Richard Lees posted on October 12, 2009 19:38
CARPAL TIVO SYNDROME
As another season of “the greatest gemme” comes to a close, with snow falling on baseball parks in the first round of their “big show,” I thank the golf gods for the warmth of this year’s Presidents Cup in Harding Park, San Francisco.
Good hard competition without the silly jingoism of Ryder Cup. (Hats off to the obviously immensely knowledgeable fans of the true game in the Bay Area, who turned out in force to do their cheering with their eyes.)
2009 brought golf highs and lows too many to name.
None exceeded, for me, Tom Watson’s gallant showing in The Open at Turnberry.
Unless it was the electricity that raced up my spine when Tiger twirled that 4-iron on 17 day before yesterday.
No question, Mr. Woods is still The Man as 2009 comes to its 19th hole.
There’s never been another like him, and there never will be -- just as there’s never been another Palmer, Player, Nicklaus, Snead, Nelson, Hogan, Jones, Vardon, Hagen, Braid, or the Morris’s, Young and Old…
TO watch these players is a gift to the eyes, if not the soul. It’s not just about witnessing a shot or “that twirl,” which many will smile about and see in dreams on long winter nights well into next year.
It’s also to feel the possibility of perfection visualized and delivered all the way to follow through -- even in this crazy world which can oscillate all the way from Stone Age terror to high tech twitter.
Golf in 2009 was unwatchable on television without Tivo.
And in the height of high tech irony, it was unwatchable on The Golf Channel even with Tivo…
In fact, I have “carpal Tivo syndrome” from all the golf I watched on my plasma this season...
But there’s still nothing like seeing the simple stillness of a golf ball waiting to be launched into a heart shaped arc before anyone’s real eyes -- even on tv -- but especially when the green grass of earth can be felt beneath the feet until that ball comes down.
Johnny Miller (deservedly, IMO) has the last word yet again -- this time during the heat of the Cup competition at Harding, where he grew from boy into man and great player himself -- when others, including the unblinking eye of the grid, were fawning over Michael Jordan also being “in the house” at Harding, or at minimum wondering, Johnny had but this to say:
“Everybody ends up a golfer.”
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Richard Lees is on The Board of Directors of The Shivas Irons Society, and President of Richard Lees Capital Management in Los Angeles ( www.RichardLees.com ). STREAMERS attempts to reveal bits and pieces of one golfer's ”fascination.” As Shivas Irons puts it, “Gowf is a place to practice fascination, and as fascination is practiced, a capacity develops to put forth streamers of heart power for the ball to fly on."