You’d be forgiven for thinking that men get paid every time they explain something to a woman who didn’t ask. That’s really the only explanation for why they continue to do it even all these years after the word mansplain entered the lexicon. But at least we can usually laugh at it now, as evidenced by a recent viral video from professional golfer Georgia Ball. She was filming herself at a driving range when a man decided she needed some tips.
“Excuse me, what you’re doing there, you shouldn’t be doing that. You should be … right through. Swing and follow through,” the man said. “You’re doing too slow on the way up.”
Ball, very politely, tried to explain to the man she was going through a swing change — exactly what it sounds like, changing up her swing — but he did not want to hear it. Rather, he told her that she was “coming back too slow.” Ball then glances into the camera with a look that says, “Can you believe what this guy is saying to me?” It’s a classic among those of us who have found ourselves on the receiving end of a guy saying, “Well, actually …”
Ball hit the ball perfectly the next time, and the man had the gall to take some credit. “See how much better that was,” he said. When she once again tried to explain why she was swinging slower than usual, he told her that he had been playing golf for 20 years and that she just needed to follow through. Thanks, man.
“As a humble person, it’s just not in me to say, ‘I’m a professional golfer. I know what I am doing,’” Ball said on British talk show This Morning. So I’ll say it for her. She’s a professional golfer and she knows what she’s doing! Let this be a lesson to the fellas who want to go up to women they don’t know and tell them what they’re doing wrong: You too could end up being the villain in a viral video, and your friends will probably never let you live that down. Silence is always an option.
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