Enemies of Reason Poundshop potshots at the media moral maze.

The four most tragic words in world sport

Look, I like sport. I love sport. I love watching it - though that's limited by the lack of finance/willingness to get a Sky dish, and the ridiculously pisstaking prices you experience at the turnstile when attempting to watch even the most banal amateur-hour 90 minutes of hoofball before blethering into your lukewarm Bovril that you'd rather be in B&Q and fucking off five minutes before the final whistle in horizontal sleet. I even love taking part in sport, though I'm rubbish at almost everything except darts, and to be honest anyone can be good at that if they've got the wherewithal, the chunky gold jewellery and the drinking skills.

But this week sees the most mystifying sporting contest in the history of the world ever. It's something so inexplicably odd that I can't even begin to try and understand it. I mean, I can kind of understand golf. I get that, though I don't particularly enjoy it. You try and belt a little white ball down a nicely shaven bit of turf and then plop it into a hole. Fine. I can see why people like it. Bit of a challenge, and it gets you out into the open air.

But surely there's a fundamental leap in logic between enjoying that and then roaring on golfers from your continent - yes, continent - to try and do very slightly better at getting the ball in the hole than golfers from another continent.

And then there's that thing - the most tragic four words in world sport (as opposed to the most tragic three, now redundant, which were 'Come on Tim!' shrieked by hysterical HRT housewives from Surrey during the height of 'Henmania'):

GET IN THE HOLE!

What? Get in the hole? You think the ball, this inanimate object made of plastic and god-knows-what, is going to suddenly develop sentience while it's rolling along a bit of grass, and change direction? "Ooh sorry, didn't realise you wanted me to go that way, I hadn't grasped the idea of this game in all the times I ever got hit into the hole, now I see why it happened to me so much: you actually want me to get in there. Well righto, I'd better do that, hadn't I?"

I couldn't give a shit if some whispering twat with a microphone is telling me how a ball is lying on a bit of grass that's slightly different to another bit of grass; I couldn't give a flying one whether the crowds are stoking up the atmosphere or not. Jesus wept, the whole world's going to the dogs and we're getting all excited about the bloody Ryder Cup? Let me know when it's all over and Europe/America have triumphed so I can avoid every TV set and radio in the meantime.

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