Fescue. Gesundheit.
Bad sportswriting and the trap of lazy language
The following is about golf and its Open Championship in Scotland this week, but it's also about broadcasting and description and, in part, storytelling. And advice on all of these. Be correct. Use the right words for the right thing. Don't copy something someone else is doing unless you know what it means. And before you make it interesting, make it understandable. My two cents today.
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For my friends watching the Open Championship this week - and to the press covering it - you should be made aware of something.
Just because it's tall and uncut and terrifying, the long grass rough is not "fescue."
I've seen the word in article after article about the Open and its long, deep rough over and over and over again. And it made me wonder... is it really fescue? Fescue is a type of grass. Used often in green surfaces. Sometimes in fairways. Occasionally, it's a native grass in the rough, but not always and not nearly as often as the golf scribes would have us believe.
At Royal Troon this week, and most Scottish, English, and Irish links courses, the long grass you're looking to describe in your copy is not exclusively fescue at all. It's usually a mix of native grasses and because it's next to impossible to stop invasion, some of the grass seed that's been used on the fairways and greens at these courses. So to describe it as fescue just because it's really long and deep is just wrong. Royal Troon's rough, for the most part, is made up of ribwort plantain and something called Isle of Man Cabbage.
Where does it come from?
The best I can figure is that in 1995, when Shinnecock Hills hosted the U.S. Open Championship, a course that actually had fescue native to that part of Long Island, former major champion turned broadcaster Johnny Miller started describing the extremely deep rough as "native fescue." Over and over and over again. To the point the other broadcasters started to enjoy this turn of phrase and picked it up for their own use. Like "fairway metal," which in my humble opinion makes anyone saying it sound absolutely ridiculous. After all, the "irons" we play with have never been made of iron. By the same logic, shouldn't we call it a 5-tour-forged-steel club. Or a 7-titanium alloy? No, of course not. Because that would be ridiculous. And make you look stupid. Not at all like "Jim, he's looking at 275 yards and has a 3-metal in his hands." It is a 3-wood. It has always been a 3-wood. It will always be a 3-wood.
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Side note - Tiger Woods actually injured his wrist trying to escape the deep grass on the first hole of the '95 U.S. Open at Shinnecock as an amateur.
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So as Johnny Miller decided he liked the way "native fescue" felt in his mouth in front of the microphone - nothing wrong with this, by the way, considering it actually was a fescue grass native to the area let to grow very tall and long, treacherous, and intimidating. The other broadcasters and columnists decided ALL tall rough should be called "fescue" even if it was not that type of grass. Then the rest of my golfing brethren out there playing every Saturday and Sunday decided they liked the sound of the word, too. Even if it was completely wrong.
So now, 29 full years later, as we watch the broadcast of the Open Championship (by the way, you don't need to call it "The Open Championship" if you don't want to. It's perfectly acceptable to call it "the British Open" on this side of the pond) the majority of broadcasters and magazine and news writers continue to rely on this linguistic crutch and call the tall rough "fescue" when it is clearly not fescue at all. It's lazy and they should be reprimanded by their editors and producers. Unless, of course, their editors and producers are lazy as well.
Stop the laziness, I want to get off
There are so many far more interesting and entertaining ways to describe the action as the greatest golfers in the world spin their balls off the short grass into the first cut, then the long, long, long rough. Johnny Miller did it once. He was accurate and I presume he was trying to be entertaining. I was always a fan of Miller even when the PGA Pros weren't. He wasn't afraid to call out bad shots. Or sometimes bad wardrobe.
And that made the broadcast more interesting and entertaining. But it doesn't mean everyone should lean on the same limited vocabulary. When did they start saying "cover" meaning to carry a certain distance? And a hole doesn't "fit your eye" and never has. It feels comfortable because of your regular shot shape, maybe. It looks good to you. Unless it's a contact lens, it never fits your eye and never will.
Which is why these so-called writers and so-called broadcasters should spend some time thinking themselves into a larger library of language.
Vocabularic limitations
Call it treacherous. Call it dangerous. Call it the dark wood of your childhood nightmares. Invoke the Brothers Grimm. Talk about sharpening the leading edge of your 7-iron to cut through the mess, but watch you don't slice your femoral artery in the process.
Call it deep. Call it dark, dank, jungle-like, jungle-ish, jungleiforous. Call Gary McCord for a lesson in description. Read Herbert Warren Wind and Grantland Rice, and Bernard Darwin. They will teach you everything you need to know about describing things.
But whatever you do, don't say "Jim, he's got a 7-titatium-alloy from 230 and a half yards from out of the native fescue. He really needs a 5-metal from this position, but the native fescue is just too deep for him to cover the gorse bushes short right of this green."
You sound like a bozo and the 54-hole LIV golf ridiculousness has already chased me away from watching pro golf most of the time. Take a little pity on those of us who aren't completely illiterate buffoons.
And the Scots call the bushes you're so afraid of "whins." It's only the English who call it "gorse." So be polite to the locals. When in Troon, speak as the Troonians do.
"He's just one shot back, Jim, but he put himself in a really tough spot here. He's got 230 from the very deep rough that guards all the fairways here at Royal Troon this week. He's got a 7-iron in his hands right now. A very small chance he can get the ball to the green from here with this club, but he'll try and bounce it up the left side of the rock-hard fairway and bound it up as far as he can toward the putting surface. If he can get close, he'll give himself a decent chance at an up and in for par and not do any damage."
It's not that hard, really. Speak the way people understand the game. Stop trying to be overly original for no reason.
That is all.
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