Hobnobbing With Tiger And The Boys

You might think that those of us who work in the media room of golf tournaments year after year would get to know the players pretty well and perhaps some of the guys do, but most of the players, including Tiger Woods, couldn’t pick me out of a two-man line-up.

Now, I’ve talked to Tiger a dozen times at press briefings. I even made him smile once when I asked him a question about Stanford basketball. But you should know that straying off course with a question for Tiger is always chancy because most of the time he is all business. A couple of years ago a reporter in Dallas asked Tiger what he thought about the girls in Texas and he stood up and left the press conference. The guy who asked the question was pulled aside by an Official who threatened to pull his credentials.

At that same Tournament Miss Texas showed up at the media area just behind the 18 green to have her picture made with Tiger. As she stood there in her high heels wearing her Miss Texas sash waiting for Tiger to finish, I asked her if she had made arrangements to meet Tiger to which her agent answered that they we just going to grab him for 10 seconds.

“He’s not going to stop,” I told them, but they didn’t believe me until he sped by, surrounded by bodyguards, with nary a glance at the beautiful young lady wearing a crown. I saw the same thing happen to Ivan (Pudge) Rodriquez the former Texas Ranger and present day Detroit Tiger catcher. Standing there like Miss Texas he shouted, “Tiger… Tiger…” to no avail as the most famous athlete in the world walked by without even a glance.

In Tiger’s defense, not that he needs that from me, I’m sure he has ten-thousand people a day wanting everything from an autograph to a loan, so in a strange way the most polite thing to do is to keep on walking. It’s also a very Elvis thing to do.

Not everyone is as hard to get to know as Tiger. I once ran into Davis Love III at a restaurant. There was even this awkward moment when we looked at one another as if to acknowledge that we might have known each other. He smiled and said, “Hey,” without breaking stride or stopping to chitchat. Yes, we’re definitely tight.

Three or four years ago I helped Jasper Parnevik’s nanny corral his kids who were running around the pressroom barefoot. I never realized that I was speaking to the future Mrs. Tiger Woods, but I guess at that point she didn’t know either, otherwise I might have been invited to the wedding.

I helped Fred Couples find his car in the parking lot one day. I was taking a shortcut through the parking lot in a stolen golf cart and I stopped to ask if he need a ride. He was eating a banana and looking lost. He made a comment about how all of the Tournament cars looked alike and he was right. I saw no reason to remind him that his name was on his parking spot. When we arrived at his car he politely said, “Thank’s Tom,” even though my name badge said Sam.

I met Butch Harmon four or five years ago when I was helping to introduce Harmon Tour Design golf shafts. Unlike Tiger, Butch knows my name and whenever we see each other at Tournaments or at the PGA Show he always speaks. I had dinner with Butch and his brothers at the PGA Show and I never laughed so hard in my life. Billy Harmon, Butch’s youngest brother posed the following question to Butch, “You won exactly one PGA event in your entire life, and now you’re the greatest golf teacher in the world; how does that work?”

Butch’s answer is unprintable, funny but still unprintable.

One of my favorite golf celebrities is Lee Trevino, and I never realized how famous he was until I met him. It was really cool. I was in Fort Worth, Texas doing some work at United Sports Technologies, the high-performance shaft manufacturer, when I looked up and there he was; a bit older but the smile and the sound of his voice was the same guy I had seen on television a thousand times. I sat and listened to him tell stories about Jack and Arnie for almost two hours. It was magical.

Never one to pass up an opportunity to help my client, I asked Lee if I could re-shaft his backup putter with UST’s new putter shaft. “I don’t have a backup putter,” he answered. “If the one in my bag acts up I tie it to the bumper of my car and drag it home with the trunk open so the other clubs can hear what will happen to them if they screw up.”

Just so you know, I am not well known internationally, either. For example, a few years back I was in the pressroom at the Byron Nelson Championship when a teenager by the name of Sergio Garcia almost had his PGA career delayed because he didn’t have fifty-bucks with him required for the PGA’s insurance. His agent and two or three of us in the pressroom loaned him the money and the rest is history, which reminds me that he still owes me $10.

I’ve met a lot of great golfers over the years including Ernie Els, Phil Mickelson and Vijay Singh, however Phil Tataurangi, the lad from Auckland, New Zealand, is the only PGA Pro that I ever saw eat an earthworm. It was on the back nine in a rainy Pro-Am when he spotted the worm crawling near the fifteenth green. He picked it up and said something like, “In New Zealand these are a delicacy,” then dropped it into his mouth.

From that point on I never complained about the food in the pressroom.