Poulter got the Noonan treatment

One of the defining moments of childhood occurred watching the Buffalo Sabres play the Boston Bruins. This was back in the late 1970s and when it came to villains, the Bruins were on equal footing with the Philadelphia Flyers. Those Bruins teams included hard-nosed guys like Terry O’Reilly, Wayne Cashman, Mike Milbury, John Wensink, and Stan Jonathan, and were driven to great success by the inimitable Don Cherry. I don’t recall the game or the exact play, but I was watching with my father when a Bruins player went down to the ice in a heap, as happens from time to time in hockey. At the time, it seemed like sweet revenge. All too often, the Sabres, a team built mostly around the finesse of Gilbert Perreault, were on the other side of the equation, taking the brunt of the violence delivered by the hands, elbows and sticks of Boston’s tough guys. Seeing the injured Bruins player on the ice and recalling those injustices against my Sabres – both real and imagined in the mind of a boy under 10 – I let out a whoop. WE GOT ONE!

My father was a man who doesn’t raise his voice very often, but when he did, it sounded like the voice of God. The walls would practically shake and the echoes would reverberate off the close walls of our living room and repeat in my head. On this occasion, the walls did not shake, but the message echoed just the same. Instead of the riot act, I was quietly but firmly lectured on what sportsmanship really meant. The sum of the message: No matter how badly you want to win, never wish ill upon your foe; and the corollary, root as hard as you can for good things to happen to your team, not for bad things to happen to your opponent.

Perhaps a little simplistic, and more than a little 20th century, but it’s a message I’ve heeded many years. Until yesterday.

If Greg Norman couldn’t win the British Open – and every natural and Murphy’s Law said he couldn’t – then I was rooting for only thing: For Ian Poulter NOT to win.

You know Poulter. The guy with the spiked hair, pastel shirts, ghastly checkered pants, and oversized ego. Yeah, that’s him. A perfect storm of everything that’s wrong with golf – style over substance, riches beyond earnings, self-promotion over humility.

Watching Poulter shoot up the leaderboard offended my sensibilities in a way I wasn’t prepared for. I knew I didn’t like the guy, but the thought of him walking away with the Claret Jug ignited a simmering disdain that grew to outright vitriol as he climbed closer and closer to the lead. By the 18th hole, I resorted to shouting “Noonan!” and “Miss it!” at the TV. In front of my family, no less. Realizing that I was failing to set the kind of example that my father set for me, I was embarrassed, and a bit repentant. But then I figured I could turn this into a “teachable moment.” So I explained why I would rather that this fancy-boy ended up unsuccessful in his bid for the Open title. That I was much more invested in seeing guys like Norman or eventual winner Padraig Harrington win. That I would continue to positively root for my favorites, instead of wishing for the destruction of others.

(At least out loud.)

Looking back, it all worked out. I was reminded of a valuable lesson and passed it on to my own family’s impressionable minds. Norman didn’t implode (so much) and Harrington got his second straight Open title.

And Ian Poulter finished second by four strokes. Noonan!

~ by Porky on July 21, 2008.