Attention Celebrities! Stop Making Fun of Charles Barkley!

Have you been watching The Golf Channel's wonderful series "The Haney Project: Charles Barkley"? If you haven't, you should be. It's great stuff.

A little background. Hank Haney is Tiger Woods' coach and a highly regarded guru of the golf swing. (To get technical, he's a strong advocate of developing a good swing plane, as a way to increase consistency.) Charles Barkley is the legendary pro basketball great, the "Round Mound of Rebound," who played for the Philadelphia 76ers, Phoenix Suns, and Houston Rockets in the 1980s and '90s. Sadly, he never won an NBA Championship. But he's gone on to a provocative broadcast career, is beloved by millions, doesn't hold back his opinions, and occasionally gets himself in a bit of trouble.

He also has, most would agree, the worst golf swing in the world. It didn't used to be this way; at one time, he evidently played golf pretty well. But as anyone who has witnessed him struggle through a celebrity pro-am can attest, his swing for a decade now has been a bizarre, halting, hitching motion that creates horrible shot after horrible shot.

According to Haney, Woods asked him to help Charles fix his swing. Haney has taken to the task with the kind of fervor and deliberation that Montgomery brought to the North Africa campaign in World War II. You can see why Woods likes Hank: he's a focused disciplinarian who's fun to be around but who can stick to business. This contrasts with Woods' former coach, Butch Harmon, who's also very good but more of a cheerful backslapping motormouth (who's probably getting along great with current star pupil Phil Mickelson).

There's always been an element of pathos to Barkley, a lovable (if outspoken) man and a stupendous competitor who fell just short of greatness in the Michael Jordan Era. He'd made us all forget this as he morphed into a jolly entertainer, a sort of willing clown for Generation SportsCenter. He also takes the ribbing of others in graceful stride. A good thing, as everyone and his cousin seems to have developed an impersonation of Sir Charles' golf swing. Or at least an opinion about why it's such a mess. Haney thinks it's a sequence of correctable, or at least manageable, flaws. Irish pro golfer Padraig Harrington thinks it's all in Charles' head and says he "needs a shrink."

Watching Barkley work on his swing with Haney is like watching a person commit to meticulously organized torture. Barkley is a fun-loving dude, but he was also an elite athlete, and he knows what its takes to improve in sports: hard work. He's not lacking in golf talent: his grip always looks good, and his putting stroke and short game are solid. It's just that his full swing has become horrific. So he hits thousands of balls, sweating like he's in the fourth quarter, under Haney's steely gaze. He commits to new workout, diet, and flexibility regimes. Yes, it's reality TV. But there's more realty to it than most examples of the genre.

He makes progress, then he falls back intro struggle. It's agonizing to watch. You get the sense that Barkley decided one day that he'd had enough, and that he really would give up the game and rob the fans of what for him was becoming a depressing spectacle if he couldn't fix his swing and make golf enjoyable again.

What he needs now is our support. It's not often we get to witness an old pro, someone whose ups and down we once followed assiduously, challenge himself anew. And this is why a moratorium on making fun of his swing must be declared. Even at this late date, numerous episodes into the Barkley project, we continue to make sport of his anguish. Barkley's friend, the comedian George Lopez--a decent person who loves golf--should have thought twice before he jumped into his Charles imitation at the Outback Steakhouse Pro-Am this last weekend. It got laughs, but in the current context, it was awkwardly opportunistic.

We must let Barkley be! He has given us much over his colorful career, And now in his moment of need, we have to stop laughing and start admiring how difficult the Haney Project has been for him, how far he has come, and what he still has left to do. It was funny to needle him once. But by doing so now, we ridicule and embarrass a champion who isn't afraid to cure his faults in front of the world.

Comments

[stratdude]

Please put Charles in the same room with Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck for 15 minutes and televise it. Please, please, please