GOLF: THE CONSPIRACY THEORY by Larry Buttrose

Golf it would appear is all about sex. One might have suspected as much though, with its fixation with sticks and balls, strokes and holes. Like other sexual sports it is ideal for TV voyeurs. For those viewers for whom the lumpen sado-masochism of boxing, the fist-thumping pugilism of tennis, or car racing with the manic pit crews and imminent fiery death doesn’t quite get them there, luckily there remains the ultimate heart-pumping sporting Viagra of golf. 

Where tennis merely has the venereal grunting of lissom Russian blondes, motor racing the piercing shriek of tortured engines, and American football those seemingly endless minutes of dirty talk, golf has the soft core porn of middle aged men in white shoes riding about in little carts, the prim fairway and the oh so rough, and the lofted ball forever lost by the camera in the clouds, then punching the green and spinning right back to eight firm inches from the hole.

But how much sex is enough? It’s like asking how long is an orgasm. So in their eternal quest for higher ratings and ever more erotic allure for golf, its masters recruited a champion who broke all the rules, in not being white. On the contrary he was young and good looking, exotically multi-racial, and pretty handy both on and off the course so it seems.

As time went by his corporate handlers branded him the perfect family man with the model Scandinavian wife nestled down amid the manicured lawns of Florida. But what went on behind those perfectly rotated sprinklers, well, it defied the imagination.

But with his performance starting to flag, the corporate hardheads within what were once smoke-filled rooms, in cahoots with the Grand Masons ensconced in their bunkers at the Royal and Ancient Golf Club in far-off misty Brigadoon, unleashed dark hordes of advertising gurus and spin doctors upon the great task of sensationally re-branding what was already the sexiest brand golf has ever seen. It was a hard ask. How, after all, do you make a handsome, charming, talented man even sexier? The answer, as any advertising ingenue will tell you, is to add the magic ingredient: sin.

Firstly a gallery of pretty women would do for him what Divine Brown did for Hugh Grant. His wife would find out, and take to his hulking SUV with, yes, a golf club. Product placement! Then the drama would move into the confessional and contritional pincer phase, and the TV chat shows, shock jocks and National Enquirer would mop up.

By then, who then could doubt the sexual pull of golf? Yes it’s mostly played by rich white men a lunch short of a coronary on courses gouged from forest and sucking all the water from miles around to keep the greens so very green: but its star player is hot, really hot. The online galleries of the women he went with testify that to the heavens. Golf: the studs aren’t just in the shoes. Thus did the advertising gurus re-brand the royal and ancient game with an oldie and goody, by putting a tiger in its tank.

HIT FOR SIXTUS - THE PAPAL PAZZI

On Easter Sunday in 1478, the good burghers of Florence gathered in the Duomo, the splendid cathedral which sits at the heart of their equally splendid city, to celebrate the traditional High Mass marking the miraculous resurrection of Jesus Christ from his tomb. Amid the hundreds crowding the pews that day were the young Medici brothers, Lorenzo, not yet thirty years of age and ruler of Florence, and his brother Giuliano.

Among the other worshippers in the Duomo was a priest named Francesco de’ Pazzi, who intended to lead the assassinations of the brothers in a coup d’etat to end Medici rule of the Florentine Republic. Before the sun set that day, the River Arno ran red with the blood of the dead.

Francesco’s family the Pazzi had grievances against the Medici going back generations, to when Giovanni de’ Medici, the great grandfather of Lorenzo and Giuliano, had imposed taxes on the rich to the benefit of the poor. The move had predictably made Giovanni popular on the street but detested in the halls of the aristocracy.

Although the Pazzi had long nursed the ambition of bringing down the Medici, it was via the scheming of a pope, Sixtus IV, that they almost achieved their aim. But the Pope played the Pazzi for a patsy, by hatching a plot with them with the goal of annexing the plum prize of Florence to the papal states, while exposing himself to no risk.

The conspirators led by Francesco de' Pazzi saw their first opportunity to strike at a banquet given by Lorenzo on 25 April 1478, at his villa in the hills of Fiesole just outside Florence, but because Lorenzo’s brother Giuliano was ill and unable to attend, the plan was postponed until the next day, Easter Sunday. Even then it was uncertain whether Giuliano would be able to attend, but being a red letter day in the Christian calendar, special arrangements were made to get him there.

Francesco de’ Pazzi took his place in the pew behind the two Medici brothers, and gripped the dagger concealed in his priestly garb. He had chosen the dramatic high-point in the Mass as his moment to strike, and when the officiating cardinal raised the Sacred Host high, the bells rang and the congregation all bowed their heads, he leapt forward and thrust his dagger into the unsuspecting Giuliano, following up the first strike with a furious assault until the young man lay mortally wounded on the marble floor of the cathedral, bleeding from twenty stab-wounds.

But all did not go according to plan for the plotters. Lorenzo escaped, and the attempted coup collapsed. The Pazzi were hunted down: the Medici triumphed again, and all the while the Pope in Rome seethed.