Happy Final day at the Open Championship to all you early rising Blog Readers! As you can see from the Title, Tiger let his tongue wag pretty hard after a bad shot and the R & A brought down a hammer ruling from on high but as your humble and fabricating journalist who has been known to take the occasional bit of poetic license is prone to, Tiger was not the one who took the hit from the R&A, Gotcha! Now to be fair, I’m a sneaky bastard and will use all prose based tools at hand to fool readers so don’t feel bad about getting BaZinga’d.Tiger was in and out of the lead numerous times yesterday as most of you know. The most interesting sighting (and hearing) of Tiger was on hole #7. It was a par 3 straight downwind w 20+ knots of afternoon wind directly at his back. El Tigre was debating a 9-iron vs a wedge, that’s right, 9 or wedge! I don’t only hit a wedge 180 yards if I’m playing in a Walmart parking lot and get a great roll! He opted for a 9 iron and proceeded to 1 hop it on the back of the green and roll well over the back which around here its equivalent to full airmail if you don’t land the ball short of the pin and let it links-ily roll on up to the hole. As Tiger walked off the tee he was Pissed Off and pulled a real boner of a move, you could tell by his diatribe that it was aimed at no one in particular, other than himself. The whole crowd anywhere near the teebox heard this, kids, grandma’s, codgers w hearing aids, dogs (2 miles away), fetuses in expectant mothers, etc. Four of us immediately compared notes to ensure that we got the quote EXACTLY right and pardon me for being crass in this instance and spelling all these deep vocabulary words out in their full dramatic flowery verbiage, but don’t shoot me, I’m just the messenger. Hang in there, feel free to reread as many times as necessary to get the full meaning, this is pretty deep:
“Fuck, Fuck, Fucking Hell, FUCK!”
Tiger proceeded to hit a pretty crappy chip shot from the medium rough behind the green (he just missed getting into the deep stuff) to about 25 feet and missed the putt for a bogey. I’m sure a similarly vehement personal condemnation was playing pachinko in his head on the way over to the 8th tee but this time he kept it to himself. In the pic below Tiger is on the far right coming off the 7th tee immediately post vituperation. If Earl Woods had been present he would have bent Tiger over his knee for a solid spanking, which undoubtedly would have given Tiger some new ideas for his next trip to Vegas …
And let us not forget the TV Dream Pairing today – Tiger and Adam Scott w one of Tigers 200 X’s on the bag, Stevie Williams! Watch for potential fisticuffs and pugilism if things get Hot.Shall we move on to the LJ head fake and find out upon whose head the R&A brought their proverbial hammer? Sure we want to do that, and it was none other than our beloved @TheOpen radio personality Ross McFarlane! The R&A quietly sidled up to him on Sat and the conversation went something like this:
R&A Representative: “Umm, Ross ol’ chap, you will be walking with the final group tomorrow and even though your trousers are Fabulous, would you be a dear and wear solid trousers tomorrow so as not to draw quite so much attention to yourself on Open Sunday.”
Ross Spluttering: “WTF!?! These trousers are not only a fan favorite, but they give us more to talk about on the radio where 4 guys have to fill TWELVE HOURS! And the players enjoy ribbing me about them and it makes getting interviews smoother and puts players even more at ease. Why would you take a tool like this away from me!?! I’m on YOUR TEAM!!”
R&A Representative: “Umm, Ross ol’ chap, you will be walking with the final group tomorrow and even though your trousers are Fabulous, would you be a dear and wear solid trousers tomorrow so as not to draw quite so much attention to yourself on Open Sunday.”
CASE CLOSED
I highly recommend trying The Open Radio online or @TheOpen app for iPad or iPhone, down load it, poke the “Radio” button top left center, and listen to the radio guys for awhile today while you watch The Open. Or online at:
They are funny in their uniquely British way and incredibly informative. For you die hard golf fans (you know who you are – Sterner, Halldo, etc) who can listen to Peter Aliss on TV in 1 ear and The Open Radio in the other, you’ll hear real time updates from different holes simultaneously, not just what your are seeing on TV. Here is Exactly how fabulous Ross looked yesterday resplendent in Loudmouth Key West trousers adorned in his full radio hardware.
QUOTE OF THE DAY Since we have been talking about Tiger today you may have been seeing the guys below on The Open telecast and pictured on various websites the last few days. Its a wild crowd of dudes dressed in Tiger outfits. Late in the afternoon one Tiger suit was animatedly speaking and gesturing to another Tiger suit in a very inebriated and melodramatically fashion explaining: “Mate, you must ROAR!!! Not Growl…” He followed up with brilliant renditions of both a Tiger Roar and a kitty cat growl, almost a purr. They had a crowd gathered around them like jugglers at Fisherman’s Wharf during this entertaining “Only at The Open” episode.
As the CEO of a golf apparel company Loudmouth has given me entre into a variety of fun and interesting situations. Sure, its not like my uber-exciting high tech days where I got to take tours of telephone company central offices and data centers (snooze), but on Sat at The Open I ended up somewhere that I just didnt see coming. Whenever the Loudmouth Krewe has a chance to visit The Open we like to spend some time at the top of the grand stands on 18 near the Leaderboard itself.
We made a beeline to our GoTo position Sat afternoon, got some fun TV shots including Tracy and her Union Jack sportcoat both in the US and the UK as Westwood was putting out on 18. We call this shot “Tracy and her Union Back”.
The scoreboard is completely manual and there is an army of teenagers in there scrambling around at regular intervals whenever they get the call on the walky-talky to make a specific leaderboard change. It goes something like this – Silence, silence, silence … Torrid activity w feet pounding, slots opening, names and numbers noisily sliding then … Silence. How do I know this? Well, I was invited into the Upper Room ..
I had the opportunity to spend about 15 mins in the Upper Room and no, there was no feet washing or salt spilling, but a bunch of seemingly bumble brained teenagers worked like a well oiled machine up there. These were clearly the cream of the crop promoted up through the ranks over the course of the week. No bong hitting scoreboard keeping dorks from the 12th green, these kids had it together!
I rolled up the stairs right after Angel Cabrera dropped his approach shot to 18 into the right hand greenside bunker shaped like a piece a calamari (Ross McFarlane’s bunker description, not mine, but I’m not above plagiarizing a good portraiture). Angel was Even at the time but launched a rather easy bunker shot about 8 feet past the hole and missed the come baker to make aa disappointing bogey on 18. So Boom! You’re off the board Angel!!! And I was right there to take him down w the doodle headed, albeit extremely efficient, teenagers who all sounded like they were on break from Hogwarts. As you can see from the photo below, not only was I in the Upper Room, but I’m holding the sign for a guy named Angel, can’t imagine anything but sunbeams taking center stage in this instance.
And in closing today, my press conference at the end of the round yesterday was pretty Ho-Hum as usual, not much ingenuity in those tired old formulaic press questions, “How did the course play”, “Are the fairways too hard?”, “Are the greens fair?”, “Is the beer cold enough in Marquee Club?”, blah, blah, blah. But I was able to pull a little diamond out of the boring journalistic coal that was being heaped in my lap:”After your great round today, what will you wear if you get paired with Tiger or Westwood tomorrow?”
“If I get paired w Tiger or Westy I feel that although a full suit is slightly constricting in the back swing, fashion must remain my highest priority here at The Open.”
Wrapping up tomorrow with “Drinking and the Open Chaplain”, now I’m off to The Open!
[box]Larry Jackson “LJ”
Contributor
CEO of Loudmouth Golf. Bi-coastal resident. SF Giants fan. Private pilot for Loudmouth Air.
His dream foursome would be to play with Jon Gruden, Bruce Boche, Phil Jackson. Larry claims he is the best golfer on the Loudmouth team.[/box]
