If you like David Feherty, whose colorful off-the-cuff commentary and cynical observations roll off the top of his Northern Irish tongue like rapid machine gun-fire, then you’ll like this profile about the most interesting man in golf. Hell, he might be the most interesting man in sports. And if you don’t like Feherty, you should read this Sports Illustrated.com piece anyway. John Garrity’s written a fascinating story about a fascinating guy who has fought alcoholism (he used to drink two bottles of Irish whiskey a day) and prescription drug abuse. The CBS golf reporter and host of the Feherty show on the Golf Channel is bipolar, suffering from a form of manic-depressive illness, and he’s absentminded. And he’s brilliant. Like I said, you gotta read this story, where he talks about his life and dealing with depression.
Feherty rolled into Bremerton one night for the grand opening at SwingTime Golf Inc., as a favor to Dutch Skiver (that’s another story for another time) and he showed up at Newcastle in Bellevue for a tournament sponsored by Fred Couples in the summer of 1999. He showed off his quick wit and sense of humor on both visits. Here’s a sample of what he had to say:
On Jim Furyk’s swing: “It’s like an octopus falling out of a tree.”
On portly Craig Stadler: “Here’s a man who some years ago swallowed a sofa.”
On Scotsman Colin Montgomery: “He’s a few french fries short of a Happy Meal.”
On JeanVan de Velde’s logic-defying triple-bogey on the 18th hole that cost him the British Open in 1999: “He was just trying to find a way to lose. He didn’t want the responsibility that comes with winning a major championship.”
On the technical changes to the game: “The ball is where they missed out. They should have slowed down the ball years ago. That’s the only thing that makes any difference. That way, you can let equipment manufacturers manufacture what they want. If they slowed the ball down, you can make an over-sized, square-grooved, rhino-sized driver. It doesn’t make any difference if the ball doesn’t go.”
If the was the golf czar, the was asked how he’d alter the rules of the game: “I’d make our own rules instead of relying on the USGA and the RA (Royal and Ancient) to decide rules for our game. We’re on the cutting edge of the sport and much more on the pulse. There’s 600 pages that goes with the rules of golf, and the only reason that 600-page rules book is there is to justify the jobs of those people who use it.”
He offered an example of a rule that doesn’t make sense: “What if a ball rolls onto the edge of a bunker and comes up against a rake, which it shouldn’t be there in the first place at all, and you lift that rake and the ball rolls toward the hole? You’ve got to replace the ball. And if you can’t replace the ball without pushing it into the sand and if it continues to roll toward the hole and won’t stay on the slope, you’ve got to drop it out of the bunker under penalty of the shot. Now that’s a genuinely dumb rule that needs to be changed.”
