{"id":305,"date":"2010-08-14T09:03:06","date_gmt":"2010-08-14T14:03:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnstrawn.com\/?p=305"},"modified":"2010-08-14T09:06:52","modified_gmt":"2010-08-14T14:06:52","slug":"may-the-era-of-the-unforced-error-end","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/golf\/305\/may-the-era-of-the-unforced-error-end","title":{"rendered":"May the Era of the Unforced Error End"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Second Round Leader Matt Kuchar at Whistling Straits<\/p><\/div>I was watching action from the second round of the 2010 PGA Championship on TNT.\u00a0 Matt Kuchar had a wedge for his second on 9, but left it short and a little right\u2014not the kind of shot one expects from a top professional golfer, although he would go on to make an easy putt for par and lead the championship after two rounds.\u00a0 Ian Baker-Finch, a nice man whose commentary glides along on\u00a0a generous and complimentary path, said after watching Kuchar\u2019s ball settle in the fringe, \u201cthere\u2019s an unforced error.\u201d\u00a0 And I wanted to scream.<\/p>\n

When is there ever a \u201cforced error\u201d in golf?\u00a0\u00a0 Did Kuchar\u2019s fellow competitors suddenly jump out of a bunker and try to bump him in his backswing?\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cUnforced error\u201d is a term of art for tennis, and even there it sounds precious and affected.\u00a0 In tennis the person on the other side of the net is trying<\/em> to make you screw up so he or she can win the point.\u00a0 Forcing your opponents into an error is one of two ways to win a point in tennis, the other being to hit an outright \u201cwinner.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Golfers may be distracted, may not “commit to the shot,” may be knocked off balance by a gusting wind, or may simply not hit the shot they’re hoping for, which is certainly something everyone who’s ever held a golf club can understand.\u00a0 But “forced error” or “unforced error?”\u00a0\u00a0 They have nothing to do with golf.\u00a0 It would make more sense to blame the caddie.<\/p>\n

Players are struggling not against an opponent but against the golf course\u2014in this case the ominous Whistling Straits, with all the optical illusions and vertiginous slopes and gnarly rough that Pete Dye\u2019s ingenuity and virtuosity can summon.\u00a0 Designed to confuse and intimidate and ultimately exhaust anyone who confronts its challenges, Whistling Straits whispers \u201ccalamity\u201d in the players\u2019 ears.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

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Climbing Mount 17: You Can’t Get There from Here<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n

But unforced errors?\u00a0 No, every mistake a player makes–every flair to the right on 17, every smothered hook on 2–\u00a0is the product of Dye\u2019s genius, with contributions from the weather or the sudden\u00a0intrusion into consciousness of the dreadful realization of what is at stake in\u00a0a major championship, and not because of any disturbances from beyond.\u00a0 If Baker-Finch and other commentators would just think about what they\u2019re saying for one moment, they would abandon the conceit that there are \u201cforced errors\u201d in golf, and settle for describing shots usng the plausible scale of somewhere between \u201clousy\u201d and \u201cgreat.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 After all, most viewers are now watching with excellent resolution on their high def TVs, and can see for themselves what’s going on.\u00a0 Baker-Finch’s innate kindness contributes to his favorite locution, which is a variation of “that’s pretty good from where he was.”\u00a0 I can live with that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was watching action from the second round of the 2010 PGA Championship on TNT.\u00a0 Matt Kuchar had a wedge… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":306,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-golf"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2010\/08\/matt-kuchar-uspga-rd1-2010_24873261.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=305"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":310,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305\/revisions\/310"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}