HOW TO IMPROVE MAJOR SPORTS FROM A SPECTATOR AND PLAYER'S POINT OF VIEW

 Dear Readers,

          Here are my ideas.

TENNIS:

          This is one of the most unfair sports there is. Somebody like Argentinean Diago Schwartzman at 1.7 m tall is expected to play on equal terms for the same prize money against somebody like that American giant John Isner at 2.8 m. It’s a game where the taller you are the more likely you are to be able to serve unplayable aces, which is something the little players are seldom able to do in what is the most important part of the game. In other individual sports like boxing and weight lifting competition is evened out by dividing competitors into weight categories, effectively making size nothing like the advantage it is in tennis.

          I believe only ONE SERVE should be allowed. Currently the serve is the only time in tennis when a player has two chances to get the ball in play and as this is the aspect of the game that is so much in favour of tall players restricting it to one shot would help to even the odds. The big servers would then have to be much more circumspect knowing that they can no longer just blast away as hard as they can to begin with as they would no longer have two chances to get it right.

          There should be no LETS (when a served ball hits the top of the net, goes over and still lands in). At the moment if a player hits a ball that clips the top of the net and it goes over and in during normal play they win the point if it is not returned successfully. So why should it be any different for the service.

          The number of times a server can bounce the ball before hitting it should be restricted to TWO. It really is a pain in the but watching the likes of Novak Djokovic bounce the ball seemingly forever before serving.

          Abolish ADVANTAGE. When the score reaches Deuce (40-40) the winner of the next point should take the game. At the moment games can become very tedious bouncing between Deuce and Ad and back again.

“Tennis is psychological sport you have to keep a clear head. That’s why I stopped playing”- Boris Becker.

(Jailed for bankruptcy offences)

GOLF:

          Golfers spend far too much time fiddling with their balls on the greens. Place marking and picking up of balls on the greens should be abolished. Here are some other changes that I believe would make the game more exciting and watchable.

          Players should have to play in the same order that they start a hole until they hole out. If they find they are snookered by another person’s ball when it’s their turn to put on the green they would have to either knock it out of they way with their put or go round it. It would make play on the greens a lot more interesting.

          Lifting of dents made by balls landing on the greens to smooth them out should no longer be allowed.

“Hockey is a sport for white men. Baseball is a sport for black men. Golf is a sport for white men dressed like black pimps.” – Tiger Woods

RUGBY:

          INTERNATIONAL RUGBY has become a game of aimless kicking away of possession, brawn and very little skill. Passing the ball beyond two players is an increasing rarity. As this win at all costs style of play appears to have been developed by the SPRINGBOKS when they won the last World Cup everybody else is doing much the same thing. A lot more should be done to promote a running, passing type of game.

          To encourage try scoring the points for a TRY should be increased to 7 with 3 for a conversion. Penalties should only count for 2 points. BOX KICKING should be banned completely and when the ball comes out of any kind of scrum it should have to be passed through the hands of at least two players before it can be kicked.

          There should be no more penalties or free kicks at set scrums unless foul play is involved. The ref should just let these go on even if they develop into a loose scrum until one side or the other gets the ball. At the moment they are so regulated they destroy the flow of the game and often result in penalties, which are the dreariest part of what is supposed to a running, try scoring sport.

          INTERNATIONAL PLAYERS of today have forgotten that RUGBY was started by William Webb Ellis when he picked up the ball during a football match at Britain’s Rugby School and RAN with it. This aspect of how the game should be played is a lot more evident in school boy rugby than it is at the top.

"You're not going to please everyone, but then, it's not about pleasing people -it's about winning rugby games."-Alun Wyn Jones, International lock forward for Wales and the British and Irish Lions.

This is exactly the attitude the Springboks seem to have adopted.

 SPORT IN GENERAL:

          How many males sporting codes have women as managers or coaches? My bet is there is a handful, if any. Wayde van Niekerk South Africa’s 400 m World Record holder did have a woman coach when he broke the record but now that she is almost 80 he has switched to a man.

          Men should be banned from being managers or coaches in any kind of women’s sport. I can’t understand why women have no yet campaigned for something like this. All kinds of female sports from hockey to tennis and a host of others have men as coaches. The South African women’s cricket team has had a man as a coach (appointed by men no doubt) for 10 years and he was far from being a major star in his playing days. It’s hardly surprising then that the team hasn’t exactly excelled under his leadership.

“The tennis ball doesn’t know how old I am. The ball doesn’t know if I’m man or a woman or if I come from a communist country or not. Sport has always broken down these barriers” – Martina Navratilova

         

          What to do think of my ideas?

          Regards,

          Jon, an Armchair Sportsman of note.

 

 

 

 

         

 

         

         

 

 

 

 

 

AUGUSTA GOLF CLUB IS STILL PLAYING ITS MASTERS OF WOMEN GAME

Dear Ladies,

Martha Burk who
got death threats

          How have you allowed America’s Augusta National Golf Club to continue treating you as nobodies for just about all of its 86 year existence?

          Notorious for its racial prejudice and sexist views it has been changing at a snails pace that is the antithesis of the current century. This is particularly appalling considering that its membership includes some of the richest men in the world like Microsoft’s Bill Gates.   

          Home of The Masters that has just been played this championship began life as the August National Invitation Tournament. Even its founders, amateur champion Bobby Jones and banker Clifford Roberts had misgivings about giving the tournament its current name.

          It had hardly started when Roberts proposed the change. Jones felt this was too presumptuous, but five years later Roberts got his way.

          Other words for presumptuous are arrogant, egotistical, insolent and cocksure and the club’s male members that have been running it have certainly lived up to these unenviable characteristics.

          Ironically Tiger Woods, who has just won his fifth Master’s title, would never have been allowed to hit a single shot on the course in its earlier years. As an African American he would only have qualified to have been a caddie. Up to 1983 competitors were compelled to use an Augusta Club caddie and these were traditionally all African American.

          In 1975 one of the club’s worst prejudices began to crumble when Lee Elder became the first African American to be invited to compete in the championship.

          But the club still had a women problem: How to go on keeping them out. With millionaires, and billionaires as members their mothers, wives and other female members of their families were evidently too subservient to their Masters to call them out for their blatant sexism at Augusta. 

          It was left to Martha Burk, a syndicated columnist and women’s rights activist to stir things up among the chauvinist pigs in their cosy Augusta pigsty where some 15% of members are CEO’s of massive corporations. Golf was incidental in this fight. It was about power.

          In 2002 she clashed with the then Chairman William “Hootie” Johnson. He responded by telling the world unashamedly that Augusta was a “single gender” club. He then had the gall to liken it to the Boy Scouts or the Girl Guides.

          She failed in her initial attempt to get the club to accept women as members, when she was refused a permit to protest at the gates during the 2003 Masters.

          Her luck changed later, however. Two gender discrimination law suites brought by her organisation, The Women on Wall Street Project, against companies associated with Augusta resulted in a $79-million settlement.

            Presumably if you treat women badly at your club you more than likely do the same in your company.

Condoleezza Rice

          Burk had to contend with death threats and being called all kinds of names like man hater and lesbian. This did not deter her. She won. Her efforts evidently embarrassed the Augusta Board of Directors into changing their admission policy on women. Grudgingly in 2012 they invited Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State in the Bush administration and Darla Moore, the former president of the private investment firm Rainwater Inc that was founded by her husband Richard, to become members.

          They were more or less forced to invite “Ginni” Rometty to become a member after she became Chief Executive of IBM, one of the main sponsors of The Masters.

The men at the top of this stuffy 300 member club could then congratulate themselves on how well they treated women. After all what more could anybody ask for now that they had three female members?

          Yet the Masters still did little to encourage woman once things had settle down after Burk’s attack.

          For some reason or other the current Chairman Fred Ridley announced a pathetic sop to them that did nothing to eliminate the Club’s clear female prejudice.

          The Augusta National Women’s Amateur Championships would be held just before this year’s Masters. This he claimed was to “inspire greater interest and participation in the women’s game.”

          It fell rather flat when he added that the Club was not contemplating holding a tournament for women similar to The Masters.

          The winner of this year’s event received $2-million for the first time. But the way things are no women will ever win any money at Augusta. That would be going too far in this male reserve.

          It is particularly deplorable that so many leaders of industry should have thought it was okay to prevent people from playing just because they had the wrong skin colour and that women could not be members for being…. women.

          These men proved that in spite of their lofty positions they were not nearly responsible enough to be in a so called “Land of the free.” And I can’t think it can be much fun being one of so few women among all those chauvinist pigs. It’s mucky in there.

          Regards,

          Jon

P.S. One of the Club strange idiosyncrasies involves the green jacket that is presented to every Masters winner. They are tailor made for each winner. Then they are only allowed to keep it for a year before returning it to the club for safe keeping in a special green jacket store room. It seems they can’t trust their winners to look after them on a permanent basis. Nothing could be more terrible than if one got into the wrong hands and a tramp was seen rummaging through rubbish on the side of a road while wearing one of those hallowed garments.

See also augusta-champion-chauvenist-pig

               

Augusta, Champion Chauvenist Pig

Too many fingers for that sign

Dear Silly Billy Chairman of Augusta National Golf Course,

         Oops, sorry I’m behaving like a stupid woman. I got the spelling of your name wrong but not the meaning. It’s Billy Payne isn’t it?

         I’m sure you’ll agree with me that things have hit a depressing low in America when women don’t know their place in the land of the free.

       You would think Virginia ‘Ginni’ Rometty (now known as ‘Uppity’ Rometty) would have known better than to complicate your life by becoming IBM’s first woman Chief Executive shortly before this year’s Master’s tournament began at your club.

        To make matters worse she’s a beautiful, dizzy blonde. She’s got brains as well and no man likes that.

Has the woman no shame? Just because IBM has been one of the main sponsors of the Master’s does she now think that she can become the first woman member of your club?

Everything was fine as long as there was a man at the helm of IMB. But nearly 80 years of chauvinist pig tradition would be for nothing if you were to allow Ginni to break the spell at your stuffy club.

It just wouldn’t do old boy. We’ve never allowed them to become members before and there’s no reason to start now.

It must be satisfying to head an exclusive clan that was founded on solid grounds of good, old fashioned prejudice aptly put into words by your co-founder Clifford Roberts when he said, "As long as I’m alive golfers will be white and caddies black."

That’s only right. You couldn’t have Whites carrying those heavy bags could you?

It took 48 years before you racialists abolished the rule that players had to use the club’s Black caddies.

Women and Blacks are in the same inferior category presumably.

How long is it going to take you and your members to hum and haw before you let women in? No wonder you don’t want to talk about it.

Billy I hope you and the rest of your 300 odd members haven’t got one of these unacceptable females or even worse a Black woman at home as a wife?

Wait a minute I see Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, two of the world’s richest men are on your member’s list. How do their wives Belinda and Susan feel about being stamped second class citizens by the Augusta Golf Classification Board?

It’s ridiculous to think what a fuss you Yanks kicked up about South Africa’s apartheid regime that kept the Blacks very much subservient to Whites. But even that disappeared 18 years ago.

I knew we shouldn’t have given a Green jacket to that Black chap, Tiger somebody or other just because he won the Masters four times. They don’t know how to behave. Look what he’s done to decorum, one of our founding principles.

He’s now more famous for that, ‘You can’t see the Woods for the birds’, joke than anything else.

You had to publicly admonish him for his sexual exploits which were splashed all over the world. As you rightly said he ‘disappointed all of us and in particular was no role model to our kids and grandchildren.’

(Thinks: Discriminating against Blacks and women is the role model to aim at)

It’s just as well our winners can’t take those jackets with them. Imagine what it would do to our name if doing it dressed only in one of them became the latest kinky, sex fad.

On top of that this chap was fined for spitting on the 12^th green at the Dubai Desert Classic. Putting through that filth would be no joke?

And just when we thought it couldn’t get any worse he throws a tantrum on our own course at this year’s Masters, swearing and kicking his club because he shot a 75.

Billy you’ve got to do something about him now. Forget about the women who the media are going on about. This is much more important.

Fortunately our Ginni is used to you men feeling inferior to clever girls. Fortune Magazine has had her in its 50 most powerful Women in Business list for seven consecutive years ranking her 7^th last year. Of course that was another version of chauvinism.

We couldn’t have her beating a lot of men in the list of the 50 Most powerful People in Business now could we Billy.

Phil Michelson & Charl Schwartzel

Anyway I told her it’s not a big deal because golf is not a game for real men. Can you think of any other sport Billy that allows you to move your ball to a better position for the most trivial of reasons when you’ve hit it there yourself in the first place?

And you complain about poor old Tiger, yet players are allowed to fiddle with their balls on the greens in full view of everybody until they feel comfortable.

Not being too familiar with the game I’ve always wondered how many strokes you are penalised if you get relief behind a bush – one or two?

Yours truly,

Jon, a formidable Pig Sticker.