Scottish golf fans are among the most discerning fans in all of sports. Watching the British Open on TV can be disconcerting because what the crowd cheers and doesn't cheer depends upon subtle slopes in course that you can't see on 2-D television. The player on the right side of the fairway hits a shot that stops 40' from the flag and the crowd goes wild (because he managed to hold his shot on a green tilted sharply away from him). Then, the player on the left side of the fairway hits his shot to 20' and is greeted with tepid applause (because he should have gotten it closer).
The Swinger is a new roman a clef novel about golf superstar Hubert X. "Tree" Tremont by two Sports Illustrated writers who clearly enjoy being liberated from the shackles of Access Journalism. In it, a fan at St. Andrew's heckles the struggling, post-disgrace Tree:
“Ya canna pleh without the magic drugs, ken ya?”
"ken ya?" must be an amusing allusion to Obama's ancestral patch, since it arises in no variety of Scottish English with which I am familiar, nor in Scots proper.
ReplyDeleteOT: Klitschko wins again but there is muted coverage in USA media. Who? What? Boring!
ReplyDeleteHeavyweight boxing is dead in America because whites keep beating blacks. Foreign non-white fighters? They make them media stars.
Foreign white fighters even when they are undisputed champs get skimpy coverage.
Soros media octopus in eastern Europe ramping psyops saturation propaganda in order to staunch flow of fearless white men still not effective.yet.
>["ken ya"] arises in no variety of Scottish English with which I am familiar, nor in Scots proper.<
ReplyDeleteI seem to remember Paul Johnson in his The Birth of the Modern referring to a Scots scientist in the early 19th century encouraging his student-proteges with, "Maybe ya can do it!" Which would sound to non-Scots ears something like "maybuh ya ken doo 't!" By back-formation, the bolded words above would be "ken ya" (example: "Ha! Ya canna, ken ya?") After all, don't Scots observe the "can you?" "do you?" "is it?" formation? I believe all English-speakers do.
Yes lets rag on the Scots today. We only just invented most of modern science.
ReplyDelete"Yes lets rag on the Scots today. We only just invented most of modern science."
ReplyDeletelawl
'Ya ken' is Scots for 'you know?'
ReplyDeleteKen ya, or di' ya nae? Ah, wha's the yoose? Aweey wi' yis.
Gilbert p.
>Heavyweight boxing is dead in America because whites keep beating blacks.<
ReplyDeleteExactly. If that feminized trash-talking Afro-Briton flop-cheat had won, it might have been spun as the renaissance of boxing, and we would be hearing about it. Vlad was too easy on him, btw. He permitted him to have his moment in the sun (and half the take), apparently out of charity. I don't even think Vlad trained for this one. Instead, he shoulda pulverized the palooka.
Steve,
ReplyDeleteDo you happen to know how many majors Tiger won "buff" as opposed to his previously thin self?
I follow golf but I don't recall. I just remember how there were suddenly articles in Golf Digest about his interest in lifting.
Hey Steve, I am pretty late to commenting on this, but...
ReplyDeleteMost of my family is from Scotland. And recently I was talking to one of them who is an avid golfer (he plays quite a few rounds every week [no exaggeration] and gets in a round on every vacation he takes) and I asked him what they (i.e. Scots, and Brits in general) thought of John Daly when he rose to fame and his response was, "...breathe of fresh air."
He said that they loved him. He played his game without pretending to be anything he wasn't.
Granted, he is not a one man Gallup poll, but I thought that you might be interested.