Charles Barkley owns the worst swing in golf. It is an odd herky-jerky mixture of golf, boxing and Iraqi shoe dodging. It is both funny and painful to watch.
Granted, he is six-foot eight and that alone makes golf more difficult, but Barkley’s problems are not mechanical because no one’s mechanics can possibly be that bad. Which begs the question; how can anyone’s head get that screwed up, especially a world-class athlete like Sir Charles?
But then again how can it be mental? This is Charles Barkley. He has played basketball in front of tens of thousands of screaming fans and performed at the highest level. On top of that he is a television star. He has smelled the greasepaint and heard the roar of the crowd, and as Peter O'Toole once said after falling off a bar stool, “I am schooled in these ways.”
Even Tiger Woods does an impression of Charles, and maybe that's where the idea came from. Hank Haney has stepped up to the plate and said, “I can fix Charles’ swing” and for the next six months you can watch it happen… perhaps. It started this past week on the Golf Channel, and if the first installment is any indication of what’s to come, the next six months is going to feel like six years.
It starts off well enough setting the stage with a series of video clips documenting Charles’ swing, but then with the stage already set it shows another three minutes of Charles’ swing. I get it! Now we’re six or seven minutes into this thing and nothing has happened. Cut to Charles in his car driving through Philadelphia talking about his swing problems. Hank in a different car is also talking about Charles’ swing. Surprisingly, both Charles and Hank seem very serious about the task at hand.
Now cut to Hank and Charles meeting for the first time in a restaurant to talk about Charles’ swing. It’s a funny encounter, but between the lines you can tell that even though Charles is laughing, he’s not pleased that his swing has become such a mainstay on YouTube. Charles has a couple of good lines like, “You’ve probably never worked with a stud athlete like me,” and “I haven’t hit a ball higher than my head in ten years.” And, when shown Tiger’s impression of him he says, “Tiger is an idiot.”
Interestingly, what comes through in scene after scene is that Charles is a very charming and very funny guy; he’s the kind of guy that you’d like to hang out with. Hank also seems like a nice guy, but Charles is clearly the big personality.
I should also point out that by this time there have already been 35 commercials and basically nothing has happened.
The most interesting dialogue so far has been Hank describing what he called a Tiger workout, which according to Hank starts at 6:00 AM with weights, then putting, short game drills, hitting a thousand balls, then nine holes before lunch. After lunch it’s more short game, more putting and a thousand more balls, nine more holes and finishing up around six or seven PM.
Much to Hank’s surprise Charles say, “Let’s do it.” Cut to 35 more commercials.
Once they get to Hank’s school in Dallas and Charles starts to hit balls the show starts to get interesting. What’s also obvious is that Hank intends to work Charles hard to test his mettle. It starts to rain and Charles keeps swinging. Charles is sweating like the fat guy in the circus and keeps on swinging. Asserting his ego a bit, Hank says, “Charles your head is moving two feet” to which Charles asks, “You think I’m moving my head?” Hank then asserts, “I know you're moving, I don’t think your moving.”
If you go by the first program, the only thing Charles did in the first session was one drill all day long. I can’t imagine that’s true, but what do I know. In any case, by the end of the day Charles is exhausted but still takes the time to talk to a couple of kids.
As the show is winding up there are a couple of scenes showing Dr. J, David Feherty and others, then there are more flash back swings of Charles. We get it already! All in all, it was about ten minutes of entertainment crammed into thirty minutes, and if every show sinks to the same level of content it’s going to be a long season, and that’s too bad. One side note; as the Golf Channel is prone to do, they showed a repeat of the first program as soon as it was over. Who does that, Home and Garden Television?
A message to the Golf Channel; the idea is good, Charles is great and Hank is fine, but you desperately need a producer and director. Somewhere in the middle of all the video being shot is a good television show and it’s their job to find it.
Trust me, I am schooled in these ways.
