Organisers of the Australian Masters are optimistically aiming for a mobile-free event, banning cameras and phones.  With sell-out crowds attending Tiger Woods’ first appearance on the continent in over a decade, professionals are worried that those attending for the celebrity rather than the sport might make shockingly rude mistakes, like “making noise when a golfer is golfing.”  This has already happened in other events, where the constant clicking of camera-phones plagued the popular golfer even during the most delicate of putts.

The intention is sound, but there are concerns over the method and practicality.  The first worry is how it’s necessary to ban all electronics because a few idiots can’t be trusted to wait and see the professional photos instead, but that’s not the organiser’s fault: let phones in and some idiot will decide their very own crappy blurred 0.5 MP shot is more important than sportsmanship or basic human decency.  We know that.

The real problem is enforceability.  With twenty-five thousand attendees a day you simply can’t search them all for phones – and even if you could, any attempt to store confiscated equipment at an event of such size will be a nightmare.  And it doesn’t matter how clearly you print “no mobiles” on the ticket.  You might as well say “no left kidneys” where some cellphone-stricken souls are concerned, and they certainly won’t leave after having paid for a ticket.

We can only hope that a combination of intelligent staff and audience sportsmanship triumph.  But while we’re hoping for idiots to stop snapping shots of everything around them, we might as well wish for a unicorn.