I used to love press conferences. They were a chance to meet sports people in an informal environment, banter with them and uncover stories that ordinary questions could not.
Some of the most memorable press conferences I’ve ever attended were on golf courses.
At my first Million Dollar in 1992, the new superstar of South African golf joined the press in a converted crèche. Theodore Ernest Els had just played his first competitive round at Sun City in the company of Freddie ‘Boom Boom’ Couples, the charismatic American noted for his monster drives.
‘So Ernie,’ came the first question from the floor, ‘how did your length compare with Freddie’s?’
‘I don’t know,’ came the reply. ‘I didn’t shower with him.’
Some months earlier David Feherty had won the Bell’s Cup at Mowbray.
The Ulster man’s title-winning final round of 72 included 36 putts. In the press conference he said, ‘I shaved so many holes today, I should have been a gynaecologist.’
A few years later at Glendower came the greatest question from the floor I have ever encountered. It came from a lady representing a best-selling national newspaper who was not au fait with the niceties of golf. She had been sent to write what is known in the trade as a sidebar, a short tangential piece run alongside the main report.
John Bland was wrapping up the summary of his round when the room went quiet. Spotting the gap, the lady jumped up and said, ‘Any holes-in-one today?’
There was a murmur from the back and then a stunned silence. Sometimes you don’t realise what you know until a neophyte reveals such profound ignorance.
To this day I wonder how I would have responded had I been in Blandy’s shoes. Never in a million years would I have answered in the way he did, putting the lady at ease, the golf press in their places and effortlessly retaining his gentlemanly reputation.
‘Not today,’ said Blandy, ‘but I’m hoping for a few tomorrow.’
The problem, of course, is that you can’t print that, not even in a sidebar.
Instinctively, Blandy knew that, but there was another golfer of similar vintage who was not averse to playing games with the press that would result in some very odd things appearing in print.
Simon Hobday was campaigning at Durban Country Club one day in the early 1980s. He wandered into the press room for a chat.
It hadn’t been a great round, nothing to talk about really … but … ‘My playing partner, Tertius Claassens, hit the greatest shot I’ve ever seen off the 1st tee. He carved it straight right over the fence and onto the highway, it hit a lorry, bounced up in the air, hit another lorry and landed back on the middle of the fairway. He made birdie from there.’
The assembled press giggled their respect of a Hobday classic, but one young local reporter took the statement at face value and wrote it all down. It appeared as a front-page teaser in his newspaper the next day.
When he died, 30 years later, now a long-serving and much-loved newspaper man, his friends in the press were still telling the Hobday story.
– This column first appeared in the May 2024 issue of Compleat Golfer magazine.
