In just a few hours, they’ll be out on the practice range at Torrey Pines tuning up for the start of the 2008 U.S. Open.
Part of the beauty of this year’s Open is that it will be eminently viewable for those of us on the East Coast who happen to consider golf a superb spectator sport. NBC and ESPN will be taking advantage of the Pacific Time lag to provide many hours of prime time coverage. And why not? Prime time, Thurs-Sunday, in mid-June, is generally no great shakes.
Thursday and Friday will present a fantastic subplot (or subplots), with the number 1 group of Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Adam Scott playing together at the end of each day, and Woods coming off a nearly two-month break since undergoing arthroscopic surgery. Will Woods be rusty – and will that matter at the San Diego course which he has dominated for most of this decade? Will this provide a psychological opening for Mickelson, whose pairings with Woods have usually provided enjoyable drama?
It will be interesting to watch, for everyone lucky enough to be home the next few evenings. As it turns out, that group will not include me because I am facing a number of uncharacteristically busy nights the entire weekend. The only way I would be able to see this great drama unfold would be to DVR the telecast and watch after I get home from my various commitments, staying up into the wee hours of the morning – and as regular NVTH readers know, I would never do such a thing.
If you don’t watch golf, I feel sorry for you. And if you actually play golf, I feel sorrier for you still. Because I consider golf the perfect spectator sport. Not only does a major golf tournament provide an unmatched battle of wits and sheer skill, tailor made for the sports enthusiast, but to play the game at any level approaching competence requires such a gargantuan investment of time and money that the pure spectator gets the added boost of remembering how much time and money he has saved by staying off the links entirely. I hoist a cold one to celebrate Tiger’s fabulous wins. I hoist a second to celebrate the fact I’ve never paid a greens fee, but instead have gone fishing and shooting, read books, done some writing and recording, rabble-roused, spent time with the wife and kids, that my entire recreational wardrobe has never been near an iron or dry cleaners, and that’s the way it’ll be until the day I die.
So it should be fun to watch this weekend.
Tags: golf
Joe,
You got it all wrong. I play golf with hand-me-down clubs. I now have a Ping 2 set that I got when my dad died 2 1/2 years ago. Can’t wait to try them out. All courses run specials and if you are a little pudgy like me, walking is a good thing. Wear tennis shoes (groundkeepers will love you) and a Keys or Hawaiian shirt with shorts. Heck, your socks don’t even have to match. If you are walking, carry a flask of your favorite as girls in golf carts will be swarming you with drinks at many holes. If you use a cart, bring a cooler. For a cheap course you will be paying about the same as 2 movie tickets. You will lose balls, have a great time, exercise and bond with your buds. Like NASCAR, it ain’t nothing like what you see on TV. They play for money and we play because we can’t! You need to at least try it one time. I get out maybe once a year if I need it or not. It’s much better than wrestling pigs!
I play and I love it
I play and I hate it
repeat
Golf is the perfect sport to watch while taking a nap on the couch.
Oh Cath, you must try it awake some time! It’s really cool.
The polite applause and hushed voices lull me right to sleep, wait, we are still talking about golf, right?
HA!
ACT, maybe I’ll join you sometime after I get caught up on my fishing …
Joe,
I are-not stupid you knows. A man NEVER catches up on his fishin, not evens when he’s awake! I’ll be listenen for the grass to grow waitens on you!!!
We need to put together a NTH smallie Potomac river float. The smallies are biting !!
Golf. defn: A vice I would like to acquire.
Don’t really have an interest in hitting a little ball and chasing it all over the place. I’d rather hit the ball and have someone else chase it. Anyway, the ball’s just sitting there. Where’s the challenge in that? Now, when you don’t know how fast it’s going to be going, where it’s going to be, or what sort of spin is on it, then you have a challenge.
I like it when the ball is going 1700 feet per second and explodes a watermelon at 100 yards.
It can do that? I really have to acquire this vice.
Great game, quite challenging though. The ultimate exercise in self control.
That would explain all the clubs in the water hazard.
Jack, yea, when I play golf, I’m reminded of the movie Apocalypse Now.
A flung golf club sounds a lot like a small helicopter..