Let's start with this: Mac O'Grady made his reputation as a good golfer with very vibrant synapses. In a world of careful talkers, his tongue was all square grooves and modern dimple technology. He never let a loopy thought go unexamined, and to call him a loose cannon is to wrongly indict the munitions industry.
Thus, when he called Tiger Woods a cheat and equated modern golf equipment with steroids for the notebook of the Detroit News' Krysten Oliphant, people who remember O'Grady doubtless said, "Well, if anyone was going to go postal that way, it would be him."
Everyone else simply would say, "What the hell is he talking about?"
You see, when you hear something this inane, context matters, and context can mitigate. The context for this is that O'Grady has said a lot of weird stuff in his time, so we can slough off this as plain goofy.
One thing we do remember, through the field of O'Grady one-liners ("I developed osteoporosis of the personality," "The PGA thinks I'm beyond the Twilight Zone and I like that," and "My goal for 1987 is to go through the year without being fined"), was one telling O'Grady line:
"If you get a chance to win, win any way you can."
Well, OK, then. Tiger Woods' way is to meld his talent to the allowable equipment of the day. "Cheating" is strong stuff. "Steroids" is flat incendiary. Combining them almost reaches the level of silly, with a side of flap-tongues malice.
But let's be fair here: Let's let him have his full say, because it seems his real issue isn't with Woods but with the new conditions of the game.
"When (Jack) Nicklaus and (Arnold) Palmer played, when (Ben) Hogan played and Sam Snead played, on a scale of zero to 10, they were a nine-plus. Tiger Woods is not even a one-plus.
"The reason why (Woods) can hit it on the green is because he has square grooves. He doesn't have that, he's dead. He cannot do it -- it's impossible. For him to go after Nicklaus's records is cheating. This is like steroids."
OK, that's a start. He has studied the mechanics of the swing for 23 years and is working on a book on the subject. He has a vested interest in the swing. But, sport that he is, he also took a few swipes at the ball, too, in particular the new dimple designs that help minimize curve.
"It allows all these guys to come into the game that ordinarily couldn't do it," O'Grady told Oliphant. "This ball is designed for the 30-handicap. It's not designed for the pro tour. The 30-handicapper hits the ball and it goes up to the apex, it comes down straight. It doesn't slice. So when the tour pro gets it, it's robbery. It's not fair."
"I still love the game, (but) I don't enjoy the technology because what's happening is these kids now are shooting 63s, 62s. What Michelle Wie is doing is not humanly possible. It's technologically possible because the balls go too straight, they go too far."
OK, so it's technology and gender. But wait, there's more.
O'Grady, 56, complained about the Champions Tour, and what he referred to as "powder-puff" players such as Jay Haas, who -- according to O'Grady -- are defeating "dinosaur guys who had the best technique.
"All those big players, they can't say anything because they're being paid by the manufacturers (for sponsorship). But they know it's wrong. This is the worst dark chapter in the history of professional golf with this technology. Steroids (are) not in the athletes today -- (they're) in the balls and the drivers. Guys don't have to hit it far. The equipment is going to do it for them."
Well, that's about it. Woods, Wie, steroids, old golfers, cheating ... in all, a pretty comprehensive view into O'Grady's prodigious skull.
But because we gave O'Grady his say, let's also point out that his purity did not extend to the equipment he used. No bamboo shafts in his bag, no niblicks, mashies, spoons or thingamajigs. The courses had a lot fewer brown fairways, too. He used the equipment and conditions allowable at the time, just like the modern players.
Thus, if he wants to grouse about progress, fine. But if Woods, et. al., are cheating, then so did he, because he didn't play with Hogan's equipment. And Hogan cheated because he didn't play with Old Tom Morris' equipment, and on and on.
And to throw "steroids" out there so casually is simply grenade-rolling to see all the pretty shrapnel. He didn't know that pro wrestler Chris Benoit just annihilated his family, quite possibly with steroids as a partial cause, but the timing, incidental though it was, couldn't have been worse. Better equipment isn't the same as performance-enhancing drugs, and if you're inside the rules and the law, you're not cheating, period.
But that's Mac O'Grady, and the last part of establishing context is considering the source. He generalized when he should have specified, the age-old problem of people who get into trouble with their tongues, and he used two words -- "cheating'' and "steroids'' -- that were designed solely to get his real complaint (technology) noticed.
Only nobody cares about his real complaint. He called Tiger Woods a cheat, and he compared the method of his "cheating" to illegal drug use, and that's going to get in the way of the real message.
Unless, of course, the real message is, "There goes that loopy old Mac O'Grady again." That one we got.
