Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Pique N' Your Interest

Title sponsors tarnish victory

As far as golf goes it’s a particularly sweet plum – the final spot in the celebrated Telus Skins Game pro foursome alongside bona fide legend Jack Nicklaus, top PGA player Vijay Singh, and modern golf’s driving force, John Daly.

At the Canadian Skins event, which took place earlier this week at Whistler’s Nicklaus North golf course, that final spot in the formidable foursome was reserved for Canada’s top touring pro. And according to the 2005 Score Awards, that golfer was Stephen Ames.

Ames’s inclusion in the Skins roster was announced proudly via a release from Tourism Whistler.

"The award kicks off an exciting week ahead for Ames as he prepares to defend his Cialis Western Open Championship," the chipper statement declared.

Now, I don’t know my birdies from my sand traps, but Ames is obviously a golfer of considerable talent to be recognized as the top Canadian pro and awarded the chance to rub shoulders with the game’s giants.

It’s a shame, really, that being so damn good has also won him the privilege of having his name inextricably associated with male erectile dysfunction.

Golf may seem like the sport of slackers, but at its top levels it’s a game requiring technical mastery hard won by years of practice and coaching, innate sensibilities in the reading of weather and terrain, and an unflappable psychological constitution. Top golfers prove themselves via a grueling gauntlet of qualifying tournaments known as "Q-school," an exercise in Darwinism that has broken the heart, mind and swing of many a fine young duffer, with only the strongest and most calculating characters surviving.

Mr. Ames is one of these survivors and as such his abilities deserve reverence.

So when you think "Ames," picture an earthworm’s eye view of a driver swishing slow-mo through dewy grass.

The connection, the follow-through, the statuesque form squinting into the morning sunscape, observing the straight-arrow shot’s trajectory toward a distant manicured green.

The delightful clonking sound of ball hitting cup, followed by the joyous celebration of winning the Cialis Western Open Championship.

Try not to think of Hugh Hefner resplendent in silk pajamas, eye level with the turgid implants of a harem of vapid blondes.

Or Wilford Brimley reveling in his randy impulses following a swim in an alien pod-infused swimming pool in the film Cocoon.

Or Bob Dole.

Oh the humanity! Make it stop!

Realistically, it’s not going to stop.

Money talks at high-level sporting events. A title corporate sponsor is integral to every tournament worth its salt.

High-profile events that might once have borne the name of an incorrigible character of yore, or legend of the game, now bear the name of the highest bidder out of necessity to keep up with the Bowls.

Just imagine what the recent Skins game would have been like had there been no Telus. Without the big bucks, you don’t get the big players. We’d have ended up with a bunch of realtors and a cardboard cutout of Jesper Parnevik. Nobody’s going to turn on TSN to watch that.

But the result of the branding of the big name tournaments is that those noble tournament winners become branded with the name of the sponsor every time their victory is mentioned.

It’s a non-issue if you happen to get a kick-ass sponsor. But consider those, such as Mr. Ames, who have had snicker-inducing sponsors captaining their tournament’s ship.

If it’s the bane of the winner, it’s nothing short of mortifying for the lesser players. So quipped Pique’s bone dry-humoured editor: "it’s better to have people talking about how you won the Viagra Open then to have them say you flopped at the Viagra Open, or that you couldn’t get your game up at the Viagra Open."

As far as women are concerned, the potential for sponsorship-related embarrassment begs for some kind of action. Imagine the cringe-inducing, grin-and-bear-it grimace of the first gal to hoist the trophy declaring her the queen of the Massengill Masters. Or the athlete attempting to maintain a shred of pride while being congratulated on her fine performance in the Always Open.

All kidding aside, there are more serious issues at hand. Should an athlete who lost a relative to lung cancer have to swallow their heartache and have their name forever linked to a tournament sponsored by a tobacco company? Should a player who triumphed in their chosen game despite a childhood oppressed by an abusive alcoholic father have their name associated with an alcohol sponsor, all for being presumptuous enough to win?

Would we rather suffer through another lockout non-season of NHL hockey if the solution turned out to be the players competing through hard-fought seven-game series all for the glory of hoisting high the McCain Cup?

One thing’s for certain, it’s not the players’ fault for being good. Stephen Ames can hold his head and his Cialis title high, the fact that his name is going down in the record books in association with an erectile dysfunction remedy is a non-existent speck in the grand scheme of getting picked to play alongside three of his game’s greats.

Besides, at least it wasn’t Depends.