Courtesy New York Post

(March 27, 2009) With golf season here and the Masters in two weeks, this one's for those who don't play golf. It's particularly important for you folks to know this about those of us who do:

We're nothing like that. We're not what TV would have you think we are. What's spoken on golf telecasts is never spoken on golf courses. Never. Even those heard on golf telecasts who play golf never speak that way when they play golf.

While you will hear on TV that a player "carded a bogey," such an expression, if spoken by a man (or woman) on a golf course, would be spoken by a man who was talking to himself, because no one would play with a person who speaks such expressions.

Same for much of the golf talk heard on golf telecasts. Only on TV do we hear that a player "fashioned a 71," "authored a par" or "successfully negotiated a putt." Again, anyone who spoke like that would have no one to hear him.

Same with, "slim one-stroke lead," "atop the leaderboard" and "battled back from a three-stroke (or hole) deficit."

Golfers don't speak like that -- unless they're on TV. Something happens when they're on TV; they get goofy or try to sound British or as if they're writing a try-too-hard essay for The New Yorker. Otherwise, golfers speak regular American English.

The worst common application of a word on golf telecasts is "found," as in "the ball found the water," "the ball found the bunker," "the ball found the fairway."

Golfers don't speak that way because they know better. The ball didn't find anything; they hit it there!

Golf Channel, as a matter of perverse and reverse common sense, is the national home of golf expressions that golfers never use. Just about any time, one can tune in to hear golf spoken as it's never spoken unless it's spoken on TV.

Recently heard was that a first-year pro is in his "initial professional campaign" and that a shot "found the putting surface." Yesterday on GC, co-host Kelly Tilghman said that Tiger Woods last year on 18, "recorded a 3." Good grief.

Ya' gotta believe me, golfers don't talk that way. They wouldn't and, more important, they couldn't or they'd have no one to talk that way to.