When I was a kid–wait, where are you going? Stop it. I promise this isn’t some sort of “I remember when” story, despite how the lead sentence sounds. Can we start over again?
When I was a kid, I knew on weekends I could always find my dad watching golf on television. He would eat his lunch, a bologna and cheese sandwich with potato chips mixed in, and sit for hours watching. I tried in earnest several times to watch it with my dad, but my interest always wained.
You see, golf on TV is really, really boring, and this is coming from someone who sits through entire baseball games.
Sure, you can follow along if you know where everyone is and who is leading in the tournament, but the coverage is forced to skip around from one hole to the next after a single shot. This is because nearly every hole has action going on (that’s what she said) and it takes so long for golfers to walk to their next shot. The result is something along the lines of picking up a book, reading page 1, then skipping to page 56, then going to 32, then to page 2 and so on. There’s not much of a story told unless you unscramble it yourself.
Last Friday, I went to the second round of the AT&T National PGA tournament in Bethesda, Maryland. Locally, it’s known as the Tiger Woods tournament, likely because it’s hosted by him and benefits the Tiger Woods Foundation.
Watching golf in person is much more interesting because it gives you a better appreciation for the kind of shots they make, and you can follow whomever you want the whole time. Plus, it adds the NASCAR-esque feel that if these guys mess up, somebody could end up getting killed. That doesn’t really happen in other sports. A flying baseball into the stands at worst cracks someone on the head, prompting a free ride to the hospital, and at best, a little kid gets a souvenir, and I’m tired of seeing that.
Perhaps the biggest difference is that while smoking abounds, most people are smoking cigars, not cigarettes. This is probably the only time in my life I have witnessed such an occurrence. As a cigar smoker, this made me crave one pretty bad. If I ever go again, I’ll have to remember to be prepared.
With golf, you’re actually part of the game, in that you are part of the problem. In any other sport, you can heckle players and they’ll just ignore you. In golf, you have to stop moving, shut up and behave yourself, or it could cost them the tournament (not to mention get you kicked out). You even have to surrender your cell phones and cameras at the gate.
It’s certainly a different crowd at a PGA tournament. No one wears their favorite player’s jersey, because they don’t have them. Instead, everyone wears collared shirts. There are no large foam fingers sold at concession stands, and putting on face paint is a big no-no, especially if you are a Tiger Woods or Vijay Singh fan.
Just like other sporting events, American beers are available for the low, low price of $7 a bottle. Luckily, you can still be over-served, this is still America after all.