U.S. golfer, Patrick Cantlay, left, reacts alongside his caddie, Joe LaCava after making his putt on the 7th green on the final day of play in the 44th Ryder Cup at the Marco Simone Golf and Country Club in Rome on Oct. 1.PAUL ELLIS/AFP/Getty Images
On the list of ways you can express contempt in golf, standing in someone’s line might rank at the top. It’s more pointed than coughing during someone’s backswing, but more subtle than running them over with your cart.
It is the body language that says, “I hate you, but in a seething, passive-aggressive sort of way.” It’s very Canadian in that sense.
For obvious reasons, golf types can’t fight. I mean – look at them. They’d embarrass themselves. So this is how they work off their rage.
The Ryder Cup ended on Friday, but they kept playing it until Sunday. Europe won. As often happens in any contest that’s gone crooked, the space created by an absence of competition fills up with sore feelings.
That’s what American caddy Joe LaCava was feeling on behalf of his boss, Patrick Cantlay.
Cantlay is apparently angry that he wasn’t paid to play in the Ryder Cup. He’s only won US$42-million in his career, so you can’t help but sympathize. Those private jets won’t buy themselves.
A normal person might say something, or refuse to participate. But this is golf. The correct way to express negative emotion is by slightly bending an inconsequential rule.
Cantlay was the only member of Team America who didn’t wear a team-branded baseball cap as he played. This was reported as a protest over wages. So everywhere Cantlay went on the Marco Simone Golf and Country Club course, he was greeted by Euro fans waving their hats at him.
Cantlay denied the hat story, but who doesn’t wear a hat when they know they’re going to be walking around under a hot sun for four hours? Someone who wants to look like a potato doll in 20 years.
Cantlay’s excuse was that the hat he was given didn’t fit. “Everybody knows that,” Cantlay told reporters, as though it were obvious.
They put together this multibajillion-dollar international sporting event, but they don’t know how to order another hat? It’s a weird angle to take.
Cantlay also refused to say if he believes he should have been paid, which is another way of saying he believes he should have been paid. So why not just say that?
When Cantlay sank a big putt on Saturday night, his caddy, LaCava, took off his own hat and saluted the saluting fans. So did the rest of the American team.
In the midst of LaCava’s petty gesture, he wandered into the vicinity of Rory McIlroy’s putting line and stood there. McIlroy tried punching a hole in LaCava’s head with the weight of his stare. That didn’t work. He barked at LaCava to shove off. LaCava did so, but said something over his shoulder. More smoldering looks.
If golf had erotic fan fiction, there were enough charged gazes packed into this 30 seconds to pad out a trilogy of novels.
Later, McIlroy’s teammate, Shane Lowry, jawed with LaCava. Later still, cameras in a parking lot caught McIlroy tearing a strip off a different American caddy while Lowry dragged him back.
To recap – this is a guy trying to fight another guy because he knows a third guy who didn’t move sharpish when informed that he was standing a foot to the left of where he should have been standing.
Cantlay said he hadn’t seen what happened because “I was too busy letting out all the emotions that built up over the day.”
Maybe they should give out chew toys to Ryder Cup participants, like they do for anxious dogs. These poor guys have a lot of big feelings and no good way to communicate them.
After Europe won on Sunday, the feelings continued to pour forth. McIlroy repeatedly choked up when discussing the win.
“I’m probably on the back nine of my career,” McIlroy said. “Every [Ryder Cup] I play in is incredibly meaningful.”
The back nine of his career? McIlroy is 34 years old.
Who’s writing this stuff? Because no one is ever going to buy that real humans talk this way.
That’s what makes it so perfect.
No modern sport can survive based solely on its athletic merits. If feats of strength were the draw, professional weightlifting would be a thing.
The real currency of a modern sport is manufactured drama. The more manufactured, the better.
These things are moving closer to becoming reality shows broadcast in real time. Take the recent explosion of interest in Formula 1. Is it a sport that has its own show, or a show that has its own sport? It’s becoming hard to tell.
The NFL is remarkable at this hype game. You think Taylor Swift is dating Travis Kelce? The better way to describe what’s happening there is ‘special guest appearance by.’
Sports that are fixated on the purity of competition can no longer thrive. The ones that accept that what they are doing is closer to a Real Housewives franchise than the Olympics of ancient Greece are looking in the right direction.
Golf used to be a real snooze in this regard – a bunch of good old boys having a whole lot of fun together, never a cross word exchanged.
That isn’t going to fly any more. Certainly not as far as Netflix is concerned. You want an eight-part docuseries? Give us some conflict.
McIlroy understands that. Even Cantlay, in his uncertain way, gets that people are more likely to want to hear a story you won’t tell them.
But the real prize goes to LaCava. Leveraging the unwritten code of golf, he turned a silly moment into a global sporting soap opera. He’s suddenly the world’s most famous personal valet. Everywhere Cantlay goes, hats will continue to be waved. The roll-in to next couple of majors will have an obligatory McIlroy vs. Cantlay/Europe vs. USA angle to go along with the tired PGA vs. LIV storyline.
It goes to show that holding in your feelings until you burst is bad for your emotional health, but it’s amazing for creating content.