Maybe it’s a hangover from my Save Albert Park years, but I cringe whenever I hear someone utter the words ‘world class’. Because in my experience people who’re doing or making something genuinely world class – i.e. among if not the best in the world – simply go about their business without crowing or bleating about it. And conversely, those who bang on about doing or making something ‘world class’, are big-noting if not fooling themselves and others, for in the main they’re aspirational nobodies and wannabes but neverwillbes. This, I suspect, is a minority view among my countrymen. I see Australians as generally a parochial lot. Maybe because we’re a second-world country far from all the first-world countries which we aspire to emulate or surpass. And we don’t see third-world countries as fair dinkum competitors let alone national role models. Of course the media have a stake in perpetuating our faux sense of national self-importance on the world stage. That’s par for the course for them. Segueing across to golf, that’s why I found this item by sports journalist Jake Niall (pictured) in last Saturday’s Age, to be so insightful and thus refreshing. The fawning over Tiger Woods in Melbourne recently made me cringe. And clearly it made Niall cringe too. Also I like what he wrote about Olympic medals vis-à-vis Peter Carey and Tim Winton. So I hereby add Jake Niall to my list of favourite journalists.
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