You da drunk!

We've all encountered That Guy before. Here is my story, or at least one of them.

It happened just last week in a place where I was watching the NCAA Tournament, accompanied by a tableful of Those Guys who'd apparently been staging their own tournament (i.e., First One To A .20 BAC Wins!). They were drinking Stella Artois like its demise was imminent. And so of course they all thought it uproariously amusing to periodically bellow "STELLA!"

And by "periodically," I mean "about every 30 seconds."

(And here I pause to acknowledge what you're going to say next: "But Mr. Blob, didn't you figure ahead of time that if you went to a sports bar to watch the NCAA Tournament, there would be a high probability of serious day drinking?" Yes, I did. But it was still annoying.)

Anyway ... this brings me to my point, sort of, in a typically meandering way.

I think Rory McIlroy is right about drunks on the golf course.

Apparently there was one seriously lit individual who (like the STELLA! guys) thought it would be amusing to periodically bellow the name of McIlroy's wife Erica as McIlroy headed for a win at Bay Hill last weekend. As with most drunken shenanigans, this is never as hilarious as you, personally, think it is at the time. 

At any rate, the incident prompted McIlroy to gently suggest that perhaps golf needs an alcohol sales cutoff, the way baseball and football and pretty much every other team sport has.

The Blob tends to agree. Although I don't know how cutting off booze sales after, say, the last group makes the turn every day is going to prevent Yelling Out Rory McIlroy's Wife's Name Guy from doing so, since a golf crowd is not contained and he'll likely be somewhere out on the course with a drink in his hand already. And maybe two drinks, considering the cutoff.

Now, granted, the incident that ticked off McIlroy probably was nothing compared to what you'd encounter at, say, your average NFL game in Buffalo. This is because it's golf and not football, and there are different parameters. Golf is supposed to be a sport played by gentlemen and women with a gentlemanly code of conduct -- i.e., a cathedral hush should accompany the proceedings at all times.

As result, the Blob has always considered golfers (and tennis players, who operate by much the same parameters) to be among sports' most notorious whiners. If it isn't deathly quiet, or the rough is too rough, or the pin placements are deemed unfair, they're going to complain about it.

(And in tennis, about fans moving in the stands as they prepare to serve or receive serve. For this reason, the Blob has always considered tennis players to have the worst concentration of any athlete. Really, a guy can stand on the free throw line with 12,000 fans screaming and waving giant cutouts of heads behind the basket and still splash a pair, but a tennis player gets distracted by some guy coming back to his seat way up in Section XX? And what's he or she looking up there for, anyway?)

But I digress.

The point is, in this instance, McIlroy's right. Something ought to be done.

In the meantime, he can take a small measure of comfort in one thing.

At least his wife's name isn't Stella.