I attended two separate golf tournaments this past Saturday, and, to be honest, neither one was really my cup of tea.
The first one was the BMW Championship, which was being played out at Bellerive Country Club. Being the intrepid sports reporter that I am, I attempted to cover the tournament like a proper reporter should. However, the PGA people are apparently really serious about cavity searches. Both of my cameras, my portable tape recorder, and my Blackberry were all discovered, sanitized, and confiscated, leaving me without any means of recording the event for posterity. Four hours of work, down the drain. You know, I'm really tired of every sporting event I attend ending with some random official questioning me about something that came out of my ass. It's ridiculous.
I have to admit, events like that are a little too stuffy for me. For one thing, I'm apparently the only person in the world who thinks it would be funny to boo a golfer. Why not? We boo sports teams we don't like; hell, we even boo the ones we do like occasionally when they do poorly. So why can't I boo a guy when he pulls his drive into the rough on the left side? Here come the security guards to curtail my personal freedom, as well as conduct more cavity searches. Also, my cries of, "Play Freebird!" went woefully unappreciated. Sad, really.
Look, I don't want you guys to get the wrong idea, okay? I am all man. That being said, that Camilo Villegas is a good looking dude. I'm just saying, is all. I'm not saying that, you know, I was standing there watching him tee off and undressing him with my eyes or anything, 'cause that's not my thing. But, um, I forgot what I was saying. Oh yeah. Villegas is a really good golfer, and that's all he is. That's it. Also, unicorns kick ass.
The highlight of the whole thing, for me at least, was Sergio Garcia's hole-in-one. My father and I were walking the course backward, for the most part, trying to see as much of the course and as many groups as possible, before we had to leave. We were walking down the path, headed toward the fourth hole, when we decided, just on a whim, to stop and watch the group with Garcia in it tee off. Sergio stepped up, did his customary little re-gripping ritual and swung. The ball took off toward the hole, looking like a pretty good shot. ''Maybe a little long,'' was my thought at the time. The ball landed on the green, took two small hops, and disappeared. The entire crowd surrounding the hole was too stunned at first to do anything, and there was perhaps a second and a half of silence. Then everyone erupted, and Garcia threw his club up in the air, grinning goofily. It was the first hole-in-one I've ever seen in person, and it was like a magic trick. It was so much quicker than you expected, just there one second, and then gone the next.
The other tournament was, if anything, even more prestigious. It was a golf tournament sponsored by a company that makes industrial paint spraying equipment, and it brought together some of the true elites of the area game. Paint representatives, contractors, guys who own power-washing businesses -- everyone who was anyone was there. And I, being a sterling example of an anyone myself, was no exception.
I was actually there playing with my father, who just happens to work for a railroad company. If you need a visual, just picture the guy from Monopoly riding on a cartoon train. It's not an accurate picture, mind you, but it's the way I always picture it in my head. One of his coworkers had dropped out of the tournament, so they needed a warm body to fill out a foursome. So they called in a ringer. (At being a warm body, not necessarily at golf.)
The thing about this particular tournament that really set it apart from the BMW was, to be completely honest, the ladies. See, the owner of the company that was sponsoring this little shindig, being a man of the people, has a much better read on the pulse of his audience. And so he hired several young women, from various establishments around the area, to come to the tournament and entertain the participants. I'm assuming you all probably know what I mean, so I won't add, "if you know what I mean."
See, the thing is, I don't have any problem with looking at women in various states of undress. If anything, I'm all in favor of it. But when it comes to strip clubs, or wet T-shirt competitions, or just young ladies on a golf course lifting their shirts to get bigger tips, I just can't really get into it.
Then, finally, you've made up your mind. You know which one you want. Cherries Jubilee is calling out your name, begging you to have a big old waffle cone absolutely stuffed with it. So you go over to the counter, get the attention of the girl who works there and tell her you want a double scoop of Cherries Jubilee in a waffle cone, please. She takes your money, looks at you, and says no. Fuck you, go home and eat out of your own freezer. You protest; this is an ice cream store, after all. Why won't they sell you any ice cream? Nope, they're just not interested in selling you any ice cream. You can look at the ice cream all you want, but you're just going to have to find something to eat elsewhere. So you end up just digging around in your freezer at home and eating out of the same carton that you've had all along. And it's not that it isn't good ice cream; it could be fantastic ice cream. But it certainly isn't the one you wanted at the store.
Now that's a metaphor.
Same thing with the golf tournament. I certainly wasn't going home with any of these young ladies. And guess what? It's hard to hit a nine iron over a pond with breasts possibly being bared somewhere near you. Doesn't matter how good your concentration is. These are breasts, man, real human ones! Golf just can't compete.
In the end, my father did manage to win a set of power drills in a closest-to-the-pin competition. I, sadly, did not win anything, not even a door prize. I did, however, manage to tweak my back on an especially ugly swing, lose four balls to the aforementioned pond/boob combination and drink enough bloody marys that I began sweating out tomato juice and vodka when the sun came out.
Still, given the choice between the two, I think I would probably take the amateur tournament, Baskin Robbins tease and all. At least there everyone responded to calls for "Freebird."
