Golf
My parents' friends invited us to eat at their country club tonight. It's on a golf course where they hold a PGA event (formerly the Kemper Open, now I think the Booz-Allen something or other). It got me thinking about how I used to really like watching golf. I watched the 1995 Kemper Open there and got to see people like Greg Norman and Billy Andrade play.
In 1997, a friend and I went to the PGA Championship at Winged Foot because I was interning at IBM in Westchester, NY, that summer. Only Thursday tickets were left by the time we decided to go, so on Thursday we went. We followed Tiger Woods, Justin Leonard, and Ernie Els the first half of the day. The gallery was pretty crowded because they were the winners of the three earlier majors that year (including Tiger's rather historic Masters win). It wasn't all that much fun because of the elevated greens--unless you were near the front, you couldn't see anything but the golfer's head. On the par-5 12th, Tiger Woods tried to reach the green in two shots, when most of the others were using three. His second shot badly missed and landed behind a big pine tree. He ended up with a double-bogey for the hole. On one of the holes, all three golfers missed the fairway on our side. There are ushers on the course to signal the direction of the ball, so the usher near us would yell to us everytime it happened. Each time, all of us put our hands over our heads and ducked. Of course this really does very little to protect you, but what else can you do when you have no idea where the ball is? Later in the day while we were following Greg Norman, we were running to the green when he was teeing off. Suddenly, above us we heard all these branches breaking, which we immediately realized meant he had missed his shot and we were in danger of being hit by a golf ball. So naturally we stopped and assumed the ducking position. The ball fell about 20 feet in front of us so we got a great view of Norman's next shot, which was terrific, landing him on the green and highlight reels.
One of the employees at the hotel where IBM had put us up, told me that Phil Blackmar and other golfers were staying at the hotel. On Friday, when we interns were hanging around the lobby for the nightly chocolate chip cookies, I saw a woman wearing a Winged Foot polo and told her I had also gone to the tournament. She asked if I wanted to go again. I didn't understand but she then told me her husband was a golfer and had missed the cut so they were going home and wouldn't need their tickets for the weekend. I convinced this other intern to go. She asked her husband for the tickets and he said $20, to which she said "Frank! They're college students!" He wouldn't budge on the price since they were originally $70. Ten minutes later she comes by and presses two more tickets into our hands, and tells us to have fun. We got a few other interns to go and then more people heard and wanted to go. They bought the rest of the golfer's tickets, but some interns were left without tickets. Luckily, there was another golfer at the hotel who had missed cut and told us he had spare tickets as well. We went on Saturday and instead of following a golfer, we would go get front line spots every 3rd or 4th hole. This strategy worked out pretty well. I was curious about how Tiger Woods would approach the 12th. This time he hit the green in two and made eagle on the hole!
I haven't been to another tournament since. Watching golf on TV might be more fun. Some of the best times we had there were when we were following three fairly unknown golfers who looked like only had their families and us watching them. Since they were all white, I wonder if they were trying to figure out who these random Asian people were. In any case, it was nice being able to see the action without jockeying for position. It was also kind of funny to see one of them accidentally hit their ball into the unused adjacent fairway and then maybe have it kicked by some unsuspecting people walking by.
In 1997, a friend and I went to the PGA Championship at Winged Foot because I was interning at IBM in Westchester, NY, that summer. Only Thursday tickets were left by the time we decided to go, so on Thursday we went. We followed Tiger Woods, Justin Leonard, and Ernie Els the first half of the day. The gallery was pretty crowded because they were the winners of the three earlier majors that year (including Tiger's rather historic Masters win). It wasn't all that much fun because of the elevated greens--unless you were near the front, you couldn't see anything but the golfer's head. On the par-5 12th, Tiger Woods tried to reach the green in two shots, when most of the others were using three. His second shot badly missed and landed behind a big pine tree. He ended up with a double-bogey for the hole. On one of the holes, all three golfers missed the fairway on our side. There are ushers on the course to signal the direction of the ball, so the usher near us would yell to us everytime it happened. Each time, all of us put our hands over our heads and ducked. Of course this really does very little to protect you, but what else can you do when you have no idea where the ball is? Later in the day while we were following Greg Norman, we were running to the green when he was teeing off. Suddenly, above us we heard all these branches breaking, which we immediately realized meant he had missed his shot and we were in danger of being hit by a golf ball. So naturally we stopped and assumed the ducking position. The ball fell about 20 feet in front of us so we got a great view of Norman's next shot, which was terrific, landing him on the green and highlight reels.
One of the employees at the hotel where IBM had put us up, told me that Phil Blackmar and other golfers were staying at the hotel. On Friday, when we interns were hanging around the lobby for the nightly chocolate chip cookies, I saw a woman wearing a Winged Foot polo and told her I had also gone to the tournament. She asked if I wanted to go again. I didn't understand but she then told me her husband was a golfer and had missed the cut so they were going home and wouldn't need their tickets for the weekend. I convinced this other intern to go. She asked her husband for the tickets and he said $20, to which she said "Frank! They're college students!" He wouldn't budge on the price since they were originally $70. Ten minutes later she comes by and presses two more tickets into our hands, and tells us to have fun. We got a few other interns to go and then more people heard and wanted to go. They bought the rest of the golfer's tickets, but some interns were left without tickets. Luckily, there was another golfer at the hotel who had missed cut and told us he had spare tickets as well. We went on Saturday and instead of following a golfer, we would go get front line spots every 3rd or 4th hole. This strategy worked out pretty well. I was curious about how Tiger Woods would approach the 12th. This time he hit the green in two and made eagle on the hole!
I haven't been to another tournament since. Watching golf on TV might be more fun. Some of the best times we had there were when we were following three fairly unknown golfers who looked like only had their families and us watching them. Since they were all white, I wonder if they were trying to figure out who these random Asian people were. In any case, it was nice being able to see the action without jockeying for position. It was also kind of funny to see one of them accidentally hit their ball into the unused adjacent fairway and then maybe have it kicked by some unsuspecting people walking by.
posted by wchien at 1:05 AM
9 Comments:
Why did the first golfer (who missed the cut and from whom you got your ticket) buy so many tickets? You would think that participants in the tournament would've gotten at least a few free passes.
clearly he had seven kids, which is also why he wanted his $20. sending all those brats to college adds up.
what i want to know: do you type these things up beforehand and paste them into blogger? the time stamps between this post and the last one are only two minutes off. you don't type THAT fast, do you? it's not like you're ramesh.
i guess the first golfer had a lot of family there. i sort of remember a lot of kids, possibly seven. i don't know if they get any free passes.
blogger defaults to the time you begin your post (though you can change the time--something i am very much against doing, that's why all my china timestamps reflect exactly when i wrote them). so the time difference indicates more how short the previous post was.
i always thought that watching golf live would be more fun than on tv, since watching golf on tv bores me so much. i didn't think about the crowds though.
i didn't like watching golf on tv until i started playing golf. i hear at the big tournaments, there are always young, scantily clad women wearing high heels with or looking for sugar daddies.
on tv there is less down time and better views. of course seeing it in person is also interesting in the usual live sporting event way.
i didn't notice any scantily clad women, though maybe i should ask my guy friend who went with me. i do wonder why golfers always seem to have attractive wives.
I would think that professional athletes in general tend to have attractive wives.
because attractive women are stupid and attracted to brainless fools?
ladida.
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