And then I wrote...

by Dick Schilling, "Editor Emeritus"

... that I was disappointed to learn that the Iowa-Northwestern football game was televised on a sports channel that I do not receive.

So, I listened to radio, and as the game wore on, I was thankful that I did not have to witness the inept Iowa team as it lost.

In fact, I had the TV tuned to the Ryder Cup golf event, because it was entertaining even with the sound turned off. Reading the papers the next morning, I guess I should be thankful I had the sound muted, because the fans up there in Minnesota apparently behaved very badly toward the European visitors. I witnessed a little of that as I watched the U.S. team win back the cup Sunday afternoon.

Since Tiger Woods in particular, but a little bit with Arnie Palmer before that, it has become obvious that a lot of people who follow the pro tour are not golf fans, but sports fans.

Since the University of Iowa is a land-grant school, it was required to demand some physical education (as well as military) schooling for bachelor of arts students. I don’t suppose that is true today. Anyway, I chose golf as one of my phys ed subjects. I had no exposure to the game before that. Our instructor was also the varsity golf coach. I think his name was Woody Davis. Not sure. Could look it up, but it doesn’t make any difference. We received very little actual experience with hitting a golf ball outside. We used whiffle balls in cages inside the fieldhouse. Their design made them act the same way a real golf ball would if struck the same way, i.e., slice or hook. But we did have lectures on the rules and etiquette of golf. Like who plays first. How long to wait for the foursome ahead to play on. How to stand still and be quiet while a fellow golfer hits or putts. When to assess a penalty on oneself for an infraction, even if nobody else saw it.

Golf, we were told, was a gentleman’s game.

And I learned more in the days when Navy duties allowed me to play golf every weekend. One of the guys in our foursome played college golf in Texas, and what I learned from him augmented what I learned at university. In addition, how to dress!

Today’s fans don’t know the game and don’t follow the etiquette. That’s why you will hear some idiot yell “in the hole” to a golfer teeing off on a 570-yard par five! And that’s why foreign golfers heard actual insults directed at them in cup play.

Bad fan behavior, of course, is not limited to golf.

I read that some Iowa fans threw “water” bottles onto the field after the officials missed an obvious infraction.

I would guess the odds of hitting an offending official or officials would be much smaller than hitting an innocent person.