Watch Where You Spit

I’m not a big fan of golf, despite the best efforts of my cousin Jim, who tried to indoctinate me in the ways of swatting golf balls at an early age. Jim, who is and always has been an excellent golfer, couldn’t succeed in instilling a love for the game in his young cousin. (We share a common passion for soccer, although he plays many times better than I ever did or will.) I never could pick up the game of golf, even when I tried again in my mid-20s.

So I would have missed the following story, were it not for eagle-eyed reader Steve Balow, who tipped me off this morning.

It seems that over the weekend, Sergio Garcia had a bit better aim with his saliva than his putter on the 13th hole of the third round of the WGC-CA Championship match at the Doral Golf Resort and Spa in Florida. While not the greatest of behavior, and certainly a little crude and boorish, it doesn’t seem like too big a deal.

At least he got a hole-in-one for the saliva, even if he didn’t manage to sink his putt. But the whole episode was shown on NBC television, and apparently it’s caused a bit of an uproar.

Garcia thought the better of it later, apologized and added:

“I did [it], I’m not going to say no,” Garcia told NBC. “It went down in the middle. It wasn’t going to affect anybody else.

“I just missed the putt and wasn’t very happy.”

Tim Finchem, the PGA Tour commissioner, had this to say about the incident:

“As I normally don’t, I won’t comment on the specifics here,” Finchem was quoted as saying by BBC Sport.

“But I will say that we try to avoid conduct that creates a distraction, a negative for the fans and a distraction for the media.

“Thankfully, on the whole on the PGA Tour, we don’t have too much of it. When we do, we have to move forward. I’m sure I will have a conversation about it with Sergio.”

Finchem also stressed that Garcia has been a model professional since joining the PGA Tour in 1999, adding: “He has been a terrific addition. His record is blemish-free and I’m confident this is a one-off situation.”

Well, perhaps it’s just an unusual situation. We all do things when we’re angry that later we wish we hadn’t. I found a reference or two to an incident involving a tossed club, and another where Garcia got upset and chucked a shoe against an advertiser’s billboard. But all in all, pretty rare incidents for a man who’s been on the pro tour for the last seven or eight years.

What’s interesting about the situation is how Finchem handled it. He took steps to defuse the situation, rather than inflame it. Contrast that to the behavior of Pat McQuaid, the head of the UCI. His typical MO is to make some statement that makes things worse. Like the “worst case scenario” statement he made as the Landis scandal started to blow up last July.

Of course, McQuaid didn’t name Floyd Landis as the person who tested positive — he merely implied it. But the press was able to put one and one together and figure out who he meant.

Now, granted the infraction Floyd is accused of is much greater than the offense Garcia committed, but it’s interesting to see the differences in how various officials handle such things. Finchem took a low-key approach, choosing to avoid fanning the flames of controversy. McQuaid, on the other hand, threw gasoline on a bonfire last July, and had the audacity to blame the resulting explosion on others, before admitting he leaked the information before someone at LNDD would have. And he got a lot of help stoking the fire from the likes of Dick Pound and others.

McQuaid, and Pound, and others broke their own rules regarding confidentiality when disclosing and confirming that an alleged positive test had occurred.

But imagine what might have been the result had they chosen the same kind of path that Finchem took with the Garcia incident. What if they had said, “We can’t comment on an ongoing investigation until it’s run its course.” And what if the lab had kept a clamp on the story until it had at least gone through the full B sample analysis?

My guess is that the Landis story wouldn’t have blown up — and in fact, it wouldn’t have been a story at all, because no one’s credibility (in public, anyway) would have been threatened. Calmer heads could have prevailed, and the lab could have taken more time (and perhaps greater care) in analyzing and interpreting Landis’ test results.

How often have those who are supposed to be the guardians of cycling, such as Pat McQuaid, managed to do things that piss away whatever reputation the sport of cycling has left? Yes, doping scandals are bad. And no one wants more scandals or the damage they do to the sport. But there’s something about the way such people as McQuaid and Dick Pound thump their chests every time an accusation is made that manages to heap even more disrepute on the sport.

Simply put, while the drumbeat of trial by media goes on, it’s often Pat McQuaid or Dick Pound doing the drumming. At such moments, their jobs are to calm the situation down, ensure that the process is run fairly and with regard for the athlete’s rights, as well as with regard to punishing those found to be guilty — but only when they’ve been found guilty, not before. What they should not be are the people drumming the phrase, “guilty, guilty, guilty” into our heads before the process has gone through to completion.

Cycling’s certainly gotten a bad reputation over the years. In some ways deserved, and in some ways not. But do people like McQuaid help or hurt? From where I see it, the way Pat McQuaid handles controversy is a case of, “With friends like this, who needs enemies?”

Can you imagine what would happen if the McQuaids of the cycling world would work with the sports’ biggest personalities to really promote cycling? Like partnering with Lance Armstrong and the LiveStrong Foundation to promote cancer awareness, for example? Or with other big names in the sport, to promote various causes? Think of the good will towards cycling that those kinds of activities might generate.

Tim Finchem handled the whole “Sergio Garcia hocks a loogey” dust-up in a very smooth way. At some point he’s likely to talk to Garcia and explain that it’s not a good idea to do that in public when the cameras are watching (which in this day of camera phones is basically all the time). Garcia will no doubt be apologetic and that will be that.

Wouldn’t it be great if our erstwhile guardians of cycling were capable of handling situations as well as Tim Finchem did? And wouldn’t it be great if those who oversee the sport could find positive ways of promoting cycling to the non-cycling public? Perhaps then we would really begin to see a turnaround in cycling’s reputation in the sports world.