They’re heeeere.
Cicadas are no supernatural poltergeists, but at this week’s Memorial Tournament they are unnatural visitors all the same. I have watched enough wildlife documentaries to know that bugs swallowing up birdies goes against normal animal behavior.
Yet set foot on the grounds of Muirfield Village Golf Club over the next seven days, or listen on TV, and that is exactly what will happen. Once the Brood X bugs get their game on, the buzz of mating call victory will drown out the sound of birdies. And eagles. (On the plus side, the whiny mutterings of players cursing bogeys also will be harder to hear).
How loud will it get when the red-eyed wonder — no, not John Daly, who is not among the 120 competitors scheduled to tee it up on Thursday — begins to shimmy and shake? A male cicada’s pick-up line can reach 96 decibels.
For perspective, a normal conversation is about 60 decibels, a commercial jet landing is about 80 and a lawnmower reaches 90, which explains why cicadas will sometimes follow your Toro like children trailing a motorized Pied Piper. For these pent-up bugs — no sex for 17 years! — a noisy power mower is quite the aural aphrodisiac.
But I digress. Bottom line, these winged creatures do not go quietly into the night. What’s that? They actually do go quiet after sunset? Well, that’s no help to the golfers.
K.J. Choi has a cicada flicked off his shoulder by a caddy during the 2004 Memorial Tournament. (Columbus Dispatch file photo)
Before revisiting the 2004 Memorial, which was the last time this many periodical cicadas climbed from their underground hellholes — existing on tree root juice for nearly two decades defines a devil’s lair, no? — we return briefly to 1987, when the grandparents of the 2021 cicadas strutted their stuff.
Ray Stein, sports editor emeritus of The Dispatch, recalled covering the ’87 Memorial, when cicadas entered the collective psyche of the CBS broadcast team.
“I’m in the control truck as an observer and the late, great Frank Chirkinian is going crazy because he can’t hear his announcers over the din of the cicadas,” Stein said. “He was something of a control freak, and famously ranted for effect, but he was straight-up livid that he couldn’t find a way to drown out the buzz. He kept pleading for someone on the crew to muffle the noise, and of course, no one could. Meanwhile, the talent — namely Gary McCord and Ben Wright — just kept needling him about it.”
Fast forward to earlier this month, when defending Memorial champion Jon Rahm asked why tournament host Jack Nicklaus “can’t get rid of” the cicadas?”
I explained to the 26-year-old Spaniard that the Golden Bear might have 18 major championships, but only God can sequester cicadas, and so far has opted not to. (Related: cicadas and locusts are not the same thing, so save the Biblical plague references for the Memorial’s traditional thunder, hail and lightning).
Now, on to the infestation of 2004. It’s not just the noise that will turn the Memorial into an abdomen-banging rock concert this week. It would be one thing if the cicadas stayed in their lane, but noooo, they spread their wings and fly — not very well, either — into and onto places where PGA Tour players prefer they not visit.
Joey Sindelar’s dream foursome would not normally include a cicada, but you take what you can get when the other two players in your group are Tiger Woods and Vijay Singh.
“It was the Memorial right after my last victory, at Wachovia in ’04, and my pairing was Vijay and Tiger, the biggest pairing of my life, of course,” Sindelar said. “On the fourth tee there was a back-up and one of those bugs got stuck in my collar tag under my shirt and both Tiger and Vijay were trying to get it out. The crowd was laughing, a photograph was taken and it still hangs in my house.”
If Sindelar was embarrassed about wing around the collar, at least the former Ohio State player didn’t ingest the bleepin’ bug.
Craig “Woody” Camarolli did. On purpose. Camarolli, the caddie for Dudley Hart, earned a cool $100 from his boss in 2004 for chomping a cicada. (Hart withdrew after the round with food poisoning. Power of suggestion?)
On Tuesday of that week, Paul Azinger offered $50 to another caddie to eat one of the 1½-inch critters.
“He popped it in his mouth like a grape and it crunched like a potato chip,” Azinger said. “No guts. No bug juice. Easiest money he ever made.”
This week, watch for the “Cicada dance,” where unsuspecting Tour players and unassuming spectators jump around after finding a bug clinging to them. Look for backswings to be bothered, putting greens to be peppered and cicadas to be salted.
Tastes like chicken.
Rob Oller is a columnist for the Columbus Dispatch, part of the USA Today Network. Email him at roller@dispatch.com. Follow him on Twitter @rollerCD
