Five consecutive entirely well-executed shots, each ending up in the drink.

As the commentators joked about whether he might soon run out of balls Garcia nonchalantly took out his sixth one, dropped it, hit it, managed to keep it on the green and then holed the putt for a 13.

He seemed remarkably unflustered. Quite a display of self-control I thought.

Little did I know at the time how great that self control must have been. 

Given his antics this past week at the Saudi International I should perhaps have been a great deal more impressed at his Masters restraint.

Last week Garcia was disqualified by Saudi tournament officials for wilfully damaging multiple greens -  and staging an entirely indecorous tantrum in the bunker on the 4th after finally extricating his ball from the trap.

The tiniest bit of Googling shows that this volatility is vastly more typical of the Spaniard's response to golfing misfortune than his unruffled behaviour at the Masters.

He is far from being alone though.

I remember a bloke in Maitland who, having some continued difficulty successfully crossing the hazard on the 10th, threw his entire golf bag into the water, buggy and all. 

Back at the clubhouse he realised his car keys were in the bag, forcing him to trudge back down the hill, wade out into the water and drag the thing back onto land.

He retrieved his keys and then threw the lot back in again.

Bernard Tomic is still in the news. 

For somebody who isn't winning anything he is certainly getting a lot of press. These days it's focused on his spat with Lleyton Hewitt. 

It has prompted Tennis Australia to issue a statement that 'Bernard does not meet the standards of behaviour and commitment to himself, the team or the sport.'

Racquet smashing fits of pique have become standard fair and umpires are all too regularly being subjected to various verbal abuses.

I wonder how much blame can be laid at the door of the 'McEnroe Phenomenon.' 

I remember being absolutely appalled at McEnroe's explosions. But somehow, gradually, something changed and our distaste for McEnroe evolved into something more approaching amusement. We began to see the childish, ugly tantrums more as colourful explosions of passion.

It was certainly entertaining. And McEnroe was such a character who played such a wonderfully aggressive, exciting type of tennis that he sort of won us over - 'you cannot be serious' became a jokey catch-cry.

But maybe we lost something in the process, allowing such behaviour to become acceptable on the tennis court, when it shouldn't.

The extremely hard-to-like Tomic performed his latest airing of grievances on 60 Minutes accompanied by his father John, from whom it would appear young Bernard has inherited quite a bit of his charm deficiency.

Repeatedly sacked rugby league player Ben Barba's ratbaggery is in the news again, prompting all the same old questions about what is wrong with the culture of rugby league?

It’s a question that unfortunately we have had to ask too often this off-season and hopefully serious crackdowns by the clubs will start to address it.

But it does offer as a good an opportunity as ever to run this photograph, in the interests of providing a bit of contrast, with the sadly less common headline, perhaps, of “Woman Attacks Footballer”.

Maitland had just beaten South Newcastle in the 1965 grand final and the woman, the mother of one of the South Newcastle team, ran onto the field and began vigorously assaulting our Kel O'Shea as he left the park.

“Lady,” Kel said to her, “If your team had been as enthusiastic as you they might not have lost by so much.”

If you have any thoughts on these issues or suggestions for future columns email me at brian-burke7@outlook.com