Sport: played and watched by individuals not automatons

Remarkable victory by Rory McIllroy in the US PGA Championship last night.

I didn't see it because I fell asleep at midnight when he was on the eleventh and still a shot behind Rickie Fowler.

Earlier they were predicting it would be too dark for the leading competitors to complete their rounds - bad weather caused the start of the final round to be delayed - and the tournament might have to be finished today.

Few top golfers smoke on the course these days but there are exceptions and last week I was asked to comment ahead of next month's Ryder Cup at Gleneagles.

The question was framed as follows:

From the standpoint of Forest, does having world class professional golfers smoking either cigarettes or cigars on course during play at the 2014 Ryder Cup send out the correct messages to smokers and non smokers alike, young and old, with the event seen around the world on TV by over 500million viewers in almost 200 countries worldwide?

"The great thing about golf," I replied, "is that it's played by individuals not automatons.

"Smokers like Miguel Angel Jimenez are expressing their personality and perhaps their individual flaws. What's wrong with that?

"Some of the most popular [modern] golfers have been smokers. Jimenez, Darren Clarke, John Daly. The golfing public clearly doesn't mind so why should politicians and lobbyists?

"The idea they're encouraging young people to smoke is nonsense. Everyone knows the health risks of smoking. Seeing a golfer light up during a round isn't going to change that.

"It's not as if they're playing in a stadium or enclosed arena. They're in the open air, for goodness sake.

"The Ryder Cup should be a celebration not an opportunity to impose unnecessary regulations on players who already have enough to think about."

Of course it's not just golf that's played by real people not robots. The same is true of every other sport and the idea that every top sportsman (Arsenal footballer Jack Wilshire, for example) has to be a role model for our children is quite disturbing.

I'm told that both the Scottish Government and ASH Scotland have commented on the golf/smoking issue and it doesn't take a genius to work out what their position will be.

Frankly (and I don't care how much money the former has invested in the event) it's none of their business.

How dare the Scottish Government use an event like the Ryder Cup to make a political statement about people's lifestyle? Because that's what it is. It's lifestyle socialism and the sooner we use that term more often the better.

Today hardly any sporting event is immune from the politics of health. The London Olympics and Glasgow Commonwealth Games were both hijacked by lifestyle socialists who wanted to ban smoking and even vaping in every venue, the outdoor ones included.

At least London had designated smoking areas in the Olympic park and village. Needless to say ASH Scotland considered even that too tolerant for Glasgow. (ASH Scotland wants Commonwealth Games to be 'smoke free').

Hopefully the R&A and the organisers of the Ryder Cup will tell interfering outsiders where to go.

A ban on smoking on the golf course would be final proof the lunatics really have taken over the asylum.

Comments

[nisakiman]

A ban on smoking on the golf course would be final proof the lunatics really have taken over the asylum.

We need no final proof, Simon. It has been painfully obvious for years.

One only has to watch the contortions they are prepared to go through to justify their desire to dictate how others should live to realise that there is something deeply flawed in their psychological make up. It's an obsessive compulsive disorder, and their lives revolve around the persecution of those who won't do as they are told by the healthists.

We can only hope that one day the politicians will wake up to the fact that they have been hosing taxpayers' money at a bunch of embittered and malicious control-freaks whose only achievement to date has been to impoverish the country both economically and socially.