Hello, dear, readers!
Taking a break from last entries humor, I have something more serious to discuss with you today about our friends on the fairway.
Golf seems to be a sport that people find enjoyable to play, but ignore on the professional scale. Society knows the big names, and the famous courses, but compared to the NFL, MLB or NBA, what goes on the in the PGA, heaven forbid the WPGA, goes rather unnoticed.
While the rest of us go on and on about how the Patriots may or may not have deflated footballs in their spanking of the Colts in the AFC Championship game, something very real, and very scary has been going on at the Sony Open in Hawaii this weekend.
PGA pro golfer Robert Allenby was “kidnapped, beaten and robbed” last Friday, and as a result dropped out of the tournament, and the following Humana Challenge, according to Bleacher Report. He emerged with facial lacerations and other minor injuries, however, he is expected to make a full recovery. There are several alternate allegations surrounding the issue and more information is yet to be revealed.
By a show of virtual hands, how many people either didn’t know about it, or saw very little coverage on the crime? The very fact that this happened is disturbing, but what gets my goat about it, is how sport media handled the situation! Yes, that is an exclamation point, and a very justified one at that.
Putting this into context against a bigger sports organization would be laughable, because people still talk about Kobe Bryant’s rape scandal, and every ESPN ScoreCenter subscriber knew within an hour that Cam Newton crashed his car on his way to practice. This very unequal distribution of sport headlines chooses for us what we know, and do not know. And isn’t that a little scary?
One of Newton’s and Bryant’s fellow professional athletes was beaten, and it didn’t seem to be as big of a story as DeflateGate. I’m not saying there was no coverage, a short on the news, articles here and there, but it feels like the media is giving up on it pretty fast. If this were say, Bryant or Newton, I know I would be hearing far more about the latest updates, Allenby-watches, and such.
And I know, I know that sport networks are for profit, and they report the stories that they feel will draw attention from their readers who make them money by viewing advertisers’ content. I get it. But I still believe that media shouldn’t be giving up on this story so quickly to replace it in golf news for stories like has-been Tiger Woods’ missing tooth.
The allegations surrounding the Allenby case differ in that no one actually knows how it happened, and isn’t that pretty fascinating? There is a story there, and it’s some professional journalist’s duty to the public to uncover those mysterious details. Investigative journalism isn’t dead, and the fact that he’s a golf player should not sway media from the story due to the perception that no one cares.
Someone out there cares, someone notices, and someone will read what you write if it’s good and important, and that’s what all journalists have to remember.
Sarah thanks her readers for caring about what she has to say, and hopes you stop by next week for more Gossip Girl Sports.