Golf and the End of American Masculinity: Part I - August 30, 2005

There has been much talk recently about the feminization of the American male. Proponents of this theory point to trends in men's fashion as well as the proliferation of the metrosexual in print and on screen. They hold out these examples as proof that men are steadily being stripped of those qualities traditionally considered masculine. They refer us to Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Kiehl's face lotion, and pedicures. According to some writers who advance this view, and I'm paraphrasing here, American men between the ages of 18 and 35 are becoming panty-waisted semen swallowers.

Growing up in the Bay Area, I'm in no position to argue against this phenomenon but neither am I prepared to give my manhood its last rites. These harbingers of doom are pointing to trends in fashion for the love of christ; it's not like they're portending a total flip-flop of gender roles. Call me when NFL linebackers stop eating meat and start driving Hybrids.

That does not mean I'm not more than a little concerned, however. When I was growing up, I had Mark McGwire and Ronnie Lott. One wore a Vikingesque shock of red hair and hit 90 mph fastballs 440 feet, the other was the most feared safety in football who once opted to have the tip of a finger cut off rather than surgically repaired so he could play the following week.

I watched them and admired them because they were awesome and they were what was on television. In 2005, this is no longer the case. Baseball and football are being forced aside by, among other things, professional golf. Golf coverage absorbs large blocks of time on cable channels during the week and even bigger chunks of time on the networks during the weekend. It makes me wonder who the 12 year-old boys of today are going to look to.

Sergio Garcia? He wears far too much pastel and he dates homely looking Swiss tennis players.

Notah Begay III? Say 'Notah Begay' slowly to yourself. Don't worry it's pronounced exactly as it looks. He's the Millhouse of the PGA Tour; never mind that his game went in the shitter quicker than that Polish kid at the beginning of Schindler's List.

Just look at the golfers upon whom the mainstream media fix their gaze:

Tiger Woods in his clingy, shiny Nike shirts. They look like Under Armor fucked Ralph Lauren and he had their baby. Gary McCord and Fancy Nantz constantly refer to his perfect, sinewy musculature and gush about how perfect his body is for the game of golf. Sure, he's married to a hot Swedish model but he still went to Stanford...so fuck him.

Phil Mickelson, his bitch tits, and that ridiculous visor that looks like the top half of a goose's head. Until last year, this guy was the poster child for "it's not about winning or losing, it's how you play the game." Fuck that doe-eyed, aww-shucks bullshit.

John Daly and the endless string of weekend collapses brought on by the shakes and a shortage of Pall Malls in his golf bag. The only thing rounder than his huge beer gut is the bowl haircut his wife gives him the family Flo-Bee.

Can I make the masculinity gap any clearer? What do I have to do, picket outside of Michael's and House of Fabrics with coupons for Big 5 and Sports Authority? I know the cultural landscape has softened in various ways over the last 40 years, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. And if you don't think Ground Zero for the adulteration of American masculinity sits squarely at the feet of professional golf and the children of the Baby Boomer generation then you are painfully out of touch. Their contaminating influence is so thorough in some places they should be designated Superfund sites.

I am never more worried about this than during the build-up to the Masters every March and April on CBS. It starts during NCAA Tournament games. Billy Packer tosses it to commercial for the mandatory under-8 TV timeout and before you can say 'Amen Corner' there's Jim Nantz seated in one of those hideous wingback chairs by the fireplace in Eisenhower Cabin.

Sitting through a Jim Nantz Masters promo is one of the few true tests of will left for young men nowadays. Do you get misty from all the "tradition" and let your testicles ascend into your abdomen where they can become ovaries? Or do you get angry at Nantz for being such an unrepentant pussy and go into the kitchen to make a sandwich before Valparaiso inbounds from midcourt with a chance to cut the deficit to single digits? What's truly frightening about this coming-of-age test of will is that more and more fathers are embracing Nantz' sentimentalism in the presence of their impressionable sons. How do you compete with that? Billy Packer and Jay Bilas certainly aren't going to cut it.

Even still, HOW DO YOU LOSE THE HEARTS AND MIND OF YOUNG MEN TO JIM FUCKING NANTZ!? He speaks with this soft, hushed voice that takes on an eerie pre-orgasmic tone every time the subject turns to azaleas or some useless historical footnote about Sarazen Bridge.

I would be legitimately frightened if I were a production assistant for CBS and part of my duties included wiping down Jim Nantz' wingback chair after signing off from each day's Masters telecast. There is no amount of Febreeze on this planet that could soften the potential blow of discovering a white opaque film caked to the front lip of the chair and the carpet immediately beneath it. If it weren't for the frequency of floor-up shots CBS uses, I would be convinced he does the wrap-up shows without pants. The prospect is not only distracting, but it's downright disconcerting. Yet every year around tourney time, there's Nantz with his hair helmet and his "please slam your putter in my rectum again" voice as he regales us with tales of a tradition unlike any other.

How has he not been replaced by someone who doesn't make you feel like you're abetting a child pornographer? It's one of those great sports television mysteries that go unnoticed until someone with far too much time on their hands dwells upon it for an entire cross-country flight. I'm still wondering where Merlin Olsen disappeared to.

The permanence of Jim Nantz on the Masters telecast is due in no small part, I'm sure, to the fact that he is the epitome of the traditional golf enthusiast. For the longest time, golf was considered the domain of affluent, middle-aged white men in funny pants. Interest in the gentleman's game was directly proportional to both the likelihood one was able to gain entrance to a private country club and the likelihood one threw like a girl. Jim Nantz in his own nauseating, fawning manner fits that description to a T and it's the biggest reason he still anchors CBS' coverage.

The counterpoint to Jim Nantz came in the mid-to-late 90s when Tiger Woods, David Duvall and Phil Mickelson led an influx of young, dominant golfers. They single-handedly made golf cool across the great generational divide. "Tiger" and "Lefty" became household names that spurred record television contracts, record merchandising revenue, and record gallery sizes. The problem is that golf got swallowed up by its own momentum and sucked all the 'cool' right out of its new, young fanbase. Instead of an easy give-and-take between sport and fan, we are left with a really fun activity that thinks it's the coolest thing since free internet porn but is patronized feverishly by a horde of drooling sales executives who look like they just got cut from an audition for that Dockers commercial set on the wraparound porch.

As Yoda would say, 'a good combination for the young men this does not make.'

To be fair, it would be a mistake to believe that golf fans are somehow different than other large gatherings of people dedicated to a single, common purpose. The guys in the gallery are just as bad as the coke-addled whores on Lake Havasu during spring break or the spoiled, clueless ideologues at the Democratic National Convention. Once things really start to get going at these things the scene becomes a retarded, hysteria-induced dance of attention-whoring and one-upmanship. Golf fans just happen to be the only group that threatens the survival of traditional masculinity.

To Be Continued...

Posted by nils at 7:21 PM

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While my Dad loves to watch golf, I hate it. Nantz' voice puts me to sleep every single time it's on TV. Golf is a game to be played, not to be watched.

Posted by: katace at August 31, 2005 08:39 PM

A prescient harangue on the currently eroding state of the American male. Perhaps the moment is now apt for further rumination. Allow me to elaborate.

The halcyon days of our fathers and grandfathers have been supplanted and ostensibly obviated, much to the chagrin of genuine men everywhere, by the effete machinations of a rogue band of charlatans and epicene dilettantes. Once, a long time ago, in an America seemingly far, far away, the general populace revered the stoicism of the assiduous stevedore and the lionhearted infantryman. These were the men who now would grimace were they to walk into any one of today’s limitless myriad of faux-intellectual coffee vendors. Why? Because in their day, there were only two drinks, and neither was ever attenuated with any sort of “soy chi,�? “artificial sweetener,�? or “chaser.�? Coffee was drunk black and scotch was drunk neat. Water was used for bathing and animals for eating. Today, the foppish mongoloids loudly masquerading as the general American public instead turn their hebetudinous “attention�? to shameless tragedy prostitution or nostalgically pine for the libidinous philandering of the 42nd President. One can only wonder the price at which fuel would sell today were America’s gas chambers and electric chairs utilized as fully as they should. In the interest of not mincing words, I mean to say that we should cease cutting corners and instead commence putting to death all graduating college seniors whose degree is in one of the following fields:
1) Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
2) Any of its equally reprehensible derivatives

Unfortunately, modern society’s final bastion of virility, which hitherto I felt had weathered the storm of capri pants and messenger bags, has been infiltrated. I long for the days when any man could find himself a trusty local gymnasium. The gymnasiums of which I speak no more resemble today’s glossy, Nautilus-fraught centers of man-orexia than a pinot-noir-sipping French “man�? resembles a lager-quaffing lumberjack. Louis Pasteur and Andre Maginot? Give me William Shockley and General Patton. Saint Genevieve? I’ll take Paul Bunyan. These hardened floors creak and are stained with sweat and blood. The equipment consists of several tons’ worth of 45-pound plates, a couple benches, a couple squat racks, and a few bars. The denizens of such strongholds of masculinity are an increasingly rare breed; however, we are also of inestimable fortitude and trenchancy. The time is ripe and soon we will rise once more. United we stand. That is all.

Posted by: Boethius at September 1, 2005 08:27 AM

Addendum: Cal wants to be Stanford, and Stanford wants to be Harvard, so, ipso facto, I'm your boss.

Posted by: Boethius at September 1, 2005 08:59 AM

Yea, Boethius, you just wasted your fucking breath to say exactly what Drunk rex did, in a much less entertaining way. So ipso facto, sit the fuck done, because we don't need your psuedo-intellectual bullshit.

Posted by: Pigvomit at September 1, 2005 11:48 AM

Does someone on this internet blog comment forum want to fight me?!

Posted by: Boethius at September 1, 2005 12:23 PM

Fight you? They're words. If you can't take a joke, fuck you.

Posted by: Pigvomit at September 1, 2005 06:26 PM

I used to work out at the same gym that that pedophile, cuz that's what he looks like in real life, Phil Mickelson. He used to come to the gym while the high school girls were playing volleyball and converse with the other 40 year old plus perverts in hushed tones in a corner of the gym. I didn't know who he was at the time, and just referred to him as one of the old perverts. Just throwin some extra info out there

Posted by: Scruballer at September 1, 2005 11:09 PM

I was just in Bloomingdales about an hour ago, walking through Menswear. The top designers have gone pass metrosexual into FLAMING homo....As I was walking I was thinking to myself "if my BF EVER wears this shit, I know it's over". Then I happened to hear the woman in front of me remark to her friend "Who buys this stuff? Armies of metrosexuals!?!?" Pink IS the new black... it just shouldn't be applied to men...

Posted by: Dawn at September 2, 2005 11:06 AM

Rex, what you're talking about is something I have been personally railling against for the past decade: The pussification of America. Everything out there from pissy swill like Bud lite to Viagra is catering to the genetic downfall of this society. Look, if your too fat and worry about it, then do one of two things: stop drinking beer, you punk bitch and go to the gym or at least haul your fat ass off the couch and go for a walk, or man up to your personal failings and drink til it kills you, why suffer, that's pussy bullshit. If you can't get it up without pills then you probably need to pay attention to the previous statement. Besides that, there's a reason why some fuckin' losers shouldn't be fucking in the first place, call it "gods plan" or whatever rationalization you need, there are too many examples of pollutants in the genepool; we definetly need to thin the heard, Darwin said it best "survival of the fittest". The same jerk-offs that watch golf on TV are the same lemmings that take their fashion advice from Stuff magazine and their ilk.

Posted by: razer at September 2, 2005 03:30 PM

Cal blows. Eat shit and die.

Posted by: Anonymous at September 2, 2005 07:06 PM

Dear Anonymous,

If I find you I will cut your nuts off, chop them up in a tuna salad and feed them to you. Cal smack will not be tolerated. If I wasn't half drunk right now, I'd pay someone to find you, fucker.

Posted by: DrunkRex at September 3, 2005 06:34 AM

I don't get why there's such a fuss about male gender roles. Why are you so attached to the notion that other males should grow up and be just like you. Just because things were a certain way, doesn't mean thats the way they should stay or there is anything wrong with someone being different.

Besides, if males lose too much real masculinity then the fertile females wont be attracted to them so they are affectively removing themselves from the gene pool anyway.

Posted by: anon at September 3, 2005 08:13 AM

Congratulations, Boethius.

Posted by: Ignatius at September 4, 2005 12:20 PM

Just wanted to say ditto to DrunkRex's commentary. Even here in the South, a land that was a place for true masculinity if there ever was one, many of the men are becoming more pansy-like each day. Pink polos, popped collars, and the like are growing at a rate faster than Rosie O' Donnell's ass. When I pledged my fraternity 4 years ago, pickup trucks, dip, beer drinking, and hell raising were the name of the game. Today, bitch beer seems to find its way into the house like a fungus, and if you drive a truck, dip, or act like a pod-pulling sissy, you are considered "uncouth" or "barbaric". It's time for the real men of America to rise up, show all the sissies out there that men need to be men, and end this crap once and for all.

Posted by: Big Will at September 4, 2005 04:07 PM

I don't agree with anon about some of that shit, but the guy's right that women won't go for metrosexuals in the long run. Most of the girls I date go for me because they know that I'm not a fucking metrosexual. They get sick of these guys, and then they want a real man.

Big Will's right about the South though. I grew up in Tennessee ( living in Korea right now), and some of the shit there is pathetic. I really think that American fathers are on the frontlines of this battle. I'm 22 and I've seen some guys my age ( and a year or two younger) that make me want to vomit. When I was a kid and I complained about getting hurt, my Dad always gave me the same answer: stop whining and just don't think too much about the pain. My Dad was pretty easy on me and never forced me to be a certain type of person, but he didn't let me turn into a pussy either. If more fathers didn't tolerate this bullshit from their sons when they're kids ( and yeah that means that every now and then they might have to actually punish their own children), then these guys would grow up to be real men.

They may not realize for a long time why their fathers do it, but once they get older and see how pathetic a lot of other guys are, they'll be glad for all of the whining their fathers didn't put up with. And yeah girls will complain about me being chauvinist, but they know that my chauvinist attitude and refusal to kao tao to their every little wish is what makes them want me. They're not used to seeing real men. I'd be lying if I said that I was special by any stretch of the imagination, but since when did men start drinking bitch beers because "beer tastes nasty"? If men would teach their sons that, most of the time, life just isn't easy, then we wouldn't have so many metrosexuals popping up.

And of course I agree with Drunk that we can turn back the tide. My senior year of college a lot of the underclassmen guys saw me as a hero because I still drank beer, wasn't afraid of smoking, and didn't just let some woman take complete control of my life. I was never abusive to girls, but I didn't take crap from them either. They also saw how, the one or two times I broke things off with a girl because I wouldn't change for her, I always had two or three better looking girls chasing me in a couple of days. I feel like a bastard for saying we need role models who aren't afraid of a little drinking, but I truly believe that when younger guys see what real men are, they'll realize that the whole horde of metrosexuals are just a bunch of pathetic pussies.

I'd have phrased things a little more intelligently, but right now all I'm really thinking about is getting a smoke ( none of those gay menthols) and getting a couple of beers.

Posted by: Glor at September 5, 2005 06:26 AM

Oh my good God. Boethius, do you really think that dropping a lot of intelligent sounding words is going to make what you have to say anymore important? Stop trying to make yourself appear intellectually superior to other people in order to gain some sort of validation from drunkrex or whoever it is you're trying to impress. Drunk is a a seemingly smart dude, but youdont see him dropping a shitload of words that would make webster himself get a hard on. People like you make me want to vomit. I suggest you go back to reading Foucault and when you have the spare time, get yourself sterilized. Eat shit and die.

Posted by: General_Ass at September 14, 2005 03:18 AM

That dockers commercial allusion was outstanding. The only thing I remember hating as much as those ads was that depressing show thirtysomething. What a bunch of suckbags.

Posted by: C Hart at September 14, 2005 01:53 PM

Boethius, you're part of the problem we're discussing here. Shut the fuck up.

Posted by: Obscillesk at September 22, 2005 03:06 AM

all i gota say is we live in a sad world when ESPN gives tiger fucking woods the best male ATHLETE award in 1998 and 2000-2, every time i saw that i wanted ray lewis to beat the shit out of him during his acceptance speech, fuck golf

Posted by: caz at September 24, 2005 05:12 PM

How bout an update, Mr. I'm going to Law School?

Posted by: jahed at September 26, 2005 12:21 AM

Alright, let me clear this shit right up. Do you know why american males are being turned into limp wristed pussies? I will tell you. All those slovely fat assed pink wearing linda wanna-be (read the archives to get that joke) housewives watching bullshit drivel from their goddesses Oprah and Martha Stewart are being brainwashed that being a "MAN" is a bad thing. Were nothing more than meat eating, gun carrying, fight starting psychopaths who need to be tamed down into something more gentle. WHAT THE FUCK?!? Do I LOOK french to you? No. I believe in the three P's. Protect, Provide, Procreate. (Feastin Fightin and Fuckin in case you dont get it.) Instead, I have to get in touch with my feminine side, share my feelings, and communicate like a fucking girl. Now, I dont mind telling my woman if something is bothering me, and I dont mind talking. But, I dont go overboard and ask her what kind of shirt goes with those HORRID khaki fucking pants. I dont give a shit generally, if its clean, I wear it. I believe if you wanna be pussified, go ahead. But if you think its gonna get you laid? It wont. How often do you think a woman just wants to cuddle? Then ask yourself how many times she wants a mind blowing kiss the sky orgasm? Heh, bet the second is more then the first. So take your pussy "Queer Eye" and faggoty golf announcers and cram it. And youd better do it quietly, because the pacers are playing detroit again.

Posted by: Mike at September 28, 2005 05:41 AM

didn't I read this in a magazine recently like, Details, or GQ or something. Great article though it was sandwiched in between ads containing waify, well dressed boy-males.

Posted by: swollen anus at October 6, 2005 04:35 PM

I'm from South Africa and reading the post (ok didnt read the whole thing) shows me that we dont have many metrosexuals here in SA although i must admit the other day i was in Truworths man and there were pink shirts everywhere, it looked like a bunch of kids had a paintball match.
A phrase i've heard from a friend of mine in Canada is 'emo kids' - guys that whinge and act all emotional in order to obtain attention. I've actually got a gem of a joke u guys might like:

Q: How many Emo kids does it take to change a light bulb?

A: None all they do is sit in the dark and cry and whinge about it until it gets changed

;-)
Thanks for the entertaining posts drunk

--
Sanity is not statistical

Posted by: marko at October 26, 2005 02:30 PM

golf kicks ass, jim nantz likes boys, and pink is for chicks, enough said

Posted by: nick at November 3, 2005 11:37 PM

Besides having huge tits, Phil Mickelson is one of the biggest pricks on tour. I'm a club pro down in Florida at a facility with a few PGA tour pros who are good friends of mine. Besides universal hatred for Phil, who is the most arrogant sonfoabitch ever, the word (spilled after about 12 beers on the course) is that he impregnated a black, underage prostitute and has so far paid millions to keep it off the radar.

As for announcers, I'd rather watch 10 Jim Nantz promos compared to one fucking Jimmy Robert's human interest piece. Give me tradition over 10 minutes on some fucking 32 handicapper parapalegic anyday...

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