Patrick Reed held off a hard-charging Jordan Spieth and Rickie Fowler to win the Masters. CBS’ Jim Nantz, always the picture of traditional presidential class and dignity, marked the moment with “Captain America captures Augusta,” playing on Reed’s nickname. Sir Nick Faldo … well, he went a different way.
It’s been around an hour since it happened, but his decision to drop some Imagine Dragons lyrics in the afterglow of victory is one of the most perplexing choices I’ve seen made on a stage of this magnitude. And to be sure, it has nothing to do with the quality of the rock band. They are fine and moderately popular. It’s just, if you had walked up to someone earlier this week — or ever, really — and suggested that Faldo and Nantz quote Imagine Dragons in golf’s golfiest moment, you are probably a 15-year-old who hangs out at an abandoned mall.
Look, Reed’s affinity for the group was mentioned earlier in the broadcast. Golf announcers have a lot of time to kill, thus this fact emerging. It’s one thing to bring it up, it’s another to double-down during what will likely be the biggest moment of Reed’s professional life. Whenever someone replays the clip now, they’ll have to decide whether to include the awkward homage to a band no longer on anyone’s radar.
At this point, I’m hoping Reed wins again at Augusta, if only to ensure he has a winning moment which doesn’t include Imagine Dragons. That really isn’t too much to ask. Spieth’s Masters win wasn’t punctuated by a line from Hozier’s Take Me to Church. Neither of Bubba Watson’s two wins were capped by a clever Fall Out Boy line.
And why not? Because those notions are nuts.
Again, to be clear, I don’t want to be overly critical of Faldo. It’s just that this was such an unusual choice that it rose to the level of distraction. Like many of you, I assumed I had misheard in real-time. Surely we weren’t getting the poetic words of Radioactive, a five-year-old tune, read to us in the shadow of Butler cabin because, uh, why would that be happening?
Alas, we were.
It was, quite simply, an astonishing choice. Perhaps the only thing that can help explain it is the thought that maybe, just maybe, we’re entering a new era. A new age, if you will. Welcome.
from The Big Lead https://ift.tt/2qfftQH
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