My friend Kristin Collins and I went to school together at Delaware. She’s smart, funny and very talented, and worked for a long time at the excellent Raleigh News & Observer, in Raleigh, N.C.
She wrote on her blog the other day a beautiful post about reading Nelson Mandela’s autobiography, and how it’s affected her as a woman, and as a mother. It’s honest, so well-said, and a joy to read.
It’s truly the best thing I’ve read in a long time, and if you have five minutes, please check it out.
**OK, so please explain this to me, golf fans of the world.
Let’s say I’m watching an NFL game on TV. I see a play develop, and I see No. 78 on the offensive line blatantly trip and hold a defensive lineman. No flag is thrown signaling a penalty. However, I saw the infraction on TV. So I call the stadium and get connected to an NFL official, tell him what I saw, and then suddenly, No. 78 gets a 10-yard penalty.
Ridiculous, right? Never in a million years could that happen. Yet, in the “sport” of golf, this kind of thing happens regularly. Fans on television, sitting on their couches, call in infractions to tournament officials, and affect the outcome of tournaments.
It happened again over the weekend in the LPGA’s Safeway Classic. Top pro Juli Inkster was seen by a TV viewer swinging her club illegally during a break. The viewer emailed the tournament director, and Inkster was eventually disqualified.
This is insane! How can you let a guy or girl on their freaking couch officiate a major sports event!?? It’s unbelievable to me that pro golf allows this to happen, and players are victimized by it. It’s happened at least a half-dozen times that I can recall in recent years.
What a joke. No other sport in the world would stand for this, but golf does.
