Peter Alliss suffering from


Augusta greenhouse gas

FROM THE TIMESONLINE WEBSITE
By PETER GILES
Take a bow: Katayama's fourth-place finish at the Masters was a defining moment, pity about the commentary.
Ah, those timeless sounds of Augusta. Could they be more instantly evocative? The blithe warbling and chittering of the birds. The distant wail of a passing freight train. The noise of Ángel Cabrera, later to be crowned Masters champion, wildly duffing an approach shot off the middle of the fairway and shouting, “F***! F***!”
At least, I’m pretty sure that’s what he shouted. Of course, it could have been a Spanish word, meaning, “Go left! Go left!” Alternatively, there was Tiger Woods, in one of the bouts of self-chastisement that are such a feature of the legend’s game, apparently offering lip-readers a rare — and, accordingly, highly collectable — use of the c-word. “Something in Swahili,” Peter Alliss (pictured above), covering gamely, thought.
Which brings us to yet another element of the great Augusta soundtrack: the eager background chatter of television viewers, arguing among themselves about whether the Voice of Golf should be forcibly retired. It wouldn’t be the Masters, frankly, without four, full, 18-hole rounds of the Alliss debate.
Nothing more neatly divides people, with the possible exception of a malfunctioning water sprinkler at the 12th.
Where do you fall? Indispensable, occasion-clinching generator of the course-side witticism or blazered bore? Dusty, cupboard-bound anachronism or still vital keeper of the golfing flame? Or could Alliss just plausibly be — whisper it — all of these things at the same time?
He was, as ever this weekend, a supplier of captions, many of which appear to be paying hearty homage to the heyday of radio comedy. “What did I do wrong there, mother?” Alliss said, the camera having framed a look of baffled despair on the face of Cabrera. (This might have worked better if Sam Torrance hadn’t been busy reminding us that Cabrera had been abandoned by his parents at the age of 3 and brought up by his grandparents. But, hey. This is light entertainment. Let’s not nit-pick.)
Alliss was quick, too, as usual, to paint a picture of viewers enjoying the tournament over “a gentle glass of wine”. (Alcoholism is always a blessedly genteel place in the Voice of Golf’s musings. The viewer is never numbly tearing off his seventh can of bargain bin cider or stoked off his face on stolen Blue Nun.) The difficulty is that, over the four days just passed, Alliss probably made as many as a hundred crisply illuminating and entirely welcome remarks about players’ club selections, approaches to the hole, the lay of the green, etc.


Yet what stays with one is the limping parody of Cabrera’s accent: “I forget to use the meedle of the club.” Or — still more thumb-bitingly awful — the point at which Shingo Katayama left the 18th green. “Sushi tonight, lad. Bit of sake,” Alliss commented.
At those moments, you can’t quite believe what you’re hearing. It’s political incorrectness gone mad — a reminder that the world strides forward in leaps and bounds, but that golf and Peter Alliss somehow don’t.
Equally traditional this weekend were the hymns to the course’s beauty — the repeated insistence that one has arrived in a scenic wonder without compare. “Amen Corner on Easter Sunday,” whispered Wayne Grady, typically. “The faithful have taken their cue.” Now, only a fool would suggest that those people at Augusta National don’t know how to keep a lawn trimmed and a sandtrap raked. But the way everyone cracks on about it, you would think the place was Yosemite or that we were present as dawn broke over the Serengeti. Have so many grown men ever been rendered so jellified by a bunch of forced-on azaleas?
Look at what Augusta does to Gary Lineker. This is the time of year when Britain’s leading crisps salesman is granted compassionate release from his penal servitude alongside Mark Lawrenson on Match of the Day. Presenting the Masters is, let’s face it, a largely decorative role, and Lineker is without question as decorative as anyone the BBC can stump up.
The job’s chief physical requirement — the ability to stay more or less upright on a white leather chair between a couple of jugs of flowers — he completes with undeniable aplomb.
Yet what happens on these holidays to the fundamental Lineker we know and understand? The cheekiness that is his habitual mode is left behind with Alan Hansen. Instead, in the presence of professional golfers, the former goal-poacher is overcome by a reverence that almost robs him of the capacity for speech and, indeed, facial expression.
Lineker might as well be on his knees in supplication throughout.
Ian Poulter, on the other hand, is clearly more choosy about whom he honours with his full attention. The golfer and award-winning self-publicist was blunt and uncooperative in the face of questioning by Shane O’Donoghue, the BBC’s post-round interview grabber. Invited, later, to join Lineker in full ceremony on the white leather, Poulter was all smiling consideration and reasonableness.
What do you call a person who conducts himself like that? Something in Swahili would probably cover it.