2009: An Asian Odyssey

Tiger Woods April 2, 2009

Sorry for the delay since my last post but I’ve been sick for the past few days. The sore throat that I had when we first got here came back with a vengeance. Not sure if it was the yellow dust or an actual cold, but it wasn’t much fun.

Anyway, Katie is out with the other teachers at our usual Thursday night destination (more on that in an upcoming post that is sure to please) and I’ve decided to stay home, recuperate and share some of my thoughts with the world. And when I say world, I mean the 5-10 people who have sent emails asking why we haven’t updated the blog in almost a week.

I had my first bout of homesickness this past Monday morning. And it was because of this guy:

Holy shit balls. Could I have a bigger man-crush on Tiger? I don’t think so.  While we’re on the subject, why don’t we take a closer look at Jordan’s top 3 man-crushes.

1) Tiger Woods

2) Tom Brady

3) Roger Federer

It’s been these three guys for awhile, but figuring out the order was harder than I thought. Initially I had Federer ahead of Brady, but that’s not fair because Brady has been hurt since last September and his wife is hotter, so I’m still giving Tom the edge. For now.

So as you can imagine, the past few months have been fairly difficult without Tom and Tiger in my life while they both rehabilitated their respective knee/leg injuries. Federer was all I had left. It was so bad at one point that I actually stayed up until 3;30am to watch the Australian Open final in January, only to watch Federer lose a 5-set heartbreaker to Nadal (the match ended at just before 8am). Yes, I could have taped it and watched it the next morning but I needed to see one of my big 3.

There’s nothing quite like watching Tiger make a charge on Sunday. Even when he doesn’t win, the place is electric. When I was at the final round of the Masters in 2007, he finished in 2nd but was lurking the entire day. Golf is the perfect made for TV sport because you don’t miss any shots and you get to see all the relevant players in contention, but every true golf fan should experience Tiger in person on Sunday. When you’re at the event live, you have to pick a spot and and rely on scoreboards and cheers. As the day progresses, you start to figure out by sound, word of mouth and the course layout what may have happened by the crowd’s reaction. At one point, while we were sitting on 18 watching the leaders coming in, we knew Tiger was on the par 5-15th. We were sitting and staring at a scoreboard waiting for them to either post his score or hear the crowd cheer, but I remember thinking that we were close enough that we would definetly hear the crowd reaction if something good happened. Silence was not a good thing. Anyway, just as I’m explaining this to someone, we hear a roar coming from 15 that could mean only one thing. Tiger eagled 15. You could tell it wasn’t just a birdie, it was definetly an eagle roar on the back nine of Sunday at the Masters. Sure enough, a few moments later they posted Tiger’s score and the crowds surrounding every respective scoreboard throughout the course erupted. Tiger was just a stroke behind the leader and eventual winner, Zach Johnson. Nevermind, that he didn’t win, the point is the impact that his presence has on the gallery, the players, the TV viewing audience and the whole sport in general.

I can only imagine what the atmosphere must have been like at Bay Hill on Sunday. Despite starting 5 strokes behind the leader Sean O’Hair, Tiger once again birdied the 18th in near darkness to win his second consecutive Arnold Palmer Invitational and 6th overall. Which finally brings me to my initial point about being homesick. If I had been home in Canada, there’s nothing that would have kept me from being in front of the TV on Sunday evening to watch this unfold. But being 13-hours ahead with an illness on the horizon, I had to go to bed and watch the final round on Monday night after school. I would also have to avoid going on the internet and hope that no one at school asked me if I saw what Tiger did yesterday. I couldn’t do it.

Thanks to our Slingbox, which for those of you who haven’t heard of it, is a device that links the PVR (cable box) in my parents basement to our laptop via the internet. Therefore, we can record and watch live TV from Montreal anytime and stream it anywhere in the world that has an internet connection. Needless to say, this wonderful piece of technology has made it much easier to cope with being away as we haven’t missed a second of any of our shows. That being said, it still doesn’t compare to watching it live in HD on a 40-inch screen, and it doesn’t account for time differences when it comes to watching live sporting events.

So with this being one of the bigger tournaments since Tiger’s return and me having not watched a second of him play golf since his triumph at the US Open last June, I decided to record Saturday and Sunday’s round and watch them on Sunday and Monday respectively. I only watched part of Saturday as you may recall that we’re currently living abroad to experience a new culture, not sit inside and watch sports, so I checked the leaderboard and saw that Tiger was 5 back and playing in the final pairing with Sean O’Hair. I knew Sunday would be interesting to say the least.

Anyway, on Monday morning in Korea (Sunday night back home) I couldn’t resist the temptation and had to know what happened as I knew someone would ruin it for me anyway. I’ve made a point as asking most of my classes who are old enough if they know who Tiger Woods is, and every single one over the age of 4 has said “golf” or mimicked a golf swing. I also ask these same children is they know KJ Choi, and most of them don’t (KJ Choi is the most successful Korean golfer and ranked in top 10 in the world). So most of the kids know I’m a bit of golf fan and sure enough a couple of them mentioned it to me. Fortunately, I had already checked online and of course Tiger had won in dramatic fashion. It was bittersweet. I was happy that he had won but yearned for my big screen and the inevitable Sunday charge from the edge of my couch. For the time being, I’m going to have to get used to our 11-inch laptop screen in non-HD andwatching it after the fact. Getting through Masters weekend is going to be a nightmare.

Maybe we could just go to Shanghai in November and listen to the crowd roar…

http://sports.yahoo.com/golf/pga/news?slug=ap-bayhill-notebook&prov=ap&type=lgns