Ian Wood: Sporting upset is par for the course

Published on Sunday 17 May 2009 22:52

SPORT is littered with parties which have had to be postponed because of unforeseen circumstances. A week ago, the rampant Barcelona side were scheduled to celebrate the winning of the Spanish championship and a packed Nou Camp breathlessly awaited the ritual crushing of Villarreal which was expected to get the job done in style.

The great and the good were assembled, the club president was shown on TV making his way to his seat, smiling serenely as he accepted congratulations from friends and embraced stylishly begowned ladies. As it turned out, however, Villarreal refused to enter into the spirit of the occasion, the game was drawn and Barcelona had to hang around for another week before they eventually fell over the line.

Robert Burns was spot on when he wrote of the best-laid plans often tending to gang agley, for they do and when they gang, they gang good. I remember listening to the radio commentary on the fight between Randolph Turpin and Sugar Ray Robinson for the world middleweight title and that takes some remembering for it happened in 1951. Robinson, the champion and already a legend in his sport, was hot favourite with the experts, the bookmakers and the fight commentators. The London crowd were solidly behind Turpin, but what did they know? After 15 torrid rounds, Turpin had taken the title and many an intro had been rewritten.

Another upset, albeit a fairly minor one, occurred on an early TV programme which featured a confrontation between two gunmen, which, in hindsight, sounds a lot more interesting than some of the junk we have to watch now. The object was to find the world's fastest draw and, after a process of elimination presumably held over the course of previous programmes, the final was to be fought out between an American, specially flown in and who laid claim to the title, and a lad from Lancashire who had high hopes.

The contrast between the finalists could hardly have been more dramatic. The American resembled Lee Van Cleef and was the original Mr Smooth – dark shirt, dark waistcoat, dark slacks, perfectly tailored and tapering down to cover the tops of beautifully crafted, black cowboy boots. He wore no hat. The Lancashire lad wore a hat – a big stetson-type hat which came down to his shoulders – a loud checked shirt with a silk neckerchief at the throat and wide, woolly chaps of the sort often worn by Bob Hope in spoof Westerns. The American packed one gun, slung low to his right. The Lancashire lad packed two, slung high, around the lower ribs. They drew on a given signal. The American was fast, but the Lancashire lad drew with the speed of a startled snake and won hands down.

Golf, of course, provides a classic setting for the tripping up of fancied runners and nowhere are the mental horns locked more dramatically than in the context of match-play. One of the most memorable encounters was probably the match between Tony Lema and Gary Player in the World Match-Play at Wentworth in 1965 when, in the semi-finals, Lema finished the first of the two rounds six up and promptly won the first hole in the afternoon.

Lema, winner of the Open at St Andrews in 1964, won four tournaments in America that season and, though he came to Wentworth in 1965 having relinquished his Open title at Royal Birkdale when he finished fifth behind Peter Thomson, he was nevertheless, a golfer at the peak of his powers. It seemed inconceivable that he could let a lead of seven holes slip away, even against such a formidable competitor as Player.

The story was that when Lema won the first in the afternoon, a spectator, within earshot of the little South African, said that it was all over, which made Player get down to work fortified, if he ever needed fortifying, by a "that's what you think" frame of mind. Apparently, though, Player's club-endorsement deal with Slazenger had been terminated and Lema had been signed up. Under such circumstances, whatever problems faced the wee man as he set about his task, motivation wasn't one of them. Relentlessly reeling in the slack, he finished off his man by winning at the first extra hole, having drawn level in regular play by winning two of the three closing holes. He beat Peter Thomson in the final.

In a slightly less highly charged event, a club championship semi-final, a veteran who'd seen it all faced a bright-eyed youth. I joined it in the afternoon when the veteran, who had lunched well, made a languid start and was five down before he knew it. The young man's girlfriend said there could only be one winner and it would be her boy. Lips were pursed and heads shaken. Suffice it to say that by the 17th, the veteran was only one adrift and, after he'd cut a driver out of rough to the green, the match was level.

As to details of the actual outcome, memory fails. There were extra holes and I've a feeling the veteran ran out of gas. Perhaps the kummels caught up with him. It had been stirring stuff, though, and a warning on the dangers of counting chickens.