'The Big Miss' Misses

As soon as I began reading 'The Big Miss' I thought, "This is professional quality prose. Either golf teacher Hank Haney is a natural born writer or he's got a ghost writer backing him up."

As it turns out, Jaime Diaz, who has recently been appointed as Editor-In-Chief of Golf World Magazine, did all the writing. Haney dictated his memories plus any notes that he might have made following his resignation after 6 years as Tiger Woods swing coach. 

Haney has been blistered - rightfully so - in his revelations both personal and professional of his time spent with Woods, in which he revealed virtually everything that could be utilized either by Tiger's enemies or the competition. For example, Tiger fears the driver as it might create the so-called Big Miss, where the ball flies off the course into surroundings that probably make it unplayable. With Tiger's macho inclinations, it would not take much for a competitor to goad him into using it, even if it threatens his competitiveness.

He also revealed personal stuff such as his dislike of Phil Mickelson and certain other pros. Woods' ruthless dismissal of caddie Steve Williams after 13 years is given as an example of his being cold hearted and tightfisted, devoid of empathy and utterly selfish in his pursuits - be they golf, women or Navy Seals.

I feel that Diaz controlled and created the tone of this book. He knew full well as a professional writer, the boundaries of due fairness and respect. He surely knew that many of the Haney's statements crossed the line, were defamatory and out of bounds. 

Like any professional relationship- a designation Haney seems to feel applies to himself - there is surely a teacher-student confidentiality that has been violated.

Should Tiger, with money to burn, take this twosome to court, highlighting supposed friend Haney's duplicity and Diaz' sensationalist writing and sue for defamation of character it should  make for an interesting trial!

The Big Miss is a gossipy tell-all, and when not getting up close and too personal, a book with some good golf tips. Kitchener's Moe Norman, with all of his idiosycracies brought on by his autism, gets a top billing. 

Nevertheless, technical expertise is outshone by personal vindictiveness, perhaps a reaction by Haney of not being taken into Tiger's inner circle in the grandiose manner that he thought he deserved.

Regardless, it strikes me that Tiger gets the benefit of the doubt and the sympathy vote of golf fans throughout all of this, and Haney-Diaz are not perceived as the heroes of the unvarnished written word as they may have hoped, but simply as two hangers-on living off the avails.

Battle of the Blades No Girl's Sport

I've never been a figure skating fan, and to this day I'll watch World Champion Patrick Chan - and then only briefly -  out of a sense of obligation to support a fellow Canadian.

When I played hockey as a 10 year old at the old Dixie Arena in Mississauga, there was a kid playing for the Dixie team named Peter Hughes who wore black figure skates. Dixie was a macho team in the hierarchy of Pee Wee hockey, with players such as perennial scoring champion Tom Chudleigh, he of the Milton apple farm fame, Spencer and Bob Fosbury, rock-'em, sock-'em defencemen right out of the Don Cherry mold and Freddie Stanfield, who later made an effortless leap to the NHL and fame with the Boston Bruins.
But here was this kid Hughes, who played good hockey, scored goals, was fully accepted by his team mates and gave as good as he got, distracting us Lorne Parkers with his black figure skates!

We'd lose the game, then attempt to deflect criticism of our lack of scoring, porous defence and puck-shy goaltending with a remark such as, "Yeah, but they got this guy that wears figure skates..."

Sadly, even at that age, there was a stigma attached to any boy who had the audacity to use the ice for something God had not designated it for, which of course was hockey, and to go out and skate with neither pads nor stick nor puck, and attempt spins, jumps and flowery motions with his hands.

It was considered, well, a girl's sport.

So it was with feelings of conflicted emotions that I read of the format of Battle of the Blades, which was to take former NHLers, put figure skates on them,  team them with past female figure skating luminaries and let them compete in front of a 3 person judging panel led by former figure skating champion Sandra Bezic.
The viewing public also played a large part in selecting who stayed for the next week and who became champion by electronically sending in votes for their favourites.

I was hooked after the first episode. Those were real live, macho men out there! They had the courage to skate in-line, using their picks, to fall ingloriously, to become frilly, dance to music, make flowing motions with their stick-free hands and to lift their sometimes wary (but always courageous) partners overhead.

They showed without a shadow of a doubt that figure skating is not just a girl's sport.

In 2011, things were reversed when former pairs Olympic gold medallist David Pelltier scooped Tessa Bonhomme, Canadian Women's hockey team member, as a partner, and they swept the competition when Tessa got rid of her edginess and adopted Jaime Sale-like moves and charisma.

'Battle' had Kurt Browning, Ron McLean, occasional guest judging from Don Cherry, large crowds at Etobicoke's Mastercard Centre, major TV viewership and an enthusiastic, considerable number of sponsors.
They were profitable.
So when CBC, following miniscule budget cuts, recently announced the cancellation of 'Battle', and shoved diminutive, former figure skater Julie Bristow to make the official announcement, it smacked of typical, CBC bully boy retaliation. Of  pouting, and reacting with, "This will teach you a lesson, government and viewers! Nobody sits CBC in the corner!"

Let's hope the demise of 'Battle' is short-lived and picked up by a network that gives a damn.

I bet Peter Hughes would make a great addition to the next episode.

First Spin of the Year

I went for my first cycle of 2012 yesterday, a late start in an odd spring which offered 22 degree temperatures a month ago, swung back to snow flurries, finally this week getting seasonal and drifting back into the 20's - or as we used to say before political correctness shot down our perfectly adequate Fahrenheit system - the 70's.

I rode north on the Mono-Amaranth Townline, sharing the same side of the road with homeward bound commuter traffic, into a stiff northwest breeze that didn't help my untrained legs, which quickly tired on every molehill that I contested. I thought of Tour de France cyclists tackling roads which wound 6 kilometres up mountains with 8% grades, and felt better.

I gained rapidly on a 17 year old kid who was skate boarding to Shelburne, suggesting as I passed, "This wind must be tough for you!" to which he replied between puffs, "You got it, man!"

Shortly after, I stopped, gave him the entire contents of my water bottle, for which he seemed to be eternally grateful. He told me he'd been on the road for 2 hours, having started in Orangeville, and was about halfway.

Since I had a cellphone, I asked, "Want me to call a taxi?" to which he replied, "Sure, if you pay!"

That settled that.

On the way back, I ran into a trendy looking guy on a Cervelo bike, who was kind enough to stop and offer solicitous advice after I'd shifted too quickly and my chain had fallen off.

"Nice bike" I commented, "Cervelo has a large and impressive presence at the Tour. It's nice to see Canada represented"

"What is yours?" he asked, more in politeness than curiosity.

"Garage sale. $200. Runs like a tank. Wanna trade?"

He begged off, then made plans to continue his ride to the 20th Sideroad, some 5 minutes further north. I knew he'd be flying when he made the turn to return south, so, pedal-to-the-metal, I charged hard for home and thankfully, was not overtaken.

"You look ashen and gray" commented Juice. "Who were you racing today?"

"First spin of the year, dear. You know they're always tough!"

Expectations Kill the Leafs

The Toronto Maple Leafs will never again win the Stanley Cup.

In a few years, by finishing near the bottom of the 32 team league, they might acquire a few players that in the draw will allow them to make the playoffs, but they will shortly acquiese and disappear quickly after the first series.

Owners who want to be seen as diligent and as, "doing something about the problem" will continue to fire coaches, general managers, trainers, assistants, publicity flacks and Zamboni drivers at an ever-increasing rate.

The Leafs will continue to metamorph otherwise competent professional hockey players into Nervous Nellies who won't have the confidence to play a vigorous game of road hockey with 10 year olds.

Owners will post apologies before, during and after the season, and will employ writers to come up with unique ways of saying, "We stink, stank and stunk!"

Why? Expectation. Expectation that whatever Miracle-On-Ice team a harried GM puts together will erase 30, 35, 40 or 45 years of failure by miraculously leapfrogging into Lord Stanley contenders.

Players come to Toronto with a pedigree, confidence in their skills, be they a knack for scoring, playmaking, defense or goaltending. Within a couple of years they have become lifeless, slackjawed shells of their formers selves, tossed aside for the next wunderkind who is introduced to Toronto media like a sacrificial lamb.

One of the requirements of future Leaf players should be that, like Eddie Shack, they cannot read. How else might a player survive with ego intact, with upwards of 30 sportswriters putting them under the microscope and finding them deficient in one category or another on a daily basis? And the ubiquitous "posters" - even more ruthless in their appraisals of talent which they themselves neither showed on the ice nor with pen in hand. Or bloggers.

Can any newbie live up to the fame and lore established 40 and 50 years ago by names such as Syl Apps, Teeder Kennedy, Bill Barilko, Tim Horton or Bobby Baun?

Even the Leaf motto "Defeat does not rest lightly upon their shoulders" rings of negativism.

There is hope, however. The Leafs, if they are to succeed, must become a national laughingstock, a joke, the brunt of comments by politicians and of boos from the 19,000 plus fans who jam the Air Canada Centre every game; or the millions throughout the land who clamber aboard the Leaf bandwagon each Fall, only to claim in April they were secretly Montreal or Pittsburgh or Washington fans.

And when this persona is established, and there are no aspirations, and they have truly given up all hope, and have resorted to lengthy on-ice prayer following the National Anthem, then they might , strictly by chance, put together a compatible team that is loose and confident, a team with no expectations, which no longer plays a tentative, get-rid-of-the-puck and scrambly game.

A team that can play like it actually enjoys being at the ACC, not anywhere but.

A team that wins.

With billboards saying, "Free lapdance during all Leaf playoff games" and "It must be Spring, the Leafs are out" they are close to this laughingstock requirement.

Now all they have to do now is fire the GM, all their star players and the Zamboni driver.