GOLF: Bill Elliott
AUGUSTA National Golf Club like to promote the idea that they, the US Masters and all things related are about tradition above all else. Over the years, this has become something of a tradition in itself.
Nowhere is this more evident than on the greensward close to the back of the clubhouse, an area known rather confusingly as “the front lawn”, where tables and chairs are set to catch the Georgia sunshine while a small army of waiters hover.
Unless you are a member of the paying public – tradition here has it that punters are referred to as “patrons” – this is the place to be and to be seen.
While the patrons stand and gawp on the wrong side of the ropes, the wheelers and dealers of the global golf village strut their stuff and talk endlessly.
What they talk about, of course, is money. Here, players are signed up to play all over the world, their agents sipping on cool drinks while they close hot deals worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Here, the biggest sports companies offer endorsements worth millions.
The casual observer would not realise all this activity was going on beneath the elegant umbrella, but the many quick smiles and firm handshakes are usually not merely a couple of old friends saying goodbye.
The only time the hubbub died down last week was when Tiger Woods walked by, the shoal of agents staring at the young American with the sort of rapt admiration a teenage boy might reserve for the Spice Girls. Tiger, at 21 already a multi- millionaire, is the sort of person (in agentspeak “vehicle”) who has these grown men almost salivating with envy.
As ever with Augusta everything is conducted in that genteel, understated Southern way. But make no mistake about it – the other game being played during Masters week is all about money, and the biggest player in this secret sideshow is the club. Marketing the Masters is a showpiece example of the art of making a serious profit. Merchandising sales for the week are expected to gross at least $18- million. Throw in the television contracts and other bits and bobs and the profit margin moves from good to sensational.
This is why the cost of membership of the place is, by American standards, peanuts: the 300 members – all men, and with the exception of just two, all white – pay a one-off $25-million initiation fee and then cough up $2 500 a year. Only a handful live within 30km of the place; the natural habitat of these conquistadors is the major cities of America’s eastern and western seaboards.
When the steel gates clanged shut on this year’s Masters, these (mostly old) men returned to their other seats of power. But first though, they met for one final lunch to run through the early predictions of this year’s profit. These figures will never be revealed, secrecy remaining the core Masters tradition.
Meanwhile television companies such as CBS and BBC waited meekly outside to see if they are being allowed to continue to show this extravagant tournament, for the Augusta chaps only offer one-year contracts.
Some years ago, the BBC’s then head of sport, Jonathan Martin, asked if it was possible to agree an extended contract. The man on the other side of the table smiled patiently before answering: “At Augusta, we like long relationships and short contracts, Jonathan.”
It was, of course, a traditional response on his part.
@Don’t mention defence to Keegan
SOCCER: Julian Drew
WHEN Kevin Keegan began his eight-day South African coaching assignment in Johannesburg on Tuesday there was a distinct bias to proceedings. Anybody familiar with the way Keegan played or the style of the Newcastle side he led until January would not have been surprised at all.
“I’ll work with you on finishing, on crossing, on adventurous midfield play but please don’t ask me to work with you on how to defend,” the two-time European footballer of the year told the assembled coaches on a South African Football Association level-three course.
Keegan’s bold approach won him nearly every honour in the game, but in the final analysis it was also what probably forced him to quit as manager of Newcastle. Keegan’s philosophy at Newcastle seemed to be one of “It doesn’t matter how many goals you score because we’ll score more”, and although it won the admiration of soccer followers in general and the adulation of the Toon Army in particular, it didn’t put trophies in the cabinet.
It should have done and very nearly did when Newcastle were 12 points clear in England’s Premier League last season. But melt-down struck during the crucial final run-in and although there are those who claim that Newcastle simply didn’t have the necessary bottle it was in fact a far more fundamental problem of too many gaps at the back. Newcastle’s derring-do, cavalier spirit was doomed to failure in a game where the end result counts for far more than the way it is achieved.
But for Keegan there is no other way. “I was a forward and I was always looking to go and cause problems, to be adventurous and creative and my team reflected that. I think that’s the way it is in life. Teams reflect their coaches.”
But although for now, while the memory is still fresh in our minds, Keegan’s contribution to the beautiful game will be remembered as just that, in time the record books will reflect a very different story. Keegan’s failure to win a trophy will indeed be a harsh final judgment on what he actually achieved in five years at Newcastle, but given his time again he wouldn’t try to do things differently.
“I wouldn’t change anything. I had a very exciting team. One that everybody wanted to watch and that everybody is talking about. We were everyone’s favourite team in England apart from their own and whenever we were on television the ratings were up by three or four million because people new they’d see a good game,” says Keegan. That is certainly something to be proud of for a club that was on the verge of third division anonymity when Keegan took over.
But while Keegan’s frustration at being unable to match his own heady successes as a player, and the pressures of an understanding but still expectant legion of supporters and a not so understanding press, all contributed to his winter of discontent, it was the grey financial men in London who finally nailed Newcastle’s Messiah to the cross.
Football is becoming an increasingly big business in England with the advent of huge television contracts and the imminent arrival of even greater riches through pay- per-view television and many clubs are flirting with flotation on the stock market. Despite the hefty backing of Newcastle’s chairman and property tycoon, Sir John Hall, who sank R420-million into players alone under Keegan, Newcastle United followed the flotation route as well when it decided to build a new stadium and abandon St James Park.
“I didn’t know anything about flotations until the beginning of this season but now I know an awful lot and one thing is for sure, you are not in control. There are certain things you have to do and one of those is to satisfy the banks. Newcastle had promised the banks it would raise 6- million after the Shearer deal and by October I was having to sell some of my young players. We had a quality squad but we didn’t have a big squad and I didn’t think we should be selling three or four players.
“I didn’t like it and I didn’t think it made sense but the powers that be said that is what we had to do. The float has changed the club forever now and it won’t be that easy to do the things we did before. There are a lot more people to answer to now and while I’m not saying it was a bad thing for the club to do, it was just something I didn’t want to be a part of,” says Keegan.
In a way he was the architect of his own downfall by building Newcastle into a club which is only rivalled by Manchester United and Liverpool in the English game. “The very thing I helped create probably got rid of me in the end. Nobody would have dreamed of floating the club five years ago but now it is feasible. I suppose I’m a bit like Winston Churchill. He was great in the war but when peace time came they got somebody else,” says Keegan .
The final nail in the coffin came when the men in suits demanded stability ahead of the flotation and the club insisted that Keegan commit himself to a two-year contract. “I said at Christmas that I wasn’t prepared to sign because I didn’t want to stay after the end of the season because I felt I’d taken Newcastle as far as I could under the circumstances. Then they asked me to stay until the end of the season and we shook hands on that but the flotation wouldn’t allow it and I was given an ultimatum to sign or leave.”
It is football’s loss of course when a man like Keegan leaves the game and perhaps it is time to review the direction the sport is taking when the figures in the profit and loss account become more important than the figures in the league table and the way the game is played. Those days have not yet arrived in South Africa and here Keegan is still able to focus his attention on the less complicated affairs of assisting our coaches.
“I’m here to try and sow some seeds in their minds. I’m not trying to tell them they must do it this way or that way. Coaching is a lot about your own invention and as long as you follow a few basic rules you can do anything you want provided the players respect what you are trying to do and can understand it.”
Although he didn’t want to comment on the state of the local game until the end of his trip when he will have worked with the AmaGlugGlug – the national under-23 team sponsored by Sasol who brought Keegan to South Africa – he did play with Cape Town Spurs in the Eighties and knows enough about our game to be positive. “South Africans have got Brazil’s kind of flair but they probably need more of the European type of discipline. The difficult part is how to get both and the answer is to expose yourself to both types of training and coaching.
“If you can get a balance between these two styles then you have got perfection in my eyes. You must work on discipline and the physical side of your game but don’t ever try to take away the flair that the South Africans have got because that’s what makes them special.” But then what else would you expect a man like Kevin Keegan to say?