World Cup Nonsense

[Sweder]

The Fool Monty

I stayed up past my bedtime last night to watch the climax to the US Open from Winged Foot (surely Masonic overtones there? Someone call Dan Brown . . .). For once this usually attritional golfing major actually offered up a thrilling finish with no less than seven or eight players in with a real shout coming down the home stretch. The glorious failures piled up before us like chasing squad cars in The Blues Brothers.

Monty, the butt of so many American jokes over the years, grumpy, corpulent, disrupted by the uproar of butterflies mating in the next field, received unprecedented support from the galleries. Coming down the 18th he had this, his first ‘major’, in the bag. Smiling affably at the whooping New Yorkers as he strode purposefully down the final parched fairway towards his inexorable fate. Just an easy six iron to the heart of the green, two puts for victory; the monkey on his back that makes King Kong look like a marmoset would be banished forever.

The caddie handed him the club, the Great Scot went through his pre-shot routine . . . and then that famously trouble brow folded like Peter Crouch attempting an overhead, dark thoughts scudded across his troubled face . . . and Monty changed his mind. Who knows where these demons spring from at such critical moments? No matter, the dye was cast, and the greatest-golfer-never-to-have-won-a-major dumped his approach into thick, cloying clag alongside the green. It was horrible to watch, as uncomfortable as Micheal Barrymore’s public unravelling in the Big Brother House. He sclarfed the ball out of the rough and proceeded to three put from twenty feet in almost pin-drop-perfect silence.

Back down the fairway Phil Mickelson, the equally portly American with the sprayed on grin from hell duck-hooked his tee shot onto the roof of the hospitality tent, the ball rebounding into play to the delight of the baying crowd. Had that been you or I there would have been no tent (nor hospitality) and we’d be re-loading for three off the tee. But these pampered darlings get all sorts of help, Mickelson enjoying almost shameful relief having carved his previous drive into a rubbish sack. Without a drop he’d have been blocked by a might oak; as it was he managed to hack onto the 17th in two to make an improbable and undeserved par. His luck ran out on the 18th. Like the tortured Scot before him Big Phil hacked and clumped his way to an equally poor double-bogey, handing the title (and 1.2 million dollars) to Jeff Ogilvy, a young Australian already in the clubhouse. The inane grin never left the American's face but the colour did. By the time he walked off the last green he had the look of a man seriously unhinged by his 'ordeal'.

Try as I might I just couldn’t celebrate Monty’s downfall.
OK, so he’s Scottish. To be honest I’m finding less and less time for his kith and kin. They dominate our country’s parliament, declare undying allegiance to anyone facing England on the field of sport and generally whine unstoppably about how unfair life is for those of a tartan persuasion. They could almsot be Antipodean for chrissakes. But as I watched Monty’s shattered countenance struggle through the obligatory press conference, desperately trying to salvage something positive from his pain, there was no joy in my heart.

Zut Alors! Ici nous alons . . .

I can take a tad more pleasure in the squirming discomfort of our cross-channel neighbours.
I don’t know what magical formula the French have for self-destruction but lets hope they keep it to themselves. I’ve rarely seen a side more in control of a match yet apparently too lazy (too cool? Too French?) to go for the jugular.

One moment of fabulous Fabien magic later and it’s all shoulder-shrugs and big bottom lips. ZZ Top is out of the next match, maybe off the world stage forever. Should it be so, what an ignominious way to go.

Speaking from the Baaden-Worsen camp I’d have to say the misery of other nations is a welcome relief from all the self-flagellation over here.

Two matches, two wins, six points.
I know a few Frenchman who’d bite your hand off for less.

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Lord Haw-Haw-Haw

[SIZE="1"]Sweder, Hillside Loper has temporarily suspended all loping activities pending further medical reports [/SIZE]