Golf needs to learn something from hockey.
Ten minutes into watching the National Hockey League’s “Winter Classic” on NBC on New Year’s Day, I knew I was witnessing something dramatic. Here was the stodgiest, most backward of all major sports transforming its public image with a single nationwide network telecast. The game between the Buffalo Sabres and Pittsburgh Penguins was a carefully calibrated celebration of the game’s classic traditions and culture.
And for once the NHL got everything right.
To some, the idea of 71,217 sports fans gathering outdoors in a Buffalo, N.Y., football stadium to watch a hockey game in the middle of winter snow and sleet is the epitome of “nuts.” But for anyone who knows and appreciates hockey, the afternoon was an ideal expression of sports fanaticism. It hardly mattered whether anyone in the stands could follow that notoriously elusive puck. The point was to be there and to be part of something unusual.
The raw wintry weather was the perfect complement. Anyone who has grown up playing hockey on a frozen pond – as even I did, playing hockey on Long Island before anyone heard of global warming – can recall with joy the feel of the uneven surface, the makeshift quality of the rink, the unreliable goal nets. Add the cold weather and the pelting from sleet or “snow grains” (I term I had not heard until this NHL telecast) and you have a kind of youthful idyll that has all but disappeared in modern pro sports.
So if hockey can pull this off, why not golf? What better game for evoking youthful memories and feelings – of school-house swings, piecemealed equipment, and of a dreamy, pastoral playing field.
How about the PGA Tour putting together a “Summer Classic” tournament?
Players use older, wooden-headed drivers and “woods,” plus forged, not cast, irons and wound, balata golf balls – the kind that anyone who is 30-plus years old today grew up learning the game with. Forget caddies. Players carry their own golf bags. No yardage books or pin sheets. Golfers eyeball everything and improvise their shots. Leave the bunkers rakes in the maintenance shed. Mow the greens so they actually putt at different speeds.
How much fun would that be to watch? And to play?
The NHL’s “Winter Classic” was a success in every possible regard. And no surprise, despite (or was it because of?) the rough conditions, the game’s premier player, the Penguins’ Sid Crosby, not only displayed his amazing puck handling skills but also scored the winning goal. To their credit, the NHL’s administration even bent the rules slightly in the name of equity by stopping play midway through the third period and overtime to allow the teams to switch sides, lest either one gain an undue advantage from the elements.
That, to me, showed a lot of imagination. Don’t let rules nerds ruin the game in the name of some abstract lawyerly adherence when what counts is the spirit of the sport. With a little imagination and guts, golf, too, can go back to its traditions. It might be the best way of showcasing itself.
Posted: 1/4/2008
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