Even the top professionals cringe and speak in whispers when they go back to what Hinako Shibuno said to her caddie before playing her second shot into the 18th green at the AIG Women’s British Open she won at Woburn Golf Club. “I can’t believe that she said what she said,” is how they tend to put it.
That’s as far as they can go without using the dreaded word “shank.”
The context of Shibuno’s remark was that it would be embarrassing if she were to hit such a shot at such a moment – and the mere thought of it reduced her and her caddie to giggles. The outbreak over, though, she hit a towering shot into the green before bashing home an 18-footer for the winning birdie.
There are, of course, allied afflictions to shanking. Afflictions such as Sergio García’s old gripping and regripping of his club (sometimes more than 20 times), along with the more common and equally disturbing condition of putting yips. Of the more famous “yippers,” Tommy Armour, was reduced to giving up on tournament play because of them, while Bernhard Langer has done the miraculous in surviving one attack and then another and another.
Golfers are not alone in experiencing such sufferings.
Boris Becker once told Colin Montgomerie that the shank’s equivalent in tennis was to find yourself unable to release the ball for the service toss-up. In darts they have “dartitis” (English great Eric Bristow had this). Baseball players like Steve Sax and Chuck Knoblauch inexplicably became incapable of making simple throws from their infield positions to first base, motions they had been making since childhood.
Shanks, however, are what give people the out-and-out heebie-jeebies. And the trouble is that onlookers are not always as sensitive as they should be on the topic.
Would you believe, for example, that a site by name of GolfMagic.com gave a cheerful report on how Justin Rose and Henrik Stenson unleashed a shank apiece at the Open Championship at Portrush in a week when they were among those who finished in a share of 20th. Rose, in what was his third shot to the par-4 ninth during the course of a final-round 79, shanked a wedge over his gallery’s heads. Tony Johnstone, on the commentary team, apologised at once for identifying the nature of the shot or, as he put it, “for using bad language.” To which a fellow commentator sounded as if he had gone a bit white as he reminded his colleague that it was an unwritten rule that the word should never get a mention.
By the time the shot and the ensuing conversation were over, the Rose shank had had enough air time to prompt as many as 2,813 views on the video which followed. Rose, in turn, “shanked” followers for their support.
If ever a punishment deserved to be handed out it was to CBS at the 2004 PGA Championship at Whistling Straits. That was the week when Darren Clarke hit the unspeakable off the 17th tee and the television network risked infecting the whole of golfing America by playing it over and over.
Stenson hit his horror at the 17th during the final round. He punished the club by snapping it in two and, though most might think that the Swede himself deserved to be pitied rather than punished, word has it he ended up with a fine.
If ever a punishment deserved to be handed out it was to CBS at the 2004 PGA Championship at Whistling Straits. That was the week when Darren Clarke hit the unspeakable off the 17th tee and the television network risked infecting the whole of golfing America by playing it over and over.
By all accounts, the TV people back home in the UK were altogether more discreet.
Maybe Hinako Shibuno has done golfers the world over a favour. After watching her, you would have to think that anyone contemplating a pressure-packed shot to win a major (or a club medal) would do better to relax with a couple of giggles rather than stand there contemplating a list of what-not-to-dos.