A little over a month ago, I was sitting with a friend at a golf dinner, and the hosts recognised the very real threat that the concurrent Champions League final presented to the attendance rate so, at the side of the ballroom, a widescreen delivered images of this European summit meeting to our ballroom on another continent.
As the food comes and goes, we talk about modern football, and the influence of economics on this other beautiful game, and there are parallels with golf that sadden us. The match charges on, but City are not listening to these two Liverpool supporters, citing dozens of allegations of skullduggery in the murky world of agents and investment funds. For those dressed in sky blue, and for that matter in black and blue stripes, are very much outside of that realm this evening. Their eyes are on another sort of prize…
It is easy to criticise the likes of City for those who wish to, just as it is to find Djokavic’s petulant arrogance distasteful, or to consider the golfers who left for LIV soulless mercenaries. They’re personal judgments, and no doubt those on the other end care not what we think of them. But it is interesting how some sporting teams and players are genuinely loved, and others at best merely admired for their efforts, beyond their own partisan supporters at least.
But then the final whistle goes, and this Mancunian dream - one that seems to have fouled the taste of my pudding - erupts in the centre of Istanbul, and my friend simply stares at the few dozen players and staff lying on the pitch, winners and losers crying their eyes out, and says “look what it means to them”. And all of the money and fame and outrageous celebrity status that these agent’s dreams generate seems to fall away, and tonight’s defeated army are inconsolable, while Pep and his genial band of brothers soak up their own little slice of paradise under the stars, united by joy.
So I polish off a little cheese, and consider how fortunate we all are to have sport in our lives, those of us who care about such trivialities. For when sport delivers, as it did for half of Manchester that night, or for the five million in the streets of Buenos Aires last December, or, just a week ago, on Centre Court as the underdog took down the great master and the whole of the audience roared with delight, it transcends most of the rest of life for players and spectators alike. When sport delivers, it is sublime.
Alcaraz and Djokovic, modern gladiators in that SW19 Coliseum, walk past part of Kipling’s “If” on their way onto the court, and leave in the quiet serenity of that little old dressing room all thoughts of past and future. For they are in the moment - a five hour bubble - when it is just triumph & disaster for which they battle. Two sides of the same coin; life’s highs and lows played out on a micro-scale for the whole sporting world to see. And in their eyes, as they lock stares over that stubborn net, you can see what it means to them. Everything.
And we - the fans - sit through so many other types of match for the one in a thousand that seems fuelled not by tactics or cash or logic, but which is instead hewn from magic. The story in which the universe seems to take an interest, in which the underdog seems destined to scrape home, or the script too good to be true. This is when Messi leaves Pele and Ronaldo, and Best and Edwards, in his wake. When even Diego, that master of the dramatic, is left behind, and, in raising the same gold trophy to the skies, Messi pauses mortality for a moment and our hearts sing with the simple beauty of sport. These are things that can never be taken away…
We tag these fragments of life with so much emotion as they unfold; they become for the sporting addict as well-preserved as the less frequent milestones we collect in the narrative of our lives. I remember exactly where I was when I became a father, when the call came to tell me my own father had gone to sleep forever. When I heard that Kurt was gone, or that lockdown was imminent. And of course, I remember watching the ink of Tiger’s swoosh tip that pitch over the precipice on sixteen, or Origi’s second as my beloved Reds took apart Barcelona, a tiny dose of disaster in Messi’s otherwise steady diet of triumph. Unforgettable times.
And so, as attention turns to historic Hoylake, these players walk in the footsteps of the greats, and a few of them might still glimpse, beyond the distracting veils of wealth and fame, a place in the annals of this game - this simple game - that has beguiled us helpless souls for centuries. With their sponsorship deals and caps full of corporate badges, they are as far from the amateur ideals of John Ball Jr and Bobby Jones as it is possible to get; yet this week, in the fine fescues and the sea breeze of The Wirral, they have a chance to perch among those and the other great champions that this links has crowned.
A rare opportunity to seize the type of real estate that no money can buy; a place in golf’s history, engraved in silver for all eternity. And, as the cameras peer into their frowns and smiles, and the microphones catch every groan and plea, you will see in the eyes of those in the hunt just how important it is for them.
Look what it means to them…
This is divine. Thank you for sharing your wonderful talent with us Richard.
What an excellent theme for a story.