language we were subjected to at Royal Troon.

Shane Lowry, Xander Schauffele, Brooks Koepka, Tyrrell Hatton, Robert MacIntyre, Jordan Spieth, Matthew Jordan, Tiger Woods, Jon Rahm, Viktor Hovland. It would actually be easier to go through the field and name the players who were NOT caught dropping the F-bomb. 

We are used to seeing footballers mouth the f-word but golf is meant to be different. I can tell you one thing for sure - if these golfers had used the sort of foul language that now seems to be common-place when they were juniors then they would have been sent from the course. That is precisely what happened to me as a 13-year-old when I decided it would be a good idea to wrap a three wood around a tree. I never did it again.

Golf is a game that prides itself in the standards it sets. It has proud traditions and a glorious history. Etiquette is part and parcel of our sport. And obscene language has no part to play. Bizarrely, even the foreign players swear in English, and they it on a regular basis.

Can you imagine Jack Nicklaus or Arnold Palmer swearing in front of the cameras? Palmer used to be a heavy smoker but he was taken to one side by his agent and told that it was doing nothing for his image. He stopped smoking. Immediately. Palmer cared what people thought about him. He wanted younger golfers to look up to him. He wanted the huge galleries who followed his every move to like him.

It seems that many of today’s generation could not care less what we think of them. 

I have said this before, and I will say it again - if impressionable youngsters hear the world’s best golfers swearing as a matter of routine they will believe that it is also just fine form them to do it too. And it is not. Creating the right impression matters.

Let’s not kid ourselves here. They all know that TV cameras follow their every move and that there are microphones everywhere. So why on earth do they keep doing it. I actually lost count of the number of times the Sky commentary team had to apologise for the players’ language. This is not the game I grew up playing.

And speaking of which, I looked on with a growing sense of disbelief at some of the shots I saw being played at the 152nd Open Championship. Yes, the wind was blowing, but you would hardly describe it as a gale.

When the sun is shining, the fairways are narrow, the rough is almost non-existent, the bunkers are shallow and the greens are as soft as sponges they throw 62s and 63s at us for fun. 

While I am in awe of the ball-striking of the likes of Scottie Scheffler, I am here to tell you that they couldn’t hold a candle to men such as Nicklaus, Palmer, Gary Player, Tom Watson, Seve Ballesteros, Nick Faldo and Lee Trevino. These golfers were all shotmakers. Apart from Trevino, who hit everything from left to right, they were able to manipulate the golf ball in any and all conditions.

Perhaps it has much to do with today’s equipment, but it is a fact that this is a lost skill. I was staggered at just how wild were some of the drives and approach shots that were played at Troon by men who claim to be the best on the planet. 

Let’s take the 11th hole as an example. It is one of the most difficult holes on the major rota. The one thing you cannot do is go right. And what happened? Time after time we saw them pulling out drivers and hitting wild slices. I simply do not understand why they cannot cope. If the wind is blowing from left to right then you need to either hit your drive with a draw or aim left. Rocket science it is not.

And I could not quite believe the mess that so many of them made of the Postage Stamp, the shortest hole on The Open rota. Time and again we saw players rack up cricket scores on this tiny hole because they kept going for the flag and found the sound. Joaquin Niemann took eight blows to play the hole for goodness sake.

I learnt my golf in Scotland and I realised at a pretty early stage in my life that if I was going to have any chance of scoring well on links courses then I was going to need to keep the ball flight low. I am in no way comparing myself with any of the players who teed it up at Troon but if I can do it, surely these guys can? Apparently not. How many times did we see the likes of McIlroy, DeChambeau et al stand up on a tee with a driver in hands and give it the full treatment, only to see the ball disappear into the gorse? It made no sense.

When The Open was last held at Troon in 2016, Henrik Stenson won with a total of 20 under par but the conditions were benign. The Open Championship we have just witnessed was played in true links conditions, with wind and a bit of rain. Tricky, but not impossible. They should have been able to cope with it.

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