Compiled by PHILIP REID
McDowell and Morgan show it's not all about swing
IN THESE days when everyone appears to be seeking perfection, be it in art or in a skinny latte with fewer calories than the real deal, it seems somewhat timely and informative that two Irishmen with their own uniquely-grooved swings are at the very top of their sports: Graeme McDowell in golf, and Eoin Morgan in cricket. Neither, you would say, has the so-called perfect swing!
Watching the first of the England-Australia Twenty20 internationals from Adelaide on Sky Sports the other night, it was inspirational – even for a couch potato – to see the almost cavalier and certainly unorthodox manner in which Morgan batted fours and sixes in setting his adopted team up for victory. At one point, the Sky commentator was left with no option other than to describe the Dubliner as, “a genius”.
Morgan’s unique batting action might have been honed in the unlikely environs of Rush in north Dublin, but McDowell’s high-tempo golf swing was developed on the classic links of Royal Portrush and his rise and rise in the game with his personalised but trusted swing would lend credence to that old adage that, “no one becomes perfect, but some become great”.
In golf, more than most sports, this quest for the perfect swing can destroy the most talented of players. Maybe everyone should take a leaf out of McDowell’s book. As US tour player and current NBC golf analyst Brad Faxon put it the other day in a round-table discussion with contributors to Golf magazine after McDowell’s course-record equalling 62 final round in Kapalua, “G-Mac has some unique things in his swing, but pretty soon you guys will be writing ‘Swing like G-Mac’. I love seeing guys like him, who aren’t out of the textbook,” observed Faxon.
While so many young players of today are taught from the time they can hold a club to imitate Tiger Woods’s swing, history – BG (Before Graeme) – tells us that owners of their own unique swings have competed, contended and won championships.
The other great modern-day example is Jim Furyk. Despite owning what David Feherty described as a swing like “an octopus falling out of a tree” and which another commentator Gary McCord said looked like he was trying to “swing inside a phone booth”, Furyk has become one of the all-time top money winners in the sport.
In fact, Furyk – the 2003 US Open champion – has won over €38 million in career earnings and has the distinction of also winning the richest prize in the sport when he took a €7.5 million bonus for claiming last year’s FedEx Cup on the US Tour.
Another player who carved out a good living despite an unorthodox swing was Eamonn Darcy. The Ryder Cup hero was once described by the esteemed golf writer Peter Dobereiner as having a swing which looked “like a man picking a five pound note from a grate with a tongs”.
Darcy, though, had the right approach to such observations and invariably had the last laugh. He would make the point “pretty swings don’t make money” and, for any professional sportsman, that green-backed commodity is one of the most motivating factors of all.
And Lee Trevino, whose own swing was not a thing of beauty, once self-deprecatingly remarked, “My swing is so bad I look like a caveman killing his lunch”.
What McDowell (with a swing introduced to him by his uncle Uel) and Furyk (whose swing was given to him by his one and only coach, his father Mike) have proven is it doesn’t matter one iota how you swing. Rather, the important factor is how the clubhead hits the ball at impact; and, just like Morgan in cricket, the unorthodox approach can be the most effective and certainly the more interesting to viewers.
As one professional described McDowell’s swing, “he manages to deliver the club perfectly on swing plane in the downswing even though he is slightly out of position at the top of his swing.”
In other words, the end justifies the means. And, these days, there is a strong case to believe that McDowell with his unique high-tempo action, is currently the best player on the planet. Sorry Lee!
GAA on 'score detection technology' track
THE GAA might be slow movers when it comes to using technology but, finally, it seems they are moving in the right direction in terms of using what they term “score detection technology” – or, as it is known in the tennis world, “Hawk-Eye.”
Okay, so we won’t have it in place this year while a feasibility study on the technology and how it is implemented is carried out. The assumption is finance will be one criteria of the study, and that another will be in assessing whether the use of the technology will impact on the speed of how hurling and football is played. The last thing we want are interrupted games where the intensity of these unique games are diluted. Here’s hoping the studies prove fruitful and suitable technology is in place for next year.
Verbal sparring lacks punch
THE MORE things change, the more they stay the same. This is especially true in the murky world of pro boxing’s heavyweight division. Unfortunately, the whining and bickering and utterances from Wladimir Klitschko and David Haye this past week about their non-fight towards unifying the heavyweight titles lacks all the grace of, say, Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier.
Klitschko and Haye have indulged in a bout of claims and recriminations since their proposed fight fell through. WBA champion Haye said he is “through” with the Ukrainian and that he will retire at the end of the year, while Klitschko – the current IBO, IBF and WBO titles holder – responded by calling his would-be opponent a “piece of s**t.” Lovely!
You could think this sort of thing comes straight out of an old Rocky movie but fact is often stranger than fiction and this carry-on is commonplace in modern boxing. We don’t have to cast our minds back too far to Floyd Mayweather running from Manny Pacquiao to realise that some of the most interesting action in boxing these days takes place outside of the ring in verbal combat rather than in Queensbury Rules battle.
The truth of the matter is both fighters will lose out financially and in terms of their respective legacies by not fighting one another. A Klitschko versus Haye bout would only be in the ha’penny place compared to an Ali-Frazer or a Roberto Duran-Sugar Ray Leonard rivalry, but it is the one fight that would go some way towards giving any respect back to the heavyweight division.
As it is, Klitschko is the fighter with the greater reputation. But surely even he knows that getting into the ring at some point with Haye – who doesn’t have anything near his track record – is the best way to shut up his would-be opponent.
Sports stars play part in relief efforts
EVENTS AWAY from the sporting fields offered quite a lot of perspective over recent days. The tragic death of Tyrone manager Mickey Harte’s daughter Michaela on her honeymoon struck a chord throughout the entire GAA community and beyond, while the floods in Australia – which have wreaked death and destruction on an area of Queensland the combined size of France and Germany – have brought out the best in professional sportspeople currently Down Under.
Cyclist Lance Armstrong has organised one of his now-famous twitter rides as well as personally donating €38,000 . . . tennis player Pat Rafter has organised a “Rally for Relief” tennis tournament featuring Rafa Nadal, Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic which will be staged ahead of the season’s first Grand Slam tournament, the Australian Open . . . and England’s Kevin Pietersen is auctioning his Ashes shirt and bat via his website while Tim Bresnan is also auctioning the shirt he wore during the Ashes which has been signed by the winning England squad.
English clubs top earners from Fifa World Cup fund
UNFORTUNATELY, IT seems that the financial woes of League of Ireland clubs garner as much media coverage as any on-field exploits. And, as if to rub salt into the wounds of Bohemians players in their efforts to get paid what is rightfully theirs, they must look wistfully at the pay-outs by Fifa to clubs who had players featuring in last year’s World Cup in South Africa. The dispersion of funds, though, only served in this case to show that the rich get richer.
In all, Fifa set aside €30 million from the profits generated in last year’s World Cup – and the criteria used in assessing where that money went left Barcelona as the big winners. In fact, the top five clubs in the hand-outs table were Barcelona (€649,667), Bayern Munich (€583,971), Chelsea (€571,971), Liverpool (€521,674) and Real Madrid (€508,574).
The criteria used to distribute the money was to calculate how many players from a club were selected for their representative team for the finals and then by how many days each player was at the 2010 Fifa World Cup.
Given its current position as the strongest league in the world, clubs in the English FA benefited most from Fifa’s largesse with €4.4 million going to English clubs while €3.5 million went to German clubs and €2.9 million to Italian clubs.
Some 400 clubs from 55 member associations around the globe benefited from the distribution of the lucre including such powerhouses as the UAE and Saudi Arabia. League of Ireland clubs were left empty-handed, which pretty much shows where Irish soccer stands at the current time and also sums up the Fifa take on rewarding the rich rather than adopting a more philanthropic approach. But then, what would you expect in the greedy world of professional soccer?
