Ooer. Drama at the golf.
And the headline to go with it:
Look, I get it. The player (Kyle Stanley) hit the ball into the crowd and didn’t warn them that it was coming. The lady who got hit with the ball happened to be the mother of the caddie of Stanley’s playing partner that day, Bob MacIntyre.
Golf etiquette dictates that golfers should always yell “fore” upon hitting a shot that carries the risk of hitting another golfer. As long as you yelled “fore,” you did all you could to warn the other golfers. Convey this message to them in as polite a manner as possible.
MacIntyre was irritated that Stanley never warned the spectators that the ball was going their way.
But that’s not quite what the headline says, is it? That word “after” really doesn’t fit very well, because now for me, the suggestion is that Stanley should have gone over to Mrs Caddie Mum, who was by now nursing a very, very sore hand, and shouted “fore” at her. And I mean, there’s no point in doing that once the ball has hit someone, is there? In fact, some might call it ‘adding insult to injury’.
Seriously, if a golfer whose ball had just fractured my metacarpals, then strode purposefully off the fairway, across the rough and over to the gallery (look at me with all my golfing terminology, innit?), I’d be expecting some sort of sympathy or apology, not for him to shout “fore” at me at very close range. I’d likely consider that rather sarcastic, and, given my recent and clearly still very painful injury and subsequent troubled state of mind, I might even swing for him with my remaining good hand.
The subheading doesn’t really clear it up either, does it? It almost makes it sound as though MacIntyre was encouraging Stanley to go and scream “fore” into the face of the injured woman. Which he clearly wasn’t, but you wouldn’t know that by reading that second line.
There’s no point to this post except maybe to point out how weirdly my mind works sometimes. And that if you do play golf, and your ball looks like it’s going to hit someone, warn them before it happens, rather than after. Because that’s the way that warnings work best.
