Lost in translation

ILE BIZARD, Que. - K.J. Choi is a powderkeg on the golf course, mostly fearless, and one day no one in the sport will be surprised if he wins a major championship. His match-play record isn’t the greatest (2-3 in one previous Presidents Cup and 2-5 at the Accenture), but his form has been so good this season that he might be the guy no one wants to play in the Presidents Cup, which begins here today at Royal Montreal.

That said, Choi also inadvertently provided a personal PC highlight back in 2003 at South Africa, in his pre-game press conference. Choi speaks a little English, but prefers to use a translator when facing large groups.

So Choi brought in his translator in ’03. They split the team in half at these things, so Choi shared his press session with, as it turns out, five Australians, namely Stuart Appleby, Robert Allenby, Adam Scott, Stephen Leaney and Peter Lonard.

Now, is it correct to say that Australians don't always take things entirely seriously? They were a pretty relaxed group that day at Fancourt, needling each other and rather graphically. Choi’s translator whispered the conversations into his ear, the golfer listening intently, but as the scatological references began to grow, he began looking more and more quizzically at the five men he shared the podium with.

When Appleby and Allenby got to trading friendly insults about carnal relations with farm animals, the whole game was simply watching Choi’s face as things were translated, however loosely, to him.

He was equal parts incredulous and incomprehending - obviously, a lot of things in English don’t translate seamlessly - but he and his guy were striving to keep up, tentatively laughing several seconds after everybody else.

Clearly, he had no real grasp on the particulars of the conversation. All he knew was that his teammates were having a fine old time, saying some very strange things. He went along like a good sport, but the guess here is that when it comes to Presidents Cups, the pre-event press conference will be his least favourite part.

From Dave Perkins

 

President's residence

Dave Perkins is at Royal Montreal following the PGA's Presidents Cup.

ILE BIZARD, Que.-It’s Presidents Cup week again, so keep a sharp eye peeled for Stephen Harper. That’s not the same as looking out for Nelson Mandela or even George Bush, who were the reigning politicians of note at past PCs.

This traveller has been to a few of these rodeos and clearly, if not fondly, remembers the one back in 2000, when Bill Clinton was U.S. President. It was held at the Robert Trent Jones Golf Club in Virginia, not far outside Washington, D.C., and Clinton, who liked to play golf, headed out for a couple of days to spectate. He and I even got to smoke cigars together, more or less.

It happened like this. The Presidential suite was a nicely appointed tent above the 15th (I think) green, on something of a isolated hillside maybe 100 feet above a large bunker. I had been out walking the first 10 or so holes with the matches, then cut over to 15 to see them come through again. Walking press gets inside-the-ropes access, by the way, so I slid in behind this bunker, directly in front of the prez’s tent, without knowing who’se place it was. A minute later, here comes a beefy guy with a curly wire in his ear, asking to see my credentials. He reads the information into his wrist radio and clearly, within five minutes they knew who in hell I was, how much I had on my mortgage and how many tomatoes I’d thrown at the U.S. consulate in my crazy college days.

“What’s the problem?”

“No problem, but in five minutes the President is going to arrive. If you want to stay here, fine, but you can’t leave this area or enter any other.” Well, here was coming the first match and, if I’m remembering it right, Retief Goosen and somebody else closed out Hall Sutton and somebody else right there. So I sit down, knowing I’m going to be there a while, fire up a fine Hoyo de Monterey and watch the next match come through. This one happened to be Mike Weir and Steve Elkington going dormie on Loren Roberts and Tom Lehman and those were the days, huh?

Anyway, the matches come through one by one and I’m watching and taking notes and puffing away and turn my head and there, 100 feet away, is Bill Clinton, who has appeared and is sitting in front of his tent, puffing on his own cigar and watching golf.

Clinton turns and looks at me and smiles and waves his cigar, like we’re Stogie Brothers or something. I’m thinking of yelling something smart, like, ‘But mine’s a real Cuban and I bet yours isn’t’ but settle for a simple wave and we go back to watching golf.

I’m guessing Clinton doesn’t remember any of it.

Dave Perkins

Bermuda beckons

TULSA - With Tiger Woods seemingly all but crowned PGA Champion - even with 36 holes to go - a win presumably would add one more stop to his schedule for 2007. Some of us like to see 72 holes played before handing out the trophies, but you know how often he blows major championship leads: The next time will be his first time.
    Anyway, if Woods indeed wins, that extra stop, if he chooses to participate, would be the Grand Slam, the 25th edition of which takes place at Bermuda’s Mid Ocean Club Oct. 16-17. It’s largely a made-for-TV event, but the four major champions, playing in one paradise or another (past editions were held in Hawaii), for two days is an idea with some merit.
    The PGA of America promotes the Grand Slam and because of its move to Bermuda this fall, Dr. the Honourable Ewart F. Brown, premier of Bermuda, showed up with some of the island’s movers and shakers to greet the golfing press here Friday evening.
    Dr. Brown, an acclaimed physician who now doubles as minister of tourism and transport, looked absolutely cool and untouched by the heat that had reduced most of the press to something approaching a grease spot. He’s a warm and friendly guy and between running the ministry, if not the whole country, he’s also medical director of Bermuda HealthCare Services Ltd. Someone said he likes to play golf, although where he would get the time, who could know? Sure enough, he’s also the same Ewart Brown who ran track in the Commonwealth Games in 1966 representing Bermuda. He ran 400 and 1600 metres back then and when yours truly started a little Commonwealth Games talk, he turned on his memory machine.
    Next thing you know he was asking about Bill Crothers and Bruce Kidd, Canada’s great track stars back in the day, and how they were and they’re up to these days, etc.
    Needless to say, as the Bermuda rum cocktails found their mark and the rather spectacular shrimp and empanadas kept arriving, a grand time was had by all. Dr. Brown personally invited any and all Toronto golf fans down to the Grand Slam and noted that his ministry had enticed low-cost air carriers to fly to his island.
    Not many sporting events would have the premier of the country behind them this enthusiastically. The Grand Slam appears to be in good hands.

Weir not out yet

TULSA - Mike Weir’s last-gasp chance to go in the front door to the Presidents Cup is already just about over, but Stephen Ames has brought his chances back to life.
    The Calgary golfer played one of the best rounds of the afternoon in the stifling 38-degree heat at Southern Hills Country Club, making birdie at the final three holes to shoot a round of two-under-par 68. That put him in a tie for third place, three shots behind surprise leader Graeme Storm of England and one behind John Daly. Weir shot a disappointing 77, playing in the kinder morning.
    “The greens obviously were very bumpy, and slow, but they bumped in the hole nicely,’’ Ames said after draining birdie putts of 35, eight and seven feet, respectively, on the final three holes. “They’re exceptionally slow, but they have to be. It’s too hot and they can’t get them fast enough. Plus it’s the wrong grass for this area and this event, unfortunately.’’
    Ames and Weir are 19th and 20th, respectively, in the standing for the Presidents Cup, to be played at Royal Montreal in late September. But a good showing here might entice Gary Player, the International captain, to use one of his captain's picks to add a little Canadian content
    “I’m just hitting it and hoping it goes in, but over-all I am hitting it good,’’ Ames said. “It’s nice to be rewarded for the way I played today. Other weeks I’ve played like this and not been rewarded.’’
    He made four birdies and two bogeys and was unlucky when a wedge to the 12th hole bounced off the flagstick and 20 feet away. He then lipped-out that putt. Next hole, he made a tidy up-and-down from a bunker to keep his round going.
    Without a sensational turnaround and finish here, Weir is in trouble for the Presidents Cup team. He reiterated yesterday how much he wants to be on the team, but understands Player has a difficult choice, etc. And that was five hours before Ames swung things his way.
    Weir made four bogeys, two double-bogeys and a lone birdie.
    “I don’t feel I played that bad. I hot two bad shots, at 12 and 13, but I couldn’t get anything in the hole. That was our whole group. I think the longest putt any of us made was about six feet. Nobody could make a thing, me included.,’’ said Weir, who partnered Steve Stricker (77) and Brett Wetterich (74).
    Weir, who said his recent neck problem was little or no factor, missed the second fair way by a foot, but paid. He gouged it out to the front of the green, but three-putted when his long lag trundled six feet past. He knocked a wedge in to two feet to birdie the fourth, but overshot the green at the 199-yard par-three sixth and pushed his comeback pitch six feet past the hole, then missed that to make bogey.
    He stitched together a few pars before double-bogeying the par-four 12th hole to slip to three-over. He hit a tee shot into the rough, hit a tree branch on his escape attempt, then dumped the next try into a greenside bunker, then couldn’t get up and down. An errant tee shot cost bogey at the next hole and he made double at the last when he drove into the rough, advanced the next one only about 30 yards, then had his third try spin back off the front of the green.

Old haunts and new T-shirts

Dave Perkins is covering the PGA Championship in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

TULSA, Okla. - How hot is it here this week for the PGA Championship? Two-shirts-a-day hot. Maybe even three.

So the thermometer provides a perfect excuse to expand the wardrobe and there's nowhere better than the T-shirt concession at legendary Cain's Ballroom, one of the greatest music halls in the free world and one of Tulsa's two (that we know of) haunted theatres. Allegedly, of course.

So there we went yesterday, down to Cain's, where the late great Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys both invented and perfected Western Swing music. There was some kind of punk-type band rehearsing and the sidewalk outside contained a number of vampire-type people - all of them born after Bob died, some 31 years ago - with dyed hair and pins stuck through their pink bits. For some reason, none of them was singing San Antonio Rose, Faded Love or Bubbles In My Beer.

Cain's was a dime-a-dance joint where Tulsans escaped the cares and worries of the Great Depression before Bob, his brothers Billy Jack Wills and Johnnie Lee Wills, and the rest of the Playboys - originally called the Light Crust Doughboys - made sweet cowboy music, all backed by Bob's fiddle, that went across America on the radio.

Cain's, since then, has been the scene of performances by everybody from the Sex Pistols to Bob Dylan and U2. Next week Blues Traveler is in and behind them comes Asleep at the Wheel and you know what they say there: Western Swing ain't dead, it's Asleep at the Wheel.

Anyway, Bob smiles down from one of the many portraits hung above the enormous dance floor and it's said that Bob's spirit haunts the place. It didn't seem to haunt the T-shirt stand or the bar, but if they say Bob's spirit is there, I'm buying.

Not too far away there's another of Tulsa's strange places and this one has more legs in the ooga-booga department. The Brady Theatre is said to be haunted by the ghost of Enrico Caruso, the great Italian tenor who died young about 85 years ago. A couple of TV shows with the weird night-light photography have come and checked this out and (as these things go) indicate that, yes, there is some kind of unexplained phenomenon, the kind that makes dogs bark for no apparent reason.

The story goes that around 1920, when the Brady was the largest and most ornate theatre on this side of the Mississippi River, Caruso was booked there. On the day of his performance, he and his peeps wanted to see an oil well, which they'd never seen before. On a rainy, cold day, they headed off to see some working oil wells. There was a mob of them in three cars and all three cars either broke down or got bogged down in mud or something. The upshot was poor old Caruso ended up having to walk partway to the Brady, in pouring rain, to make his own concert. He caught pneumonia and six months later died of pleurisy and they say one led to the other and that's why his ghost hangs around the Brady.

I'm buying that one, too, and the only way this story would be better is if they sold Caruso T-shirts there.

Dave Perkins

Player surprised at reaction to comments

Gary Player, the golf hall of famer whose reckless comments about performance-enhancing drugs have made him something of a golf pariah this week, wasn't taking any mulligans yesterday.

Player, encountered before his tee time this morning at Panmure Golf Club, a few miles from Carnoustie, said he was "a little surprised" by the roasting he has been taking from golfers and the press for stating he knows "for a fact" that at least one or two golfers are using PEDs.

He also said he thought at least 10 golfers on worldwide tours were using bottled help, but wasn’t – and isn’t – naming names, which is why his assertion caused so much ruckus.

Read on...

Hot dinners and cold cases

Dave Perkins is in Scotland covering the Open.

CARNOUSTIE, Scotland – The 136th Open Championship began under great big wet clouds and one little one.

In the rainy Scottish morning, Mike Weir birdied his first hole (Stephen Ames double-bogeyed his third and fourth) as the Open got off and running.

There was a tiny bit of buzz left over from Gary Player's cryptic remarks the day before about performance-enhancing drugs in golf. Player certainly loves to talk and embraces the opportunity to occupy any large pulpit. He made the statement that "whether it’s HGH (human growth hormone), whether it's creatine or whether it's steroids, I know for a fact that some golfers are doing it."

He didn't say who and estimated 10 tour pros worldwide are taking something – "might be a hell of a lot higher." – He said his source on this was a golfer who confessed to him that he was using illegal enhancements, but swore him to secrecy, and one other golfer "told me something that I promised I wouldn’t tell that verified others had done it."

Player further estimated that "50 to 60 per cent of athletes in the world today" are having hot dinners. "I'm not saying golfers, I'm saying just across the board with all sports."

Now, no doubt there are drug cheaters in golf, the way there are in other sports. These guys all deny it and say they encourage random testing and Phil Mickelson said the other day, "I don't think there’s even a remote chance" someone will fail a drug test. Tiger Woods, long an advocate of drug testing – which is the main reason the PGA Tour will implement it soon – said they might as well test to see who is hung over and he's probably bang-on.

These guys sound like the baseball establishment 10 or 12 years ago, and like everybody in hockey at all times: No way our guys would do anything wrong, etc etc.

Well, with all this money at stake and a self-policing sport like golf, of course there will be those looking for any edge they can find. That said, it's difficult to imagine any golfer, especially a dirty guy, telling Gary Player anything this potentially explosive and then expecting him to keep it a secret. Everyone knows Player never met a microphone he didn’t like. He's a good guy with a great record and has been a fantastic ambassador for the game. There doubtless is truth somewhere in what he broadly alleges here, but he seems to be lacking a little in the hard science of the subject and isn’t prepared to name names.

The PGA Tour will bring in drug testing and the number of stars who will test positive will be exactly zero. Just like baseball and the NFL. They'll pick off a couple of nobodies and make the example of them and then say, "We have no problem."

And it will be difficult to say there is a real problem. Fans want to see the ball go over the fence, into the end zone and into the hole. The rest of it is just talk.

Dave Perkins

All four seasons in one day

Dave Perkins is in Scotland covering the Open.

CARNOUSTIE, Scotland – Stephen Ames didn't have any taste of Carnoustie in 1999, when it clobbered the best golfers in the world and left them mewling like kittens. He didn't qualify for the Open Championship that year and, looking back, he says, "Thank God."

But he's here this time, drawing ever closer to the top of his form, he thinks, and admiring of the course's set-up. He has only one wish: Move up some tee boxes, or else he might not be able to get his drives to the fairway.

"I hope they reconsider how they set it up, tee box-wise. Some holes could be unplayable, as far as reaching (the fairway). Like 18, as an example. You couldn't get there," Ames said yesterday, timing his nine holes of practice perfectly so that he departed the final green moments before thick rains began pelting down.

"It's a great golf course, set up fair," Ames said of the layout otherwise. "Obviously the elements, playing here in Scotland, you're going to get all four seasons in one day, very likely, and it looks like it's going to happen."

He is scheduled to tee off Thursday morning at 8:31 local time (3:31 a.m. EDT time), slotting into the morning-afternoon part of the draw. Mike Weir, the other Canadian in the field, is three groups behind Ames and Tiger Woods is two between. There's no telling who will catch breaks from the weather, which is forecast as generally poor at least for Saturday. Forecasts are worth little here, though, weather has been changing literally by the half-hour.

Ames, who contended in last month's U.S. Open, is anxious to keep testing his newly revamped golf swing under major championship conditions.

"The changes that (coach Sean Foley) and I have been making are in the right direction and that's a sign of it there," Ames said of his eventual tie for 10th at Oakmont, where he led the U.S. Open as far as the fifth hole before running into trouble. "The changes we've made are finally coming out in my play and that's what this is about. You want to get to the stage where you forget about your golf swing and just go play.

"I'm pretty close to that now," he said of the state of his game, suggesting that Foley has unearthed ability he knew he had, but couldn't summon.

"I've always known the way it was supposed to be, but I could never understand why I couldn't get it there, no matter how I practiced. Sean showed me that, which is nice. But it’s not quite there yet. I know it can be better.

"We always go back to our old mistakes, old habits. And those are the things you try to get rid of."

Carnoustie is more of a place to bring one's best game than to find it, but Ames has won a big-time tournament, the 2006 Players Championship, and is aiming to climb to the higher level. There's none higher than this event, particularly on this course.

Dave Perkins

Weir, wind and fire

Dave Perkins is in Scotland covering the British Open.

CARNOUSTIE, Scotland – The phrase "hotter than a firecracker" hasn't necessarily applied to Mike Weir's golf game for a while, but he well knows the expression these days.

Weir, who practiced all 18 holes yesterday under a gorgeous sun-drenched morning for the 136th Open Championship that starts Thursday, got a scare two weeks ago when his Utah home was threatened by an out-of-control forest fire apparently begun by kids setting off fireworks.

"It got within about 100 yards. There were 55 firefighters working, digging trenches," Weir said. "Luckily the wind took it the other direction."

The fire began the evening of July 3. Weir was playing in Washington, where he finished eighth for his first top-10 result of the year, and was awakened in the middle of the night by a phone call from his wife Bricia.

"She sent me a text message and picture on my cell phone and I’m like, 'Whoa, what’s this?' It was pretty scary," he said. "It burned out about 75 acres. We got lucky."

KEVIN LAMARQUE/REUTERS

Mike Weir got all wet last week in Washington; he's likely to need that umbrella again this weekend at the British Open.

Speaking of scary, Weir said Carnoustie this year isn’t quite so diabolical as Carnoustie in 1999, when, in his first British Open appearance, he shot 83-71 to make the cut. That 71, on a day the field averaged almost 78, remains one of his very best career rounds.

"It's more fair. It's still tough, you don’t want to miss fairways, but at least you can advance it down the fairways and have a pitch (at the green). In '99 if it got in there you couldn’t get it out," he said. “With all the rain the course is pretty lush, actually."

More than course set-up, which most of the players are complimenting, the determining factor in scoring might well be the luck of the draw and who encounters bad weather. It's pretty changeable around here; Tiger Woods said he has played three practice rounds in three different winds.

"You're trying to set up a game plan for the golf course, but it changes so much it's hard to stick to exactly what you plan," Weir said. "Yesterday morning, Charles (playing partner Howell) said he hit driver/3-wood and still had 80 yards left into No. 15, the par-four. The par-five hole before that, he hit driver/3-iron short of the cross bunkers. Today it was a rescue club/4-iron (to the green)."

Weir said the difference between playing in wind and rain, against sun and relative calm, probably is 10 shots a round.

"Yesterday you couldn't even hold on to the club, it was raining so hard," he said of a morning practice round abandoned after three holes. "I thought to myself, 'Am I getting anything out of this?' No, I'm not, except maybe getting sick before the tournament even starts."

Related:
British Open tee times

Dave Perkins

A tournament to make Old Tom Morris proud

Dave Perkins is in Scotland covering the 2007 British Open.

CARNOUSTIE, Scotland - Here are the reasons, some of them, that make one man believe the Open Championship, particularly when it's held in Scotland, is the best golf tournament of them all. As always, everyone is free to play along at home.

- You play the game on the ground here, the way it's meant to be played. Watching someone creative invent the necessary shots, rather than hit irons precise yardages and spin them to a stop, is a treat. Golf isn't necessarily a putting contest on perfectly coiffed greens

- The people, particularly the Scots, love, respect and understand the game because they play it. You'll never hear a Scot scream "You da man!'' or go crazy simply because he sees some backspin

- Malt vinegar is the default condiment at the fish-and-chip stands

- You walk the streets of the little towns and run into, say, Padraig Harrington and the little Harringtons out for a stroll. Or Stephen Ames coming out of the Kinloch Arms

- Five-hour time difference allows golf-loving journalists to get in a morning game and still arrive at the course 12 hours before deadline back home. So they tell me, anyway

- The Famous Grouse and The Open Arms, long-time mainstays of the tented village, which minister to the thirsty

- The local betting shops, where you can always add fiscal excitement to the action

- Unobtrusive security forces that get the job done with common sense and courtesy

- Crowd and traffic control that always seems to work seamlessly; how they can hold this event every year at the end of a two-lane road, yet get 30,000 cars in and out quickly, is a particular marvel

- History, history and more history. The founding fathers of the game, Old Tom Morris, Young Tom Morris and the rest, won this championship and just about every truly great player in the game since has won it. No other tournament's list of past champions can compare

- The TV coverage here doesn't begin with Woods walking in from the parking lot, or brushing his teeth or whatever. They actually show golf and golfers and don't have a commercial after every four shots

- The courses have holes with names. For instance, Carnoustie features holes named Spectacles (the 14th, with bunkers that look like, well, eyeglasses) and South America (because a member leaving for that continent made it as far as the 10th tee before passing out after his going-away party)

- There's a booth here that sells Arbroath Smokies, a smoked fish, not unlike a kipper, made famous up the coast a few miles. They are outstanding. Almost as good as cullen skink, which is a kind of fish chowder. What do you get anywhere else? A lousy hot dog for five bucks?

- The bunkers. They're maddeningly wonderful and require even the best pros play out of them sideways or, occasionally, backward. Bunkers are meant to be penal, not an easy escape hatch on a difficult hole

- Did we mention that time difference already?

- It's a four-hole playoff in the event of a 72-hole tie. Not sudden-death, which can beat a guy who catches a rotten break (drive into a divot or whatever), and not 18 holes the next day, which is always anti-climatic, not to mention screws up several hundred plane reservations home. Four holes is a tense hour of playoff action, just the right amount

- Because it's the world championship of a world game and nothing else can come close to making that claim

Dave Perkins