The Marshals

There is a certain breed of person here at the Nedbank Golf Challenge. Their job is to make sure that when one of the golfers are about to execute their golf shot, the people in the gallery stop moving, making a noise and being general louts. They are the famous marshals. They walk with a pairing over all 18 holes and ensure that we, the regular Joes, comply with the etiquette of golf. The marshals wear a different colour golf shirt every day too. They all wear the same colour so that they can easily be seen. They also wear the most unfortunate pair of white pants with an elastic waist-band. Each of these marshals is issued with a little red flag on the end of a very long stick. The flag isn’t too big to block the view of the spectators around the marshal, but the stick is really long so that people at the back of the gallery can clearly see that the player is about to play.

Now, give a man a stick and he is going to want to hit something with it. We have the great games cricket and baseball because of this. So far, I am yet to see anyone being hit by a marshal on the course, but at night, things change.

The identifying call from the lesser-pastel-shirt-wearing Marshal is, “Stand still please!”
Suddenly the whole world stands still and if it doesn’t, is the whole world in trouble or what? There is also the mating call which can be identified as, “Golfer ready, quiet please!”
You can still keep moving with that call but you better not need to sneeze.
Then there is the call of the really important one. He tends to make that all bases are covered with, “Stand still and quiet please!”

Now that you can find these VERY important people in the course, let me tell you about them after the day.

The marshals make their way to the Cabanas Hotel and wallow in the watering hole that is the pool and pool bar. Most of them have a good time and relax after, what must be a really tough, thankless job on the course. Accommodation and a free meal a day as payment to walk right next to some of the best golfers in the world is not a hell of a lot. Remembering that that golfer will earn at least $200 000 just for arriving at the tournament.

After wallowing in the waterhole and making a noise, most of these marshals quietly find a place to rest for the night and have a good rest before another tough day in another colour shirt…..but some….

No, not these guys. They HAVE to go out and be important. Should some journalist type person walk up to them and tell them to “Stand still please!” or “Quiet please”, suddenly the rath of everything that is evil is thrown at you! Why is it that people think that they are soooo important? If you have a thankless job, deal with it. You volunteered for it. You were never forced to be here. If you don’t like it and you can’t handle the abuse, then go home. Find people that like you. Part of the job is the abuse and you KNOW you are going to get some. Especially from stupid little radio announcer, slash blogger.

I don’t want to paint all of these marshals with the same brush. Most of them are great and a few of them are actually quite fun, but you have to get rid of the bad apples and now before they infect the rest and the tournament. Either that or some little English idiot should really get a life.