There was a time when golf used to hide its dirty laundry, operating behind a country club omerta whereby the likes of disciplinary bans, drug tests and administrative disputes were probably settled somewhere between the bar and the snooker room. The events that have unfolded in the build-up to this year’s US PGA Championship are a reasonable explanation as to why the sport could never trust itself to operate outside that “safe space”. It’s not that all golfers have an uncontrollable urge to make hopelessly offensive comments, just that there are more than enough who insist on obliviously doing so.
And so, it has led to a tournament without its defending champion, in danger of being overshadowed by a power struggle fought – as they always are – in the name of greed. Phil Mickelson pulled off an extraordinary feat when he became the oldest major champion, just short of his 51st birthday, in history at Kiawah Island last year, the goofy dad decked out in Top Gun aviators who reaped untold pleasure from outsmarting a younger generation. The one man he couldn’t outwit, it seems, was himself.
