ANIMAL CRACKERS GOLF

ANIMAL CRACKERS GOLF

Golf got off to a flying start at the Olympics.

But long before these 120 golfers rocked up to play golf as an Olympic sport - after an absence of 112 years - there were other players moving in on the space.

The building of the Rio golf course has been, at times, sunk in a quagmire of court cases, environmentalists’ protests, and public mistrust.  It has been a virtual minefield that has courted controversy at every turn and, for a while, it looked like there would be no course and no medal contest.  However, those altercations and back steps went way over the heads of these key players who blatantly ignored the ignominy and zeal of all parties with equal proportions of disdain and disregard.

And who could blame them?  Here was a bunch of guys and girls who knew first hand the meaning of survival of the fittest.  Competition was wired in their DNA and they were designed to adapt.  So, when the IOC, Rio organisers and the architect Gil Hanse designed a golf course that looked like paradise, these punters displayed a very human characteristic, modelled on that old template of frontier pioneers, that manifested itself in the form of land grab.  Lock, stock and no smoking barrels, they seized the opportunity to claim the land.  Such was their sphere of influence that the designers had to restructure holes 13,14 and 15 to conform to the standards set for these invaders.  It was an amazing takeover and one that was purely indigenous in origin.

First on the tees then was the capybara – these are rodents and, as the parent of a son who owned two pet rats (named Verdi Gris and Rat-a-touille) and two guinea pigs (called Edward and Anthony), I am a fan but there’s no taming one of these shrews or easily bagging one to take home by way of a trophy.  The capybara is the largest rodent in the world and likes to live near water in socially gregarious groups numbering about twenty.  They grow to two feet in height and weigh in at an average of 100 pounds.  They will usually allow humans to pet and hand feed them but the latter is normally discouraged as their ticks can be vectors to Rocky Mountain Spotted fever.  And they gave Superintendant Neil Cleverly a massive headache.  Charged with making the golf course happen on the ground but with a less-than-ideal time frame of two growing seasons to do it, he used a strain of grass developed in Texas and known as zeon zoysia.  Right bang on song, midnight at the oasis saw the nightly appearance of the capybaras at the course’s water hazards where this special grass turned out to be a favourite overnight snack.  They appeared at various times during the tournaments too, especially during practice rounds, and the players stopped to photograph them. 

The parity of disdain continued with the infiltration of the burrowing owls.  Oh yes, you have guessed it perfectly right:  their prime role is to burrow – and they just happen to love open areas with low ground cover which is the exact design for the course at Marapendi.  They are also deviant from your stereotypical expectations of owls in that they are active by day.  Long-legged, yellow-eyed, sporting white eyebrows, and head-bobbers when distressed, they like to burrow or railroad themselves into someone else’s underground home.  And love the bunkers they did, digging deep to form their nests.  On the first day of the men’s tournament, a long-legged owl, looking for breakfast as players warmed up, got himself into a stare-off with the elite golfers but eventually retreated to his abode in the depths of the ninth bunker. 

The next set of invaders came in the shape of the gnarly, knobbly caiman – a small crocodile that doesn’t grow much beyond five feet.  But what they lack in size, former English golfer-turned-commentator, Sir Nick Faldo claims they make up in bite.  “You know the way in Florida the gators are always quite sleepy?” he said,  “Well, this one opened its jaws and snapped them shut angrily.  We moved on swiftly.”  Wiesberger joked there were extra hazards on the greens and I’m guessing, Bernd, you haven’t found suchlike hazards gracing your Austrian golf courses.  They were clearly territorial, too, in that they frequented holes 2, 3, 5, and 9 – odd numbers for oddball animals.  Well, Sir Nick, you need to know that alligator pupils are always 90˚ to the horizon except when flipped onto their backs.  This move discombobulates both their vision and balance and causes them to freeze, unable to see, and with no idea which way is up. 

The final animal to add to the invaders is that snake-in-the-grass, the boa constrictor.  Knocking your ball out of bounds or in the rough carried a hazard that is probably not covered in any rulebook.  Who would want to stand in the sights of a slithering boa constrictor and have a hearty discussion as to the possibilities of a snake being a movable or immovable object?  Who cares?  Professional or amateur: if you’re daft enough to be embroiled in the out-workings of full relief, then the consequences are yours by right of your stupidity.  I, for one, would be so quick off the escape block that there is the possibility that I might smash the legendary Mo Farah’s records.  And right on cue, on the second day of the women’s tournament, volunteers captured a large snake near the eighteenth green – that’s the place where the largest viewing gallery hangs out.  Oh my!

But here’s the thing… the top five golf players in the world declined to turn up at the Rio games, with the exception of Henrik Stenson from Sweden, and represent their countries because of an animal.  It wasn’t any of the miscreants above - who had slid quietly into residence by the back door of the Reserva di Marapendi - but the culprit for Rory, Jason, Jordan, Dustin, and a subsequent whole-flock more of no-shows, had flown in by the front door in the shape of the Zika-virus-carrying Aedes mosquito.  Thanks to Rory, this virus has now gone viral to infinity-and-beyond and he has done more for raising awareness of this health issue than the World Health Organization. 

As excuses go, however, it was lame…

…and Pádraig Harrington summed it up neatly when asked if those who were not competing misread the situation.

“I think completely, yeah,” he said.  “I would have to say there was a lot of sheep in this decision.  They kept just following each other out the door.”  Well done, Pádraig, that’s the correct animal to nail their mass defection with.

Pádraig Harrington grew up in Ireland so he should know a thing or two about sheep.  He might not be of sheep farming stock, given his origins in Rathfarnham on Dublin City’s Southside, but his knowledge of that animal probably springs from that famous theory of Six Degrees of Separation.  Frigyes Karinthy first proposed it in 1929 in a short story called “Chains” and it theorizes that anyone on the planet can be connected to any other person on the planet through a chain of acquaintances that has no more than five intermediaries.  If you live in Ireland, you don’t need a short story, written by a Hungarian, to tell you this.  Sometimes, we can’t breathe for interconnectedness and I’m sure Pádraig knows someone who knows someone, in two degrees of separation and over a pint of Guinness, who has told him how sheep behave.  Sheep will follow the leader sheep even if it’s heading off a cliff or to the slaughterhouse.

Which is why he had plenty to witter on about when leader sheep Rory McIlroy decided he no longer wished to represent Ireland in Rio.  Rory was having none of it and he cited various reasons, chief among them being the desire to avoid a close, blood-sucking encounter with a mosquito carrying the Zika virus.  The rest of the players jumped on this excuse bandwagon.

But here’s a thing.  While Brazil undoubtedly registers “High” on the advisory health sites, Florida is also documented on the same sites as a “Moderate”.  Appearing in the Olympics required only a seven-day stay in Rio but a high number of professional golfers base themselves in the US and, in particular, in Florida where the exposure risk is moderate but for much longer periods of time.  Would I be wrong to propose that the greatest reason so many golfers withdrew was not the flimsy fears of a disease-bearing mosquito but more to do with that potential infection of which golfers live in particular life-smothering dread: the absence of a large monetary prize at the end of seventy-two holes?

I have an animal to describe that sort of behaviour: chicken.

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