New workout today. I like this workout a lot. It's quick and intense, and it really works your arms. My numbers were the same as the last time I did it in week 12 of the first round, except for the pull ups, which fell away a little at the end. I've never felt like I am on top of the pull ups, they are so damn hard. I tried to fix my bar, but I couldn't. No great drama though.
I just went down the shop with Will and bought a can of coffee - my only indulgence for the day. It's weird because as soon as I decided to cut down on the crap (really not to eat any at all, but I've decided I would like one treat a day, whether it be a can of coffee or a Kitkat, the kitchen seems to be piled high with doughnuts and mini croissants and ice-cream etc. Last week I would have gone nuts and ate a heap of them, but this week, nup.
Tiger will be in Melbourne in a couple of days. There's an interview with 60 minutes tonight, which I will definitely download. I should have scheduled my trip to coincide with him playing at Kingston Heath. I would have loved to have seen him play. I saw him at Royal Melbourne when he came down for the President's Cup ages ago.
I still can't believe what he has done. When I was learning golf, the best two players were Greg Norman, who you knew deep down was an asshole, and Faldo, who was my favourite. Golf exposes people. Flaws in their character, work they haven't done, presumptions they've made. Norman was exposed again and again. Those 'unlucky' things that happened to him, he brought about. Larry Mize's chip in in 87 was amazing, but like he said years later, it was Norman's shitty second shot that took the pressure off him and let him chip the ball thinking that he might be able to make a bogey and still be in the play off. If Norman put his second to fifteen feet, then Mize would have approached the chip knowing that he had to get up and down to stay in it - a completely different mindset. In 86 when Tway holed a bunker shot to beat Norman, Norman had shot a 40 on that back nine. He was already beaten. The other times Norman's technique let him down, and even though it cost him dozens of tournaments and millions of dollars, he refused to tackle the problem. Faldo, on the other hand, did the work, hit the shots, and for a few years was the most dominant player in golf since Nicklaus. He won 6 majors. Norman won 2. I thought Faldo was the best golfer I would ever see.
Tiger has won 14. The thing I love about Tiger is that all he wants to do is win. He's not Ali, or Shaq, he's not about changing the world or being in Disney movies, he's about winning golf tournaments, and he does what he has to do to win them. When he first came on the scene the media tried to paint him as some kind of saviour, a barrier-breaking racial hero, all that. They tried to portray his dad as some kind of crazy Korean tennis dad. Turns out that Tiger isn't really interested in race, and that his dad was a great guy who taught Tiger what he needed to know but was just as in awe of his son's talent as anybody. From a purely golf point of view, he's the greatest ever. I think only Nicklaus has a problem with that, and he's a proud old bugger. The shots he has hit over the years are just amazing. The pressure he is under week after week is intense, but the consistency of his form is untouchable in any sport.
Sometimes I wish he would be more... charismatic, so people who don't play golf take an interest in him like I might take an interest in Michael Jordan or Ichiro, even though I have no interest in their sports. It's probably why even though we have the greatest golfer in his prime playing, golf is in all sorts of trouble. Clubs are struggling, TV audiences are down. It's a shame. But fuck it. I'm a golfer, and Tiger is mine, and part of me is glad that he doesn't appeal to the shitkickers out there who don't know what it takes to do what he does. They've got their Koby Bryants and Lance Armstrongs and all those tennis faggots. You won't see Tiger taking steroids or involved in a nightclub shooting or smoking bongs. Sorry.
So good luck in Melbourne, Tiger. Hope you like Kingston Heath, it is a beautiful place. Hope you kick their ass and win.
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