KEY POINTS:
With the sporting year coming to a close, the only conclusion that can be reached is that New Zealand international sport is, with some exceptions, in considerable disorder right now. So it was no wonder we all blinked with admiration as the still stately Sir Bob Charles strode
off the 72nd green at the recent New Zealand Golf Open.
Charles' feat - a 71-year-old finishing equal 23rd and shooting under his age consistently - helped to light up the Open and became one of the year's most memorable performances (see Top 10 Sporting Performances, p 50-51) in a 2007 not exactly brimming over with tales of positive achievement. He became the oldest player in history to make a cut on a regular Tour event (beating Sam Snead's record set when he was 69) and he had also recently beaten Snead's record of 18 cuts made in succession when he made 19 on the Senior Tour.
New Zealand has had two major winners in golf - Charles' British Open in 1963 and Michael Campbell's US Open in 2005. At this Open, Campbell didn't make the cut in a continuation of his wretched form and slipped out the back door.
Charles sailed serenely on. The length of the course was beyond a man of his years so he did the sensible thing - he played it straight. His course management was impeccable; his decisions calm and execution composed.
As a metaphor for the state of much New Zealand sport right now, it was as clear as the view from Arrowtown, site of the Open where Michael Hill's fetching and exclusive course was framed in scenery that almost defies description.
So often in modern sport, we complicate and over-analyse. We seem bound up in many unnecessary things, like swing changes; psychologists; marketing hype; coaches for Breathing In and Out; video and statistical analysis until the players have data coming out their ears; and coaches and administrators who try to justify their new brooms by sweeping things that shouldn't be swept. Plus commercialism which often seems to give our sporting stars a status they may not always have earned on the field.
This is no dewy-eyed reminisce for the past, for a bygone age. Nor is it any kind of bitterness at what has been done to what used to be.
But you have to say that, as a nation, we have not handled professional sport particularly well. You'd also have to say that reaching back into the past for some values is one way to right the ship.
Look at rugby league. The same night the sport was throwing on dinner suits to name Mark Graham as the player of the century, the topic on everyone's lips was the board ructions and shock-horror allegations of financial problems that prefaced the resignation of chairman Andrew Chalmers (for, he said, family reasons) and other directors following the disastrous tour by Gary Kemble's Kiwis.
Graham famously trotted out to play the second half against the Australians in 1985 with a broken cheekbone and a seriously duff ankle. He'd have run headlong into a Panzer division if he'd been wearing a Kiwi jersey. Yet here was the sport, seriously in debt and with horrendously bloated figures being bandied around, dressing up in clothes that signify the wealthy elite.
League needs a return to the values of the likes of Graham and administrators Ron McGregor and George Rainey - straight thinkers and talkers and with ethics in their bloodstreams. Maybe McGregor's son Cameron is the way to go to help league out of this horrifying spiral of what seems to be incompetence, indebtedness and infighting.
Look at rugby. Graham Henry's avant garde, multi-faceted, futuristic strategy of bringing home the World Cup brought home only ridicule for the All Blacks' worst performance yet at the sport's Holy Grail. In pursuit of the unobtainable, we thought we were undeniable but didn't prepare our players for the intensity of World Cup knockout football.
Reaching into the past when test matches and test jerseys had real value; when being an All Black was something to be truly revered and not just the subject of TV commercials; seems a sensible path.
There's not enough room here to go into cricket - and a coach whose corporate-speak often surfaces; where some players have opted out; where our cricket snuggles up to money - one day internationals - while the real fabric of the game, test matches, is left outside the door.
No, Charles looked pretty good to me - as a golfer and a reminder of what is wrong with some modern sport. He's no "personality" - no entertainer. You wouldn't send him onto the Late Show to trade quips with David Letterman.
But he has a straight back, a steely spine and a clear head and eye at 71. He competes hard and enjoys the competition but not necessarily the adulation; the marketing, the phony bits.
On the 72nd green, he said he wasn't sure he'd be at the next Open because he didn't like embarrassing himself (he'd just finished with a double-bogey).
The embarrassment was all ours; that we'd thought him too old for such a performance.
Charles has done well from his deer velvet exports. Maybe we should get all our sports stars to take it. Maybe some administrators should eat the whole flaming antlers...
