Creep of the Week: Legacy Edition

[image courtesy of flickr user amacapugay]

This edition of COTW is a departure. It's meant to celebrate, not condemn. Commonly overlooked in the discussion of golf's most colorful characters of all-time is Sergio Garcia. Actually when it comes to making headlines for bizarre behavior he is the runaway leader. Not John Daly. Not even close. And Sergio's melodramas tend to play out on, not off, the golf course, or else n the press room right afterwards, and that makes him the arguably more compelling golfer.

2013 Legitimategolf Awards

It's time now to look back on the year that was 2013. The popular or media-savvy thing might be to get retrospective in the last weeks of December, but my thing is, why not let the year play out entirely, then make our piddling assessments of what went down, through the clarifying lens of hindsight? is what I say. Also I was just busy.

Indian Summer + the Anti-Creeps of the Week

Verrazano Bridge overlooking #13 and #14 fairways.

It's hot over here this week. I snuck out for some late afternoon golf and it felt like summer all over again.

Great.

Creeps of the Week

The first two Legitimate Golf Creep of the Week awards recognized some high-profile douchebaggery. But this week, we train the spotlight on the ordinary folks, the unsung jerks who make golf so miserable at the local level, in our own day-to-day lives.

As part of the LGNYCGT ("Legitimate Golf New York City Golf Tour"), I found myself in the Bronx the other day. A full-write up of the excursion is coming soon but for now I wanted to quickly vent about some of the foul people I had the misfortune of crossing paths with. Originally I thought of just posting this away on some safe, obscure little corner of the internet.

But screw that--I have been working hard to build up this bully pulpit and dammit, why shouldn't I use it to lash out at the people who make me (and all other reasonable people) mad?

Creep of the Week

[photo courtesy of Brandel Chamblee Hater Page on Facebook]

Brandel Chamblee is the mouthpiece of the Golf Channel. His prominent position is a testament to the belief that negativity sells. Like an O'Reilly or a Limbaugh, Brandel's job is simply to enflame, to irritate, to provoke via harshly critical opinions--often unfounded--delivered with a near-religious fervor and dogmatism.

Random Thursday Post: Creep of the Week, Bethpage Black and more

In the last post I talked about negativity, and how it sells. Well I want to sell too, so here goes. We all know that the world of golf is lousy with lousy personas. From time to time, why not put the spotlight on some of them? Maybe there's a lesson to be learned for all of us.

"Hey kids--I have a Twitter."

Ted Bishop is the current president of the PGA of America. (Respect.) I had never heard of him until this week, when he laid this gem via Twitter.

Shame on you if you tried clicking that 'Follow' button. It doesn't work anyways.

Clearly he's alluding to the slow play issues that have popped up on high-profile stages recently--this year we've had the slogfest of Tiger's final round at Torrey, and then there was the Chinese wonderkid at the Masters, then there was the USGA getting all up in our business with their cutie-patootie campaigns.

And in this one little twitter post he manages to 1) take credit for Jim Furyk and Jason Dufner's pace of play b) declare the PGA of A's ownership of the very concept of pace of play and 3) implicitly call out the PGA Tour, Augusta National and whoever else had a slow play issue, practically gloating about them not keeping their players in check. It's not just what he's saying--it's how he says it. The emphatic caps, that noxious hashtag. Ya, ok Ted. Take it easy.