Monday, June 16, 2008

A U.S. Open for the Ages

Whew. What a day. A bonus four-and-a-half hours of golf today just ended, and shockingly it was anticlimatic at best. After having played eighteen playoff holes even, Tiger Woods and Rocco Mediate headed to the 91st hole, #7, for a sudden death playoff. Tiger went from tee to fairway to green and two-putted for par. Rocco went from tee to bunker to grandstand to green to missed long par putt, and as a result Tiger Woods is your winner. Considering the way these two traded jabs today I expected Tiger to nail his long birdie putt for the win or for Rocco to roll in his ridiculously long par putt, but neither happened, and all of the media folks who were complaining this morning about having to stay another day can finally go home.

I'm worn out. Luckily, I have two screens at work, so I was able to work on one and watch on the other. Of course, as the day wore on, IBM's servers started to slowly melt, and the video and audio quality went into the tank, but I was at least able to make out most of the final hole.

My hat's off to Rocco Mediate, for hanging in there despite his "158th ranked player in the world" status (he's up to something like 47th now), and to Tiger Woods as well. Not so much for him playing on the "balky" knee, because frankly, none of us know how much it hurt or how much it really affected him; only he knows. I'm more in awe at the fact that he was absent from competitive golf for the better part of two months and hadn't even walked eighteen holes during that span prior to last Thursday. That's impressive.

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