As they say, there’s no such thing as bad press. And last weeks bench-clearing brawl between the L.A. Dodgers and Arizona Diamondbacks was proof positive. Now baseball brawls are not uncommon, but they happen infrequently enough that it’s a big deal when they do. It’s not like a hockey fight where they happen so often that it’s just become part of the game. No one outside of hockey fans cares about a hockey fight anymore. But a bench-clearer in baseball? It’s all over ESPN, Sportscenter, sports highlight shows and, with this particular one, even my local news the next morning! Imagine that type of coverage for a regular golf tournament?
Come on now…admit it. Deep down, I know most of us golf fans have a little voice telling us how much we’d like to see Tiger and Sergio come to blows right on one of the tees, mid-tourney. I know some of you probably just gasped. “How could he say something like that?” But think about it from the stand-point of adding attention to the game. Something like that would add so much more coverage to the sport, which in turn will lead to more viewers and more fans. people who are not even golf fans are going to be curious about that. Hell, they may even tune into the tournament just to see if something else erupts!
I used Tiger and Sergio as examples. But in reality, it could be anyone on the tour really, however it would only help if at least one of the brawlers was a bigger name on the tour. The younger generation of sports fans has fewer and fewer golf fans within. Younger fans look to more physical, fast-paced sports. And with the rising popularity of extreme sports or X-Games type sports in recent years, several sports are either losing fans or gaining them at a slower rate. But none more than golf. So something new needs to happen.
More attention needs to be drawn to the sport, and not only during majors. I’m sure many people will think that a brawl will just be a black eye on the sport, and maybe it will…temporarily. But like a brawl in any other sport, it will blow over in a pretty short-period of time. Afterward, it will just be remembered something like “Hey, do you remember that time when (insert golfer here) and (insert other golfer here) went at in during their round? That was awesome.” Well, as long as the fight is a good one and doesn’t look something like this:
Because if it does look anything like that, then the sport is about to lose several more potential fans and gain a whole mess of hecklers. Talk about a black eye…
Swing ’til you’re happy!
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