I was pondering the other day just what it is that makes watching sport so compelling for us all, the majority of whom have neither the time nor the talent to be actively engaged in it to any great degree.  This train of thought, of course, has been driven by the arrival of a new kid on the block in the world of golf, namely the LIV Golf Invitational series.

This week sees the playing of the third event in an opening series of eight tournaments and, so far, golf nerd though I am, I can summon up not a jot of enthusiasm for logging on to watch the action.  I did tune in to see just who would win the obscene amount of money in the first event (Charl Schwartzel and $4million) but the whole spectacle failed to ignite any real interest.  And I wondered why?

For the moment, if we can, let’s park the whole moral, sportswashing, human rights issues’ conundrum that has everyone taking entrenched positions.  After all, there is hardly any sport or global business not intricately bound up with some regime or country that has questionable human rights records.

Just what elements does sport need to contain to engage us, capture our undivided attention and mean we clear the diary of everything else?

I have realised that, for me, friendly matches don’t cut it.  Football friendlies, warm-up rugby matches and the like, even when it’s “my” team, are only useful/of interest to me as a fan as a barometer of where said team might be performance-wise at a given time.  It’s a practice for the real thing.  I am only interested in how we perform when it really matters.  That’s an important phrase – “when it really matters” – and is critical to this fan’s enjoyment.  The contest has to mean something.  It’s the difference between a pre-season friendly and a cup tie.

There is also something massively tribal about sport and it’s embedded in our DNA as far back as gladiatorial times in ancient Rome.  The thumbs up or down from the emperor would either spare a man’s life, or not, so the consequences for failure or under-performing were dire.  Sport stirs something in us that harks back to those times from centuries past.  It allows us to enjoy conflict in a controlled and more civilised manner (one hopes) than in the Coliseum, containing as it does a raft of rules within a set format.

We like to see a team or individual pitted one against the other, pushed to their limits of skill, guile and endurance.  We see the people and teams we support as part of our tribe and we passionately identify with them through their success and failure.  I know several footie fans who, in years gone by, have retired to bed for several hours or days, pulling the covers up and shutting out the world, completely devastated by a defeat to a rival.  As Bill Shankly, legendary manager of Liverpool FC famously said,  “Some people think football is a matter of life and death.  I assure you, it’s much more serious than that.”

An individual pursuit like golf, which sometimes seems pedestrian and slow moving in comparison to other energetic, rapid-fire, team sports often jostles unsuccessfully for column inches, soundbites and notice.  However, every other year, it positively explodes in popularity and global reach when the Ryder Cup and the Solheim Cup matches are played.  We see the best from Europe and the USA pitted against each other in fierce rivalry and this platform of sport at its most pure produces the most remarkable, unforgettable shotmaking skills under the severest pressure.

That’s because the players are playing for so much more than themselves and simple remuneration.  We, the fans, can sense it.  They are playing passionately for their tribe with every fibre of their being and they frequently can raise their games to unprecedented levels in the adrenalin-filled cauldron of gladiatorial competition.  This is the arena in which legends and legacies are formed and the evidence thereof is enshrined in the archives of our sport.

The majors are another arena in which an individual can shine in golf.  It’s an opportunity for a sportsperson to cement his/her name in the annals of the game and have great performances recorded for posterity and spoken of down the decades.  That’s why they are the most watched and most eagerly awaited individual championships of the year for the fans.  It takes something special to win a major.

So, in sport it’s quite obviously not the prize money on offer nor the amount a person is paid contractually that drives fan interest.  It’s so much more complicated than that and unless the LIV Golf model can capture the elusive criteria required it’s unlikely its business model will generate the interest and support needed to succeed.  They say their new format “has been designed with fans as the #1 priority”.

If they fail to understand and capture the essence of sport, this fan, for one, will not be watching.

 

I suppose that a bought-and-paid-for ticket is a way of keeping tabs on fans/supporters and having a bit of a clue as to how many people will be attending your event but, really, I’m well on my way to turning the status quo on its head and becoming a great advocate of fans being paid to turn out.  Especially golf fans, now that LIV has established that money is no object.

It’s not such a daft idea when you delve a little further.  After all, without fans there’s no atmosphere (Covid proved that beyond doubt) and we obligingly dispense with all our image rights and most of our other rights – have you taken out the magnifying glass and trawled your way down the terms and conditions?! – when we buy our tickets.  The gate receipts have long been a secondary (at best) consideration at most golf tournaments and most fans receive very little in return for their money – programmes are extra, food and drink are extortionate all too often, the dimensions of permitted bags tend to be too tiny to accommodate all the stuff needed for a day’s golf watching (and a Sherpa costs extra) and at some venues you can see very little unless you’re an experienced tramper.

As you’ll have guessed that’s one of my hobby horses, so I’ll dismount at once and concede that the ticket for the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Games was worth every penny – and, just about, every hour spent agonising over how to access said ticket, to ensure that we were allowed in to the newly refurbished Alexander Stadium in Perry Barr.    Luckily, rail strikes notwithstanding (how I love that word!!), my mate who’d given me the ticket (husband on urgent business in Bangladesh) and I were able to get to the venue by a combination of car, train and bike.  We ditched the bike in favour of a shuttle bus on the return journey and caught the last train with our last puff.

Liz, above left, had a vested interest in the ceremony because her daughter Sophy was performing with a group called Critical Mass and had been rehearsing tirelessly for months and months.

Apologies for the truncated photos – no idea why that’s happened and technical support is not available in the middle of the night.  It was half past midnight when we made it home, so there’s a bit of an excuse. [Have fixed them for you, Patricia, – Mo.]

Don’t ask me to explain every nuance of the festivities – some of it was wonderfully daft – but it was colourful, captivating, spectacular and we loved every minute of it, applauding and cheering madly at every opportunity and waving frantically at all 72 of the teams as they paraded round the stadium.  No wonder my hands and throat are sore.

And here he is again (left of pic), near the end of the proceedings.

Earlier in the week I made a slightly easier journey – 100 or so yards across the road to Beacon Park – to visit Carters Steam Fair, on its last tour, sadly.  Everything is immaculate and beautifully presented and I had a go on the carousel, which has featured in several films, including Paddington 2 but should not be called a carousel apparently because that’s an American thing and this is, perhaps, a merry-go-round, a whirligig or a teeter-totter.  Anyway, it was great fun and just about on my limit of circling!

This, however, is absolutely not my sort of ting.

Anyway, I’m off to the badminton this afternoon, to see how it should be played.  Since my last game – my one and only singles – was half a century ago, I can’t pretend to know anything at all.  I used to play doubles, very lazily, relying on my partner and my reach, in the church hall and why I entered the singles ladder in my first term at uni, heaven only knows.  Singles badminton is brutal and its exponents have to be unbelievably fit. Fortunately my opponent was no better than I was but he did not want to be beaten by a girl and we fought ourselves to a standstill.  With my last gasp, I staggered the shuttle over the net, out of his reach, inside the line and that was that.  I never played again, never saw him again (he was furious at losing, hooray!) and was still glowing like a Belisha beacon 40 minutes later when I met up with friends.  They weren’t interested in the details of my triumph; they were too busy laughing at my visage rouge.

Finally, just because the newspaper cutting (remember those?) is dated July 28 1971, so it’s the right time of year, here is a piece from the Belfast Telegraph about the Irish Girls’ Golf Championship at Royal Belfast, Craigavad, a real example of all our yesterdays.

Sorry, again, that the photo is so small and the names probably unreadable but I hope you can make out some of them and remember long-forgotten triumphs and disasters.

Modesty nearly forbade me from mentioning the result but I got my comeuppance in the next round.