Kyle Mulholland - the Antifan is a neophyte when it comes to the burning sporting issues of the day. Last night, he watched the Masters for the first time in his life. Here is his review.
The 2016 Masters tournament is one of the four big golf competitions held each year, this year (like every other year before) it was held in Augusta, Georgia.
The players were all competing for a lovely green jacket, which I like. It makes more sense than a trophy because a trophy can’t keep you warm at night. A jacket can because jackets are designed to keep you warm.
There’s also a 10 million dollar prize pool, but that’s secondary to the lovely, lovely jacket.
The first thing to strike me about golf is how all the players look like the men out of the Aldi catalogs that placidly showcase gardening tools and cycle wear. They're all benign grins and polo shirts.
The second thing I noticed is how meek and quiet the crowd is.
I’m used to seeing sports fans thrash about and scream like a tourettic howler monkey at a Slipknot concert, but golf fans just kind of clap serenely and cheer with their indoor voices.
The golfers too have this zen-like unflappability, when they putt the ball into the hole they just sort of slowly pump their arm and smile benignly.
Golf is played on a special tract of land where no poor people may ever set foot. This wondrous place is called a ‘golf course’.
A golf course is a live action version of the default Windows XP wallpaper.
It’s pretty much just a big, sexy field, a damn sexy field. It’s all voluptuous rolling swells and exquisitely manicured grass. Here and there there is the odd flirty pond or a some cheeky trees. It also has holes.
What ruins the effect somewhat are an abundance of what look like children’s sand pits, except they’re probably not full of half-buried micro-machines and cat shit.
Golf, in many ways, is the opposite of an open marriage: the less swinging you do the better. So hitting a hole in one is considered the best thing a golfer can do.
It must have been a treat to see an excessive amount of them happen in the closing chapters of the Masters.
The first man to manage this was Shane Lowry, who is Irish so we have to love him extra hard because it says in the constitution that the only prominent Irish person you can show anything but unbridled admiration for is Bono.
It was an amazing moment where he hit the ball across a pond and it went in the hole.
The next hole in one was hit by Davis Love III, a man with a name like the third installment in a porn franchise. It was an amazing moment where he hit the ball across a pond and it went in the hole.
Finally the South African Louis Oosthuizen, whose moniker looks like the typo you get when you put your phone in your pocket without locking it, got another hole in one.
It was an amazing moment where he hit the ball across a pond and it hit another ball which rolled out of the way and then went in the hole.
That one was actually pretty cool.
A hole in one is the only thing that seems to be capable of making the golfers and spectators forget themselves. When Lowry sunk his the crowd erupted into a bacchanalian frenzy of standing up, raising their arms and going ‘Whaaaayyy!’ an entire octave higher than usual. It was like The Purge for dull people with low blood sugar.
Shane himself was like a mad man, waving his hands in the air and fist pumping. I even seen him give a guy a high five, the maniac.
As the day went on American, Jordan Spieth, took the lead by hitting the ball far less than everyone else.
Things took a turn for the worse when the pressure became too much and he hit the ball a few times too many, mainly into the water. Golf is a strictly terrestrial sport so it is against the rules to get your balls wet.
Danny Willett exploited Spieth’s aquatic escapades and took the lead, securing victory.
Willett was presented with the lovely green jacket. It matched with his green polo, leading to colour coordination that made him look like the Green Power Ranger’s secret identity.
Kyle Mulholland: the Antifan, is a writer based in Dublin. You can follow him on Twitter @Kyler_Murden
See Also: The Antifan Reviews: Wrestlemania 32
