Discussion: newspaper article

Event mentioned in this article

Any publicity is good publicity, I suppose, but I'm disappointed in reading this at the end: spectators cannot watch the action on the courses in Williamstown next weekend.

It's like saying, "Hey locals! We're hosting the national championships in a sport! People from all over the world are coming! Oh, but you can't watch, sorry."

In fairness...

While spectators cannot watch the action on the courses in Williamstown next weekend, Dady and Sleight said, special recreation courses will be set up for people to come and try the sport.

That. I was about to say that they should mention the rec courses, then I looked at the article and saw that it did. I think if anyone from the general public would even consider coming only to watch, they might appreciate knowing that they won't see anything BEFORE they bother to drive out there.

I think it's great that there are come-and-try-it courses set at US Champs. I found it frustrating at a recent US Champs event where I was staying with friends, and I convinced them to come out for a course, only to find out that there weren't any.

However, recreational courses and spectating are apples and oranges. Some people want to come and try, and some people just want to watch the best competitors perform. I never watch any women's soccer, but I watched some of the recent World Cup because they made it accessible for me to watch and they are the best on the world at it.

I'm probably spoiled by attending (or reading about) so many Canadian events that seem to "get it". But here we have the US Champs, which should be our premier event (right?), and we can't watch our best athletes perform.

Imagine going to the World Series, but being told, "Sorry, you can't go in to watch, but hey, you can go play Wiffle Ball in the stadium parking lot!"

This isn't the premier event; that's the Individual champs in Boston in October.

I'd like to think that Boston would be the premier event, but there seem to be enough people that think otherwise. If not "the" premier event, I'm sure the people attending/organizing feel that it is "a" premier event, which is still important enough to warrant some sort of spectating.

Which one is the premier event depends on who you ask, despite the wishes of some aficionados of one or the other format to have the answer declared by fiat.