beevomav
V.I.P.
- Joined
- Jul 12, 2011
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Take this case of Arnold Palmer who some say cheated his way to a Masters Victory, and Tom Watson who tried to get Gary McCord fired and was a drunk. Oh, and he married another golfers wife...
Venturi Calls Arnie a Cheater
By Brent Kelley, About.com GuideMarch 5, 2004
Ken Venturi, a major champion and the longtime television analyst for CBS golf broadcasts, alleges in a new book that Arnold Palmer cheated to win his first major, the 1958 Masters. "Nobody, not even Palmer, is bigger than the game," Venturi says in Getting Up & Down: My 60 Years in Golf (compare prices), according to The Associated Press. "I firmly believe that he did wrong and that he knows that I know he did wrong."
At issue - and it was an issue between Venturi, who eventually finished two strokes behind, and Palmer at the time it occurred - is a drop that Palmer took during the final round.
Palmer's ball was embedded and he sought relief from a rules official, who denied his request. Palmer played the ball and wound up with a double bogey. Palmer disagreed with the ruling and played a second ball (the little-known Rule 3-3a), taking a drop near the spot of the embedded ball. With the second ball, Palmer made par.
Three holes later, Palmer was informed that he should have been given relief from the embedded ball, and so his par with the second ball counted.
Here's the problem: While Palmer has always claimed (he's written about the ruling in a couple books) that he followed Rule 3-3a and announced before playing the embedded ball that he would also be playing a second ball, Venturi claims in his book that Palmer didn't say anything about a second ball until after making double bogey with the first. In the book, Venturi even claims that he and Palmer argued about it in the scorer's tent following the round.
It is probably impossible at this point to determine if what Venturi says is true. But it is possible to determine that it's a shame Venturi has chosen to make an issue of this nearly 50 years later. Maybe Palmer did do something wrong in 1958. The point is, it's impossible to tell now. And 50 years later, it is Venturi's reputation, not Palmer's, that will suffer because of this allegation.
Just imagine if this happened to Tiger..Arnie gets a pass but Tiger is held to some insane double standard.
But there is more. Tiger is called a cheater because he cheated on his wife. but is the the only one..Read this
Friday, December 14, 2012
Tom Watson Tried to Get Gary McCord Fired
I've always liked Tom Watson. He's a legend in golf, one of the all-time greats, and he just got named USA Ryder Cup captain for 2014. Good for him!But the older Watson gets, the more of a cranky old scold he becomes. Some people react to that by holding up Watson as some kind of moral exemplar. I don't. I just think he's become a cranky old scold.
Not that there's anything wrong with that! When I'm old, I plan to be cranky and scolding, too! It's just that we need to separate the public athlete who we admire for his accomplishments in his sport, from the actual person, whose attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors often don't match up with his sports-generated persona (or with what we'd like to believe about him).
Watson may or may not be a great moral authority, but it's pretty clear he views himself as one. He must, or he wouldn't be so willing to try to use his name to publicly scold or privately chastise others.
For example, you probably remember the story about Gary McCord being banned from Masters broadcasts after, during the 1994 telecast, McCord made a couple comments the Augusta poobahs didn't like. Jokes, they were - jokes about the golf course ("bikini wax" greens, "where the bodies are buried" mounds) that didn't go over so well with the guardians of Augusta.
What you probably don't remember - what you probably never knew - is that Tom Watson played a role in that. He wrote a letter the day after the broadcast to CBS producer Frank Chirkinian in which Watson called McCord "the Howard Stern of TV golf" and urged that McCord be fired. Specifically, Watson wrote, "Get rid of him, now."
The muckraking blog Sports By Brooks did a couple posts about Watson several years ago when Watson was inserting himself into the Tiger Woods scandal. In years past, Watson had a drinking problem, was left by his wife, estranged from his kids. He then married the ex-wife of golfer Denis Watson (no relation to Tom) after that woman left the other Watson. Was an affair involved in any of that chain of events? There were rumors to that effect, rumors Watson himself never addressed (even though he urged Tiger Woods to publicly come clean).
Look, this isn't intended a bash-Tom-Watson post. As I started out by saying, I've always been a big fan of the golfer Tom Watson, and I'm happy for him that he got the Ryder Cup gig again. Well deserved.
This post is really about those people who like to hold up athletes they like and admire as paragons of moral rectitude. Let's just knock that off, OK?
Tom Watson..a drunk, tried to get Gary McCord fired and had an affair with another man's wife..I wonder what the Golf Media would say about that if it were Tiger..Oh, we don't have to wait. They trash him like he is OJ..
Venturi Calls Arnie a Cheater
By Brent Kelley, About.com GuideMarch 5, 2004
Ken Venturi, a major champion and the longtime television analyst for CBS golf broadcasts, alleges in a new book that Arnold Palmer cheated to win his first major, the 1958 Masters. "Nobody, not even Palmer, is bigger than the game," Venturi says in Getting Up & Down: My 60 Years in Golf (compare prices), according to The Associated Press. "I firmly believe that he did wrong and that he knows that I know he did wrong."
At issue - and it was an issue between Venturi, who eventually finished two strokes behind, and Palmer at the time it occurred - is a drop that Palmer took during the final round.
Palmer's ball was embedded and he sought relief from a rules official, who denied his request. Palmer played the ball and wound up with a double bogey. Palmer disagreed with the ruling and played a second ball (the little-known Rule 3-3a), taking a drop near the spot of the embedded ball. With the second ball, Palmer made par.
Three holes later, Palmer was informed that he should have been given relief from the embedded ball, and so his par with the second ball counted.
Here's the problem: While Palmer has always claimed (he's written about the ruling in a couple books) that he followed Rule 3-3a and announced before playing the embedded ball that he would also be playing a second ball, Venturi claims in his book that Palmer didn't say anything about a second ball until after making double bogey with the first. In the book, Venturi even claims that he and Palmer argued about it in the scorer's tent following the round.
It is probably impossible at this point to determine if what Venturi says is true. But it is possible to determine that it's a shame Venturi has chosen to make an issue of this nearly 50 years later. Maybe Palmer did do something wrong in 1958. The point is, it's impossible to tell now. And 50 years later, it is Venturi's reputation, not Palmer's, that will suffer because of this allegation.
Just imagine if this happened to Tiger..Arnie gets a pass but Tiger is held to some insane double standard.
But there is more. Tiger is called a cheater because he cheated on his wife. but is the the only one..Read this
Friday, December 14, 2012
Tom Watson Tried to Get Gary McCord Fired
I've always liked Tom Watson. He's a legend in golf, one of the all-time greats, and he just got named USA Ryder Cup captain for 2014. Good for him!But the older Watson gets, the more of a cranky old scold he becomes. Some people react to that by holding up Watson as some kind of moral exemplar. I don't. I just think he's become a cranky old scold.
Not that there's anything wrong with that! When I'm old, I plan to be cranky and scolding, too! It's just that we need to separate the public athlete who we admire for his accomplishments in his sport, from the actual person, whose attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors often don't match up with his sports-generated persona (or with what we'd like to believe about him).
Watson may or may not be a great moral authority, but it's pretty clear he views himself as one. He must, or he wouldn't be so willing to try to use his name to publicly scold or privately chastise others.
For example, you probably remember the story about Gary McCord being banned from Masters broadcasts after, during the 1994 telecast, McCord made a couple comments the Augusta poobahs didn't like. Jokes, they were - jokes about the golf course ("bikini wax" greens, "where the bodies are buried" mounds) that didn't go over so well with the guardians of Augusta.
What you probably don't remember - what you probably never knew - is that Tom Watson played a role in that. He wrote a letter the day after the broadcast to CBS producer Frank Chirkinian in which Watson called McCord "the Howard Stern of TV golf" and urged that McCord be fired. Specifically, Watson wrote, "Get rid of him, now."
The muckraking blog Sports By Brooks did a couple posts about Watson several years ago when Watson was inserting himself into the Tiger Woods scandal. In years past, Watson had a drinking problem, was left by his wife, estranged from his kids. He then married the ex-wife of golfer Denis Watson (no relation to Tom) after that woman left the other Watson. Was an affair involved in any of that chain of events? There were rumors to that effect, rumors Watson himself never addressed (even though he urged Tiger Woods to publicly come clean).
Look, this isn't intended a bash-Tom-Watson post. As I started out by saying, I've always been a big fan of the golfer Tom Watson, and I'm happy for him that he got the Ryder Cup gig again. Well deserved.
This post is really about those people who like to hold up athletes they like and admire as paragons of moral rectitude. Let's just knock that off, OK?
Tom Watson..a drunk, tried to get Gary McCord fired and had an affair with another man's wife..I wonder what the Golf Media would say about that if it were Tiger..Oh, we don't have to wait. They trash him like he is OJ..
