On numerous occasions over the years in this space, mention has been made of the fact that honesty and perfection doesn’t always work out for those who display it.
Think of the dart player who slots a nine dart finish but still ends up losing their match. The team player who ends up on the losing side but still gets the player of the match gong. Or the snooker player who clears a 147 but still loses.
Then there are the sports wherein there’s a gentlemanly unwritten rule whereby competitors call transgressions on themselves. You wouldn’t expect to see two of them in a week. Even allowing for the fact that two of the sports where the practice is common had major events taking place recently.
Now, this writer has no problem admitting that yes, I was one of the large swathe of society who became properly versed in and attuned to the rudiments of tennis owing to the exceptional exploits of the quartet of Federer, Nadal, Djokovic and Murray. Yes, Andy Murray is worthy of commensurate accreditation to the others.
Three, and possibly the four of them have now exited stage, with Novak mentioning that last week might have been his last appearance at Wimbledon. So, aficionados of the multi surface sport might thus have wondered where the next publicity magnets for their sport might come from.
Mind you, they weren’t left wondering for long. Indeed, it could be said that the next generation had begun to make their mark before the ‘golden oldies’ had begun to fade from the scene. However, I believe even the most eternal optimist would’ve got hard to predict the changing of the guard taking such a grip on things as quickly as has turned out to be the case.
To the extent that Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz have already developed a rivalry of their own which already has three or four chapters spanning Australia, France and Wimbledon with the spoils split between them. For all the ferocity that undoubtedly manifests when they collide, neither are egregious enough to bypass the unwritten rule referred to above.
Which in both Tennis and Golf underpins the ‘done thing’ of calling a foul on onesself if officialdom have missed it. Even if said honesty ends up costing those who fess up dearly.
Lately, in the two sporting codes referred to above, there were examples of such honesty being the undoing of those who did the honourable thing. One, in the meeting of Alcaraz and Sinner at Rolland Garros where the Spaniard called a double fault on himself.
Although in fairness, in that instance, his brilliance offset whatever damage may have been incurred on the French clay during the five set, five and a half hour epic. Then, almost inevitably, Sinner had the scales tip in his direction when they faced each other on the green green grass if Wimbledon.
However, in contrast to the situation Alcaraz was able to extricate himself from any hardship his honesty got him into, Shane Lowry must be kicking himself for doing what he thought was the right thing at the end of the second round of The Open Championship in Portrush.
As in tennis, but laced with a trimming of snobbery, in golf, it is considered par for the course – pun absolutely intended – for a player to fess up if they’ve f****d up. Lowry duly did, but nobody could have foreseen the manner in which the Clara man’s game would implode once the penalty was assessed to him.
But of course rather than analyse that, golf’s blinkered filters instead chose to focus on the fact that the big man at one point exclaimed “F**k this place” during his third round travails.
For me, the whole thing of “Bad” language is a bit of a farce anyway. The manner in which the media jump in with dramatic apologies and a few decades of the rosary whenever things get a bit flowery has got to the point of being embarrassing. Like farting, it happens, we all do it on occasion, but it’s hardly worth the drama.
That said, frustration will almost certainly have been the abiding emotion for the affable character from the midlands as a -5 final round was much more reflective of what the bearded wonder is capable of and, no doubt, left him pondering what might have been. But it can and will be again sooner rather than later.
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