Is this the worst lede ever?

[senior_editor]

From the U.S. Open

OAKMONT, Pa. -- The nastiest golf course ever designed by man, sitting on a tree-stripped, ill-tempered piece of real estate in the broiling heat of the Pittsburgh suburbs has decided the best golfer in the world is a fat guy who smokes between shots, looks like Rocky Graziano, has a nickname of "The Duck," dropped out of school at 11, doesn't speak English and taught himself how to play the game as a kid by mending broken clubs and fetching balls out of the woods in the foothills of Cordoba, Argentina.

 

[Chi City 81]

From the U.S. Open

OAKMONT, Pa. -- The nastiest golf course ever designed by man, sitting on a tree-stripped, ill-tempered piece of real estate in the broiling heat of the Pittsburgh suburbs has decided the best golfer in the world is a fat guy who smokes between shots, looks like Rocky Graziano, has a nickname of "The Duck," dropped out of school at 11, doesn't speak English and taught himself how to play the game as a kid by mending broken clubs and fetching balls out of the woods in the foothills of Cordoba, Argentina.

It's one hell of a run-on sentence, but it doesn't even come close to approaching the worst lede I've ever seen.

That would go to a stringer for the Waukegan News Sun who, in September 2005, said that a team played New Orleans to the victorious team's Hurricane Katrina.

 

[senior_editor]

Hope that stringer didn't get another gig. That's pretty bad.

 

[shockey]

um, isn't this, like, three days old? ??? ??? ???

 

[joe]

The punctuation is a nice touch.

 

[SCEditor]

A simple google search shows the story doesn't get much better.

Worst lead? No. Pretty bad? Yeah.

 

[Shaggy]

Take this one to the bank, kids: An 89-word sentence is a freaking no-no.

 

[Satchel Pooch]

Kinda liked it for a change of pace.

 

[senior_editor]

Believe it or not, this was in a major metro. It belongs in Overwriting 101. It's also grammatically incorrect. A terrible job by the writer. I'm surprised the desk let it go through.

 

[chazp]

That is the longest opening sentence I've ever seen in a sports or news story. TERRIBLE!

 

[Speedys Sweater]

A simple google search shows the story doesn't get much better.

Worst lead? No. Pretty bad? Yeah.

Maybe the lede sucks, but he had the guts to call out Tiger throughout the rest of the story.

 

[Walter Burns]

Kinda makes this one (being discussed on another message board) seem like Jim Murray:

Even with a Tiger stalking him right down to the bitter end and a Pennsylvanian gathering himself for one, last-ditch flurry, a barrel-chested Argentine with a penchant for striking the ball pure -- and also for lighting up a cigarette on the course to calm his nerves -- was able to earn the title at the 107th United States Open golf championship that concluded yesterday at Oakmont Country Club.

 

[Songbird]

Kinda liked it for a change of pace.

The absence of a comma or two aside, I thought it was fantastic. And that's the beauty of writing: It's open to interpretation.

After that lede, I would want to continue reading.

 

[Jim_Mora]

I'm always glad when I open one of these threads and discover it's not something I wrote.

 

[Sam Mills 51]

It's badly overwritten by someone trying too hard to show how descriptive he can be, trying to paint a picture that many of us can see without further help, trying to tell us he's a smoker - which anyone who saw enough of the telecasts the last two days could see - and that he's not a workout warrior like Tiger Woods and that his nickname is "The Duck" and that his ability to speak the native tongue isn't nearly as good as the Americans wish it were in addition to his trying to find another spellbinding, captive and timeless description of Oakmont.

 

[Songbird]

My only response to yours, SM51, is that I didn't watch the Open or any highlights, so the writer throwing in the smoking reference is illuminating.

What I'd like to see this thread produce is 10 ledes by the 10 biggest papers in the country and let us decide which lede is captivating, compared with the first post in this thread. That would be kind of cool.

 

[blueview]

Getting ready to take two Advil after reading both of those leads. Too much work for the reader to attempt to understand.

 

[Songbird]

Again, the missed comma or two aside, the first example blows Murray's away. Murray overwrote his lede.

 

[senior_editor]

I stopped teaching sports journalism classes a few years ago. Otherwise, I'd use this as the perfect example of how NOT to begin a gamer.

Badly overwritten? An understatement.

 

[Songbird]

senior_editor, if you would indulge me, and i ask this out of respect, how and why does this lede roil you?