At least I’m hoping that’s the reason you’re comparing fictional action theater with a real sport.

Golf doesn’t have heels…for the most part – because golf has manners…for the most part. Sabbatini stepped over the line of those manners and a few people jumped on him…until they realized that he was right. The real heel was his partner who was playing at a snail’s pace.

We have Monty – partly because he acts like an ass from time to time, and he was a Ryder Cup giant who got in America’s face during those weeks.

We have the occassional slip of the tongue, like we got from Vijay at Colonial when Annika was in the field. His words were taken a bit out of context, and he forgot the pairings rules that the Tour has. (Tour winners and high ranked players are paired with Tour winners and high ranked players – non-winners and qualifiers play together) But the drive-by-media that lives to twist words to create “controversy” (but mostly a name for themselves) has fixed that problem – players mostly only give cliche answers anymore. Even Kenny Perry’s words after The Masters were twisted as much as possible to make him sound like he was a drooling, quivering mass of fear and incompetence down the stretch.

Golf is different – thankfully. Golfers want to beat each other’s brains in on the course. We pull for ourselves, but we don’t pull against the other players. You never hear a pro say that he was hoping the other guy would miss.

Tiger fans “root against” Phil because he’s the closest competition to their guy — and vice versa — but it’s not like a football game in Philly where fans would just as soon throw a fan of the other team off the back of the stadium as have them sitting in the stadium pulling against the Iggles.

There are guys like Hogan, Faldo, Nicklaus, kr mentioned Norman, and even Tiger Woods who are/were totally focused on their games. There is no room for being pleasant on the course. They were/are labelled as mechanical monsters with no personality and just mean people.

Read Butch Harmon’s book “The Pro” and you’ll get a different view of Hogan off the course. Faldo and Norman have both relaxed and you see that they both have great humor to them. Nicklaus still finds ways to be a jerk now and then, but he has relaxed an enjoys things more. Tiger’s stories are still behind closed doors, but the people who know him say he’s very funny, and even nerdy.

Some of these guys win so much that people start to pull against them – like kr mentioned with Norman – but golf fans, for the most part, don’t take pleasure when something bad happens to another golfer. I don’t see how Norman was a “bad guy” – unless jealousy, envy, and class hatred is a good reason to dislike someone and pull against them. Wouldn’t that put Tiger Woods in that same catagory ?

Golf has manners – unlike most other sports. It sets the game apart and makes it special.

Oh – her name is/was Chris Evert. Then she married John Lloyd – then took up with skier Andy Mill before divorcing Lloyd – married Mill — then took up with Norman before divorcing Mill — then married Norman. So she is Chris Evert-Lloyd-Mills-Norman. Swell lady.

I guess this would fall into the “had” category as the guy has fallen off the map. He’s the quintessential badass who drinks, smokes, gambles, and the like.

I know from one of the videos I posted on Youtube “Bubba Watson Rips Into Steve Elkington Rd. 2 Zurich Classic” it looks like Bubba might fall under that category for some.
I also know I’ve seen a few bloggers post about Charley Hoffman before in a negative light not necessarily “bad”. To bad because Charley from seeing him last year at the Canadian Open has become one of my favorite players to follow. I don’t mind Rory’s attitude sometimes at least he shows some emotion.