At the British Open, establishing linguistic supremacy is the name of the game

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The top story on the front page of Wednesday’s Irish Times: “Portrush bar serves up £8 pint to punters.”

The tone of the article is disbelief. Eight pounds is $14.70. In some corners of Toronto that’s a happy-hour price, and here, there’s no expectation of a tip.

No need to throng the airport all at once. They’re making more Guinness.

Across the north of the island, the big golf tournament is dominating conversation (as well as all roads).

All coverage agrees on two things – if you go, you’re getting ripped off; and it’s The Open. Capital ’T,’ capital ‘O’ and absolutely no need to include ‘British.’ Even the American press has finally been cowed into uniformity.

The tournament has been working for years to establish its linguistic primacy over the sport. Others may be open, or even Open, but only this one has abolished adjectives.

“It’s an education process we’ve embarked on,” the tournament’s director of marketing told the Wall Street Journal nearly 10 years ago.

A few years after that, U.S golfer Collin Morikawa won the thing. In his victory speech, he thanked all the fans at “the British Open.”

They’re still sniffing about it now. It’s an evergreen grudge. One is left imagining some guy with a tape recorder hanging over the NBC broadcaster team waiting for one of them to screw up. The North American equivalent might be the way Augusta National is on permanent tenterhooks lest the Masters ‘patrons’ be referred to as fans, or – God forbid – customers. This despite the fact that they are all three.

Some people think this sort of gatekeeping is not only necessary, but fun. I think it’s fascism. The light sort, minus the yelling and kicking, but fascistic nonetheless. I’m happy to accommodate you until you start correcting my terminology. Then I will screw it up to spite you.

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This rash of pomposity has also taken over at Wimbledon, where they are increasingly keen that people call it ‘The Championships.’

I agree that it is a championship. The first, maybe the best and technically even several of them. But it’s not the only championship, which is what the grabby plural suggests.

What do they call anybody who wins anything anywhere: champions. Just because you showed up first doesn’t mean you own it.

You don’t see Don Quixote scholars running around slapping other books out of people’s hands yelling, ‘Don’t call that a novel, you peasant.’ This problem is currently most prevalent in sports, which is in the midst of a property development boom.

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Fifty years ago, there were only a few good tournaments, golf or otherwise. Now everybody is starting one. The originals are fighting to distinguish themselves, not because it makes any nominal sense, but because they’re worried about brand dilution.

Mark Darbon, the new CEO of The Open, referred on Wednesday to the tournament’s “unique proposition” – a formulation I’ve heard in a hundred other press conferences.

With respect, no, it isn’t. It’s different, but unless we are speaking in microscopically specific terms, it’s not unique. It’s the same golfers playing the same sport as everywhere else, with more rain.

It’s only a matter of time before England’s Premier League renames itself The (capital-’T’) Football League – a soccer organization it was actually a part of until it broke away in 1992 – and starts shushing anyone else who uses the word.

The sport’s newest convert, U.S. President Donald Trump, pushed them in that direction when he mused recently about officially changing the American name from soccer back to football. I’m betting he got a casual ‘What’s up, big guy?’ phone call from NFL commissioner Roger Goodell that same night. I’d love to see it happen, if only because it would force every hipster ‘football’ fan in Canada into a lexical Sophie’s Choice. Are you a purist or a Trumpist, and how am I to tell the difference? Because there is no word for that.

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I do not care if you call baseball rounders, or first base the No. 1 bag. I’d only be charmed if you did. The point is comprehension. Do we both understand what we’re talking about?

You tell a Canadian friend who doesn’t know anything about golf that you were watching The Open, their first question is going to be, “The open what?” It’s bad rhetoric, and poor manners.

You say the British Open, and most golf-dissenters can guess what you mean. This is the goal of human communication. Or don’t. Go with The Open. That’s fine, too.

The people who own sports want to hive you off in tranches for marketing purposes. You want to control someone? Control the language. Once you have accepted this change, you are a thousand per cent more likely to buy both the official line and the official merchandise.

One cannot escape The Open at The Open because it is written on everything and everyone. Walking in this morning, I passed several hundred either very lucky, very connected or very rich people. Every single one of them was wearing some sort of tournament branding.

As I stood there behind a rope line, a man approached a steward and said, “How do I get one of them wee passes?” pointing to someone’s badge on a lanyard.

This gentleman doesn’t need a wee pass. He’s already in. I’m also pretty sure he knows they don’t just give out passes to people who ask for them. But he’ll take a flier in the hopes of improving his status with strangers. That is of a piece with The Open conversation. Say the secret password, thereby challenging all nontribe members to get it wrong.

In a perfect world, sport has rules, but as little befuddling language as possible. It is tolerant to alternative ideas and expansionist in its aims. It welcomes anyone who wants to participate.

Professional sports doesn’t want you participating. It wants you buying. It’s not looking for casual interest. It wants you K-holed and financially pliant.

You want to resist something? Resist that. Watch sports on your own terms.