Nearly a week after Phil Mickelson’s shocking galloping polo putt in the third round of the U.S. Open, the debate, rationalizations, criticisms of Fox’s coverage of it and farcical takes continue.
My take? On the largest stage of the sport, Mickelson committed a contemptuous, flagrant violation of the rules. He should’ve been disqualified on the spot, no matter whether he were Phil Mickelson or Krusty the Clown.
And it was Mickelson who appeared in USGA image ads encouraging all golfers to know, observe and respect the rules.
The next day, Mickelson could’ve preserved some of his rep — already shaded by a $2 million gambling debt to a shady character — by withdrawing. Was his defiance a sense of entitlement or a matter of no sense at all?
And Fox, for all its failings during the Open and criticisms for having overdone its coverage of and the fallout from the incident, did a superb job in placing the sport above the popularity of the player.
When Fox’s Curtis Strange asked former USGA executive and telecast contributor David Fay what he thought of the play-on, two-stroke penalty, Fay called it a “friendly” decision.
That demanded the next question, which Strange asked: What would Fay have done? Fay flatly said he would have DQ’d Mickelson.
Strange further asked if this would be similar to a player, his ball about to roll into the water at the Masters, running down to swat it in the other direction.
Fay: “Exactly the same.”
Strange confronted Mickelson at the end of his round, not settling for Mickelson’s politely defiant answers — thin rationalizations — as to why he so intentionally and conspicuously violated the rules.
Mike Francesa, who knows Mickelson as “Phil” and has come up with some doozies to excuse, explain and exculpate his own conspicuously transparent egregious mistakes — for starters, see: Al Alburquerque — Monday on WFAN explained:
“It’s hard for some public figures to stand up and admit they made a mistake. So they come up with crazy answers.” Satire-proof!
And when caller Bob Competiello — “Bob from Summit” — tried to explain why Mickelson was way out of line, Francesa, naturally, wouldn’t let him complete a sentence. Choosing an absurd analogy, Francesa shouted/asked Bob if he would be equally outraged if Mickelson “threw a club and hit your kid?”
“As the father of three,” Bob said, “which kid?”
Yet, among the funniest lines ever delivered by a caller flew undetected past Francesa, a pompous jackass who was far too busy marinating in his own juices to have heard it.
But bottom line: Fox not only didn’t run from this stunning story, having run into it, the network didn’t run away from it.
Zach Johnson’s testimony after Saturday’s round that playing conditions had become so absurd that the USGA “has lost the golf course,” was aired and discussed, though it wasn’t even a Fox-conducted interview. It belonged to U.K.-based, Fox sister network Sky Sports. Fox’s contract with the USGA easily could have dictated that the broadcast truck ignore it.
On the flipside, we again learned that host Joe Buck’s casual-slick, Hugh Hefner-like late-night talk-show host presence is no less annoying or transparent on golf as it is on baseball and football.
Buck’s contrived tightness with big-name players — “Phil,” “Dustin,” “Rory” and “Tiger” — was an affront to both the better senses and broadcast journalism, or what’s left of both.
Too many post-round interviews, for which we were pulled from the course to hear and see, were wastes of time.
Scott Piercy’s second round ended with him still among the leaders despite an excruciating three-putt — birdie to bogie — from about four feet. Yet Fox’s Shane O’Donoghue, unless he didn’t even know about it, impossibly didn’t bring it up.
And Fox should not have pandered to the coterie of loud-mouthed louts in the gallery who made every shot an opportunity to enjoy their verbal vandalism later on DVR. “Hear that jerk? That was me!”
Such conduct has destroyed the Ryder Cup as a feel-good sporting event, yet golf’s TV voices are more inclined to salute it than condemn it.
But when the heat was on — both on the course and on Mickelson — Fox came through.
Cup succumbs to replay, network foolishness
World Cup:
1. Replay rules — another foresight-barren attempt to pursue that great sports imposter: Perfection, through hindsight — has been added in the form of VARs, video assistant referees.
Thus, the Cup is to be determined by lengthy stoppages to go back in time to determine if fouls or violations were originally uncalled or undetected. And so disputable, often inconclusive conclusive rulings now rule the World Cup, NFL and MLB-style.
What’s called or not called in the first minute changes everything. France’s 2-1 group-stage win Saturday over Australia was dictated by the dubious application of replay.
In Spain’s 1-0 win over Iran on Wednesday, the ref’s shrugging, no-call indecision preceded a long delay before the VAR determined Iran was offside, and thus had not scored the tying goal.
2. Stupid clutter stats. Fox posts “Percentage of Successful Passes,” giving a 3-yard back-pass to an open man the same value as a 30-yard swinger toward a winger.
3. Fox’s deceptive advertising of starting times — a full hour early — is both disgusting and unsurprising.
Recall Brian Davis, the only TV voice in the Oklahoma City Thunder’s 10-year history? In April he was suspended for a playoff game days after activists with nothing better to protest determined that his use of “cotton-pickin’ ” to flatter OKC’s Russell Westbrook after a great pass — “He’s out of his cotton-pickin’ mind!” — was racist, as if he’d chosen to shout a racial slur on the air.
The Thunder’s gutless lack of logical support for Davis was shameful. In addition to the suspension, Davis issued a hat-in-hand apology for saying something that few, including Thunder management and players, ever before considered as racist.
This week Davis was let go, fired. No media outrage. His career, perhaps, is over. He will be entered into the annals of infamous, walked-the-plank racists.
Yo is what he is
Don’t blame $110 million Yoenis Cespedes on Cespedes. Heck, if I knew that Cespedes was jettisoned by the Athletics, Red Sox and Tigers because of his prepaid indifference to playing baseball, let alone the winning kind, how could the Mets not know?
NFL cheerleaders are: 1. completely unnecessary, 2. hired as sex objects, 3. file lawsuits because they’re treated as sex objects.
Reader Ronald Angelo has a question for New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, who grandstanded making the state’s first legal sports wagers: “Will he also pose smoking the first joint when weed is legalized?”