Is this the worst lede ever?

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.

 

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

 

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.

 

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.

 

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

 

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

 

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.

 

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

 

It's hardly the best thing that guy has written, but the reality is that not many desks are going to rewrite the lead of somebody with his track record, same as you're not going to bench LeBron for an ineffective Game 1. The guy won two APSEs this year, including a first place, and you've got to let a guy like that take some chances. That's what this was. It worked OK for me. Not his best, but not worth starting a thread over.

 

I really hate when there are threads like this and everybody dances around the name. If you're going to take a shot, have the guts to post the name, too.

And yes, I'm too lazy too look it up.

And it is way too damn long.

 

The funny thing is, he started the same thread on the Writer's Workshop. I didn't think of it before, but it sounds like someone has a major ax to grind.

 

Maybe they fell asleep 57 words into the lede.