Most American sports fans feast on the seasonal meals of football, basketball, and baseball. With the calendar just flipping over to August, we are just about to enter the all-you-can-watch buffet of pro and college football. Hoops tends to pique our interest after Christmas, with big cravings in March and June. Baseball welcomes spring and sunshine for all of us, continues to be a summer staple like peanuts and Cracker Jacks.
The question I have for you sports fans is this: what is the next sport that you you would order for your sports plate? The answer to that may depend on the house that you were raised in.
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For some of you, if I mention the number 43, you instantly think of the King, No, Not Lebron. He’s #23. I am talking about Richard Petty. In fact, a certain former Cavs all-star picked his jersey number to honor that King…
NASCAR fandom is usually inherited along with the ability to change a carborator and a 2002 Ford F-150. The most I can do under a hood is jump a battery and add some oil. Hold on a second. I have added power steering fluid a few times. Call me Mr. Goodwrench. Needless to say, I was not born into a racing family. I do read about it in the paper—Junior won yesterday, and Jeff Gordon is leading in points—but watching NASCAR is like eating spicy food for me: I can only handle very small sample sizes.
Others of you may be hockey junkies, and can not only explain what offsides and icing are, but also recite the Canadian national anthem word for word. I think I can pass the first two legs of that test, but I am no Puckhead. Now if I grew up with an NHL team in Cleveland, I think it might be a different story.
There are other sports that might be your favorite flavor: tennis, MMA, and the current flavor of the month, soccer, come to mind. But for me, the next go-to sport would be golf. I covered some of my upbringing of chasing the little white ball in this previous blog of my one great golf moment, as well as this one about 7th grade summers. My dad put this in our side yard when I was sixth grade…
But I never really golfed at all on a real course before that. But my dad was a golfer—he even became the golf coach at Aquinas after doing the football thing for a while—and my mom’s family were golfers as well. I grew up with golf on the TV on some Sunday afternoons. My dad especially loved watching the Masters with the greenery and Georgia Azaleas in perfect bloom. My earliest TV memories were watching my hero, Jack Nicklaus, win the 1980 U.S. Open as a 9 year old, and then seeing Tom Watson’s miraculous chip-in defeat The Golden Bear the next year. As I got into my teens, I would usually tuned into each of the four majors to see who would achieve golf immortality, and still do to this day. I saw many of Greg Norman’s crushing losses, Tiger Wood’s powerful wins, Phil Mickelson’s ups and downs, and even Jean Van De Velde’s epic collapse. I unfortunately missed Nicklaus’s famous 1986 Masters win due to a spring afternoon full of driveway basketball.
For all this fandom, I had never been to a pro event. So this past week, I got the itch to take my two sons up to Akron to watch the pros play in the Bridgestone Invitational. Kids get in free, so it was already a win in my book. When I told Drew and Ethan of my game plan, they didn’t quite break into cartwheels. I grew up in an age of 4 TV channels, which meant very limited entertainment choices. The channel list has grown a little since then, while also including X-Boxes, I-pods, and various other hyphenated technological breakthroughs.
Thankfully, I got them into the car without too much of a battle—I think I may have promised some eats to sweeten the deal. We got there and paid $5 to park in someone’s front yard. A change of pace from a Browns’ parking lot! BTW, do NOT park on the street for a Browns’ game. (Just wanted to preview an upcoming November blog)
Upon entering Firestone Country Club, I wasn’t quite sure of our game plan. Then I saw Phil Mickelson & Sergio Garcia walking to the 1st tee. Might as well follow some big names! That is one huge perk of having one of the World Golf Championships in Akron. The field is limited to about 40 of the world’s top golfers. There’s no Willis McGahees or Jack Hannahans or Damon Jones to watch hack around the course.
We watched Phil and Sergio as well as the group right behind them. Matt Kuchar & some Irish guy. I think his name was Rory. Needless to say, I was in golf heaven watching those guys. Strike that ‘needless to say’—if you aren’t a golf fan, I actually need to say that Rory McIlroy is currently the world’s best player and the other three are huge golf names. My boys weren’t quite as exhilarated as I was. Drew knew of Phil and Rory. Ethan kept asking, ‘Who’s Phil?’ I was impressed with the steady and strong golf play. The boys’s main highlight was watching Kuchar hit two straight chips that landed short and rolled right back to his feet. Ethan’s main entertainment was using his foil hot dog wrapper to make action figures. Gotta give him an A for creativity!
As those four were finishing their round (they played the front 9 after the back 9), we decided to follow some new groups starting the front 9. First came Jim Furyk and Jason Day. Pretty big names. Phillip Rivers level. Next up were Justin Rose and Ricky Fowler. I rate that pair as an Eli Manning. Batting 3rd: Bubba Watson and Adam Scott. Let’s give them a Drew Brees rating. Batting clean-up: Martin Kaymer and….
TIGER WOODS!!!!!
Our first Tiger spotting was after he hooked his drive a complete fairway to the left of where he was going. After seeing that, I mentally bestowed upon him the honorary title of ‘Aljancic brother’ for the clueless driver play that my two younger brothers and I like to incorporate into our own game. We were standing in between Tiger and the fairway he should have been in. After hitting a brilliant second shot to the green, he walked directly at us to the main fairway. He came within a few feet of us, and he had his game face on. Drew was impressed with his intensity.
We followed the those groups for an hour or so, and then decided to call it a day. On our way home, I decided to keep with the day’s theme of trying new things when we stopped to get something to eat. We pulled up to the drive-thru of…
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Upon sampling the merchandise, the boys reached the consensus that the 67 cent sliders were vastly overpriced. Well, at least they made the golf taste a little better!
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You can also e-mail him: macaljancic@yahoo.com