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IK Kim and the one foot missed putt

I don’t know why.

If this happened to a PGA tour professional, I would revile that guy and condemn him to everlasting hacker folklore gleefully, delighting in the schadenfreude of the moment.

But if this happened to an LPGA professional (yes, even Michelle Wie), I would shake my head in disbelief and share an outpouring of grief at the absolute, complete, utter destruction of her self-esteem and possibly, her career.

I.K.Kim - Kraft Nabisco Championship - Final Round

Here’s a video of her being commented by a bunch of white blokes who obviously know as much about golf as I know about the history of fermented camel crap. And they still make fun of poor IK Kim at the end, oblivious that she could very well hire her South Korean assassins to yank out their intestines and tie it around their smug, pale-looking, jackanape, caucasian faces.

We’re not talking about a putt on the 16th to get within one of the lead, or keep the lead. We’re not talking about a 10 foot putt, or even a five foot putt, a knee knocker to win the title. We’re not talking about some kind of obscure, charity tournament to enhance Asian Heritage in Chattanooga Tennessee.

I.K.Kim - Kraft Nabisco Championship - Final Round

No. This is a ONE FOOT TAP-IN after a missed birdie putt, to WIN THE KRAFT NABISCO WOMAN’S MAJOR CHAMPIONSHIP.

ONE FOOT.

This will be down as the greatest short putt missed in the history of golf and possibly stretching into the next million years of golf when it has evolved into a bunch of big headed aliens tapping a holographic ball across the galaxy. They will recall in horror, when their denizens misses a tap in, that they have I.K-ed it.

We could probably compile a bunch of horror stories of golf, including the dumb-a#s two footer miss to win the Masters by that big loser Scott Hoch (notice the distinct bias-ness against men who suck and women who umm, had a bad game?). I mean, seriously, who would you chose to symphatise with:

Bald, fat Caucasian Octogenarian.

Playful, pretty Korean chic.

Not much of a choice, really.

But really. One foot. Major win.

Who could forget that sheer horror on her face when the ball horse-shoed around the trecherous hole and she spun around at her caddy, her tiny eyes wide with shock, hands over her mouth, mouthing a silent “OH MY #$^&#@# CRAP, I JUST LOST US 300K!!” in South Korean. We can only hope maybe she and her tall, good looking caddy hooked up later and he forgave her for making him lose so much money.

I.K.Kim - Kraft Nabisco Championship - Final Round

IK Kim, I can’t tell the difference between you and the 6212 Koreans on tour at the moment, but the hearts of all hackers go out to you. I can only dedicate this song for you (minus the disturbingly feline lead singer and the half naked woman slithering about) from the entire world of hackers trying to break 90 and 100.

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New Era of the Wacky World of Woods

We recall just a few weeks back, when faith in Woods was at an all time low. After failing in the last round time and again, it was getting very frustrating to stay up and watch him flail around like a hacker and then to wake up to go to work, in obviously thunderous mood. People snickered. They said he was finished. They are ready to pour their accolades onto the shoulder of a 23 year old punk with pubic hair on his head. Or onto a Justin Timberlake lookalike that has about the same number of fans as a block of charcoal in your neighbourhood grocery store. I mean, as I have mentioned time and time again, if Tiger fades away, golf would enter into an era that would make the dark ages look like Mardi Gras on steroids. It would be the END OF GOLF AS WE KNOW IT (or EOGAWKI–pronounced Eh-oh-ga-wi-ki).

And like a burst of sunlight, too intense to look into, yet too mesmerising to turn away, EOGAWKI was summarily dispersed with Tiger capturing his seventh (or his eight?) Arnold Palmer Trophy. I don’t really know what the details are, except that he played as he should be played, and although it wasn’t Mr Pubic Hair on the Head he defeated, it was his fellow country man, who looks like Hugh Jackman who ate too much pork and also got stunted in the process.

Now before we crown him again, we need to know that Tiger has literally been to golf’s equivalent to Mordor and back.

1) Humiliation of dropping out of the Top-50. Now he’s back to six. He’s still some ways from Charcoal Donald and Pubic McIlroy, but at least there’s finally a recognisable US name in the Top Ten. For months, US had to be content with an old guy by the name of Steve Stricker and Homer’s brother, Webb Simpson.

2) His douchebag of a caddy called him out and wanted to shove something up his “coloured” bleep-hole. Now his player, Adam Scott is lower than Woods in world ranking. Steve Williams now lives in a mobile caravan in fear of his life, as assassins from the Bronx, Bangkok, Japan and where ever the heck Tiger is from are out to get him. Take that, racist Steve Williams.

3) His equally douchebag of a coach has written a tell all book “The Big Miss”, depicting Tiger as an egomaniacal, power-crazy, selfish piece of crap for the past couple of years. When you’re bringing in a 100 Million a year, it does crazy stuff to you. Big Deal, Hank. But you gotta hand it to Hank…he claims everything about Tiger is about golf, yet tells a story of how fearful he was asking Tiger for a popsicle. How is that related to golf, Hank? Your popsicle? As in, really?

4) His hot wife beat him up over some text messages and divorced him. She has since destroyed their home in a fit of rage, and re-married and named the scum in her new pond Tiger Eldrick Woods…in case there’s some ambiguity. What do you expect? She’s a descendant from Erik the Red. Tiger probably now fears for his life, as she’s calling the God of Thunder to descend upon his newly built life and damn him to eternal purgatory.

5) I don’t know if Tiger still hangs out with the pornstars, but really, his taste in pornstars really really suck. I mean compare him to Martin Sheen, who also hung out with a pornstar, Tiger’s choice is like choosing a dead hamster over a Bugatti Veyron Super Sports. It’s a complete embarassment. At least now, hopefully he steers clear of pornstars and get his life back in shape.

Bugatti Veyron: Most Expensive Car in The World

OK, Tiger, winning once ain’t gonna cut it. You are not Jesper Parnevik. You are supposed to win. So get that Augusta and bring us back from the brink of EOGAWKI!!

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This makes us feel good…and bad!

The big news this morning for golfers: Tiger Woods having to withdraw due to injury after the 12th hole in the last round in Doral Blue Monster this week. After watching him play well in the second and third round, it might be a possibility for him to catch up with Justin Rose and Mr Bubba despite being 8 shots back. But the guy that made the run is our curly hair number one Rory, and Tiger (YET AGAIN) just failed in the final round. I really think he should just stop wearing the darn red shirt! Over and over again, he is proving to be more like david Duval than David Duval himself. The latest setback so close to Augusta doesn’t bode well for us Tiger fans.

I don’t get it, how come guys like Tiger who looks like he benchpresses beluga whales have all these problems when a joke like John Daly doesn’t have sports injuries? How can golf be so physically demanding when Arnold Palmer can still play while half his body is already in a casket? I mean, it’s golf! The only injury I have right now is that my left pinky can no longer bend into a fist without popping, but except as a freakshow to gross out my wife, it doesn’t really bother me much. It’s golf, not football, basketball, badminton etc. Isn’t it considered an ‘old man’s game?’ (although in parts of Indonesia and Thailand, among caddies especially, it has evovled to ‘dirty old man’s game’)

Come on Tiger, stop being a sissy!!!

The big news for hackers however: Sergio Garcia, everyone’s favourite crybaby, made OCTUPLE BOGEY..yep, that’s a +8 for you guys who don’t like roman numerals. Although not as fascinating as Kevin Na’s Duodecuple bogey (a +12) , it’s still, by far, one of the biggest names in golf playing like a complete hack in one hole. Only one hole, mind you, because though that made us feel good, he still managed a 76. It’s ridiculous. If we shot a +8, we would be shooting 110. So if he had only parred that hole, he would be at 68.

Then again, these guys eat, drink, crap, sleep golf, while we only dream about playing somewhere in the open field as we try to stay awake in the office.

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Woods Mania is back

The actual golf season begins with Tiger.

Face it, quick trivia:

1) How many PGA tournaments have been played?

2) Who won these tournaments?

3) What is the current PGA tournament being played now, and who is leading at the halfway cut?

If you can’t answer any of the above, or wrongly answered Abu Dhabi HSBC championship for 3), chances are you are like 99% of the golf fans out there: NO ONE GIVES A CRAP about the other PGA tournaments outside of the majors, and outside of any tournaments Mr Woods play in.

Tiger Woods

I finally tuned into golf, between flicking channels to watch the tennis Australian Open, and watched the marquee group of Rory, Luke and Woods. Luke sucked. As a world no. 1, you gotta feel extremely castrated in many ways. He doesn’t have the charisma of Woods, he doesn’t have the don’t care attitude of Rory, he doesn’t even have a freakin’ major that both Rory and Woods at least have! And he’s supposed to be the ‘best’. It’s such a ridiculous burden he’s bearing, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to beat these two guys, driving shorter than them, less accurate than them, and yet, seeded World No. 1?? As expected, Luke played like a doberman on heat, i.e extremely out of control and crap. And did I mentioned he has the same amount of charisma as the random piece of brick you find at the construction site?

Rory? He’s entertaining, but he’s no Tiger. He plays like a punk, and his body language is just so hilarious because it reminds us of…well, us. Except that he birdies after bogeys, while we just descent into an eternal spiral of crap golf. His resigned slump when he hits a bad shot, his animated face when he hits the good ones. His penchant to engage Woods in conversation all the time…thankfully, Steve Williams is no longer Tiger’s guard dog, else Rory might have his face bashed in for speaking to the mighty Tiger. But Rory was hit with a 2 stroke penalty when Luke said that he couldn’t sweep sand from his ball path outside of the green. Which makes sense. As in how hundreds of stupid golf rules makes sense, but play by the book, right? To do him credit, he didn’t blame the tell tale World No 1 but penalised himself, but yet carded  an even round to remain at -5, same as Tiger…how does one get 2 double bogeys and some bogeys and yet remain even??

Tiger played like…someone else aside from Tiger. We are so used to seeing this guy flapping his clubs around and screaming FORE!! and go on to do a ridiculous recovery shot and sink an impossibly long putt…that the new Tiger, with the ability to fade the ball just needs getting used to. Tiger will always be Tiger, but we love him so much because he was able to overcome adversity, and come up with crazy shots that we would try on the course, much to the danger of everyone involved.

Now Tiger just plods along, hits great fades with 3 woods into the fairway (with the occasional top that can still skitter 240 yards), doesn’t do much fist pumps and resembles a black Luke Donald. Yawn. I hope this doesn’t mean Tiger is going to be playing boring golf all the way, or else I’ll be switching to watch Junior Masterchef Australia. He’s hitting it great though, and it will really be great for him to be in contention in the weekend, hopefully paired with the jabberwocky Rory McIlroy.

By the way, the report was that Tiger Woods was paid a significant sum to play in Abu Dhabi, about 2.x million USD. I think the rumor was that last year, one event organiser wanted to bring Tiger back to Malaysia for one of the tourneys…and was quoted RM5 million, which was before his Chevron victory and at his lowest value. That was his discounted value. I don’t think we’ll ever see Tiger going for RM5 million ever again, now that he has regained back some of the aura he lost when his car crashed into the tree and he downgraded from the most appealing and marketing person in sports into a not-so-pretty-pornstar lover. What a fall from grace ain’t it?

Ah Well, Tiger Mania is back, and let the season FINALLY begin!!

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Golf Sabattical – England – Part 3

A Condensed guide to a sabattical in Southwest England and London:

13. Don’t pay for Roman Bath Tour

It is a known fact that we Malaysians would do anything to get a free ride. We honestly didn’t mind paying to see the famed Roman Baths Hot Springs, but we entered the back-side of the bath house, manned by a single elderly chap. When we asked him where to pay the 15 quids per person (expensive!!), he told us to just walk through the bath house to the front and get the tour ticket there. Needless to say, by the time we walked through the bath house, we had taken sufficient photos and experienced the huge Roman dining hall to pass the actual tour.

14. Do the Free Touristy Stuff

If you’re into churches (as in architecture, not church girls), Bath has a pretty good one called the Bath Abbey, or St Peter. I think. We didn’t get to go inside because they were closed for service. And in any case we were in a hurry.

Another place you could go is the royal crescent, which is just a bunch of houses that are shaped as moon crescent. It’s supposed to be an architectural wonder, but I wouldn’t know, as my whole architectural experience consist of trying to extend my house kitchen into the backyard by 8 feet.

Something closer to my specialty would be the Jane Austen Centre. Now, I’ve read most of her books and I can honestly tell you I would likely nod off to sleep for each book. I don’t really get her books, and I’ve read Emma, Persuasions, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park. The only one I couldn’t get past was Northanger Abbey. Jane had a thing for Bath, so apparently she stayed around this area, which is near to the Crescent place. In the centre I found the solution for introducing Jane to my future kids: Comics! Marvel apparently had translated her books into comic form, which is great! Now at least we won’t fall asleep over the genteel English culture!

Finally, there’s probably a couple of tourist trap around Bath, aside from the obvious Roman Baths and Spa (get from Thailand, much better and cheaper). One that we got sucked in was this place called Sally Lunn, which is ‘World Famous’ for her Sally Lunn Bun. It’s at the oldest house in Bath, apparently built 1482. Heard of Sally Lunn? No? Me neither, so either we are not from this world or the ‘World Famous’ is as mythical as my ‘World Famous’ golf blog. Anyway, for the chinese, it’s difficult to say Sally Lunn without snickering at the surname a little. Hehe. Immature urchins.

Anyway, just take pictures but don’t try to bun, because it sucks. It’s just bread with chocolate (the one we had) and I had a hard time stuffing it in, knowing I paid an equivalent of RM30 for it.Apparently Legend had it that Sally hid the recipe at a secret compartment in the house, which was discovered by some intrepid busybody. Obviously, she hid it to remove the horrendous recipe from the face of this earth. Why must people uncover things that should be laid to rest? Haven’t they learnt from Transformers, not to dig up that old hack Sentinel Prime??

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Tiger Time

So, now he has finally won. We’ve been predicting this for ages. A guy with that many wins, that many majors ain’t gonna disappear into the sunset. He’s back, he’s now single without any worries of infidelity, and he has won….a mickey mouse event, nonetheless but still, WON!

You can feel the huge amount of relief as he dropped that last putt to beat Zach Johnson by a stroke for the Chevron event. Immediately the Tiger Woods fan club is now back to life. We’re big fans of Tiger not because we’re glory seekers, but he’s the only reason that separates golf from lawn bowl in terms of watchability on TV. Seriously. Garcia, Rory and all these guys are good, but they are so boring to watch. Yes, even Garcia. With Woods, you have history. You’ve grown up with this dude. You’ve played golf because of him. You have secretly became an internal commentator of your game comparing your stroke to that of Tiger’s. And you’ve seen him fall from the golfing heavens to hell, and now, apparently back again. This guy IS golf for many of our generations. So, what’s there not to support? He’s the only person wielding a 5-iron that is worth supporting in this dreary sport. Golf is a great player’s game, but it’s a lousy spectator sport, face it.

Now, the one thing that has been tough to swallow over these past months, aside from the ridiculous merry go round we see at world number 1, are people who thinks that they are obliged to comment about Tiger’s sorry game state.

Even when he wins, you get a joke like Jeff Maggert, commenting:

“I’m sure he’ll count it as a win. But 18 guys? C’mon! At this time of year, you’re fat on turkey looking forward to Christmas. But you don’t have the guys from behind pressing you for four days when there are only 18 guys in the field. You’re only having to beat three or four guys at the end of the day, where normally you might have seven or eight guys nipping at your heels.”

Jeff Maggert then says sagely, “For him to win this week is obviously a stepping stone for his confidence. He played well on a tough golf course.”

Jeff Maggert. Winner of a grand total of 12 professional tournaments. Commenting on someone who has 149 wins in all tournaments. That is an amazing 8% of Tiger’s achievements. And that too winning titles like the awesome Malaysian Open back in 1989. Who the heck is this guy, Jeff Maggot? What has he done, except to eat Tiger’s dirt?

Jeff Maggert. He’s playing this week at Q-School, with the winning cheque of USD50,000. Tiger just won 1.2 Million, exactly 2,400% better than Mr Maggert.

And why do people, especially the bottom feeders, suddenly want to comment about Tiger when Gilagolf has been saying all the while that Tiger will return?

Looking forward to 2012 finally.

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Golf Sabattical – England – Part 2

Continuing some travel monologue in England:

5. Stay at a small town

England is littered with small towns here and there. One of the destinations we had was a place called Dorchester, right in the heart of Dorset. Dorchester doesn’t have too much to do, not unless you are a Thomas Hardy fan. Who? Thomas Hardy? Ain’t he the guy from the movie Inception and the Warrior?

No, that’s Tom Hardy. Thomas Hardy is a dead poet and literary figure who wrote books like The Mayor of Casterbridge, Tess of D’ubervilles, Far from the Madding Crowd etc.

Quite a guy. Basically, he based his stories on a fictional place called Wessex, which itself is based on the landscape around Dorset, so he’s pretty popular around this region. As it is, aside from hacking golf courses, I’m a big fan of his books, which incidentally taught me more about writing and speaking English than all the 10 years of education in the Malaysian school system, both primary and secondary.

So anyways, Dorchester is actually what Thomas Hardy calls Casterbridge is his novels. There’s a walk around town for all the relevant buildings and landscapes used in his stories. It’s quite a yawnfest unless you are a Thomas Hardy fanboy like me.

6. Stay at an Inn

Or a B&B. We chose one of the oldest hotel in town because I wanted to do the walks, but if you like, stay at a cottage B&B to experience English countryside.

7. Visit a church graveyard

It might sound dark and sinister, but we went to visit the burial site of Thomas Hardy (well, I did, dragging my wife along). We weren’t supposed to enter (for clergy only), but we unlocked the gate and strolled through anyway and took photos of the Hardy graves. Not your idea of a typical holiday, ain’t it?

8. Take a stroll in the woods

English countryside experience is not complete until you take a walk in the woods. Late Autumn, early winter is especially pretty, with the trees shedding their leaves all over the trail; the summer crowd all but gone; we didn’t see a single person in our half hour walk through the woods. Back in Malaysia we would be fearful of thugs coming to rob us.

9. Visit Hardy’s Birthplace

Only if you’re a fan, that is. I completed the pilgrimage to Dorset by visiting his birthplace, his grave and his home where he would write his books. It’s easy being a fan of a dead guy who writes poems and novels a 100 years ago….there is very little competition and restrictions!

10. Visit the Naked Giant of Cerne Abbas

Cerne Abbas. This is where you have the naked fertility giant chalked into the hills by ancient tribes. The story goes that even today people would illegally go into the hills where the chalk giant’s big dongle is and have sex in order to get kids. It’s weird. But the giant is really a sight to see.

Unfortunately due to the fog, it was tough to make out, so I took the liberty of going into the village and taking a close up of one of the souvenirs:

There you go. It’s hilarious.

11. Have English Cream Teas

You won’t get anything better back home. Go to any small village and enter a tavern, or a cafe and have the cream teas, which is like a value meal with tea, scones, butter bread and additional english condiments. It tastes amazing, and I don’t even like scones.

12. Head to Bath

Bath is one of the best towns west of London. It’s steeped with Roman history and of course, the famed hot springs for Spa and Bath, from which I suppose it derived its name. It’s a bit jammed up in Bath though, and the streets are horrendously confusing. Also, parking sucks there, so be careful. We found this excellent B&B called Three Abbey Green, which is simply great value for money stay. It’s located in it’s own little section in the town with cobbled streets, surrounding a giant tree. It’s pretty cool.

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Golf Sabattical – England – Part 1

Every once in a while, there comes a time where we actually go on a holiday without golf on the agenda. It’s difficult to imagine, yes, but there you go. To England, near the birthplace of golf and absolutely no golf played at all. I suppose there is no relevance at all to this blog, but since I don’t have any other blogs for my non golf buddies (actually curious family members) to go to, I’m just piggy backing this to explain to them that I actually DID NOT play any golf, even though I was presented with the opportunity to go ‘punting’, as the local Oxfordians would call it.

So what does it take for a reasonably cheap, and quick trip to England?

1. Get out of London

This seems like a curious decision, but you can’t experience England if you spend most of your time in London. It’s packed, it’s full of Asians, it looks like any other city except for the cramped underground trains and cold weather. Take a car and get out to the countryside. If you have limited time, go to the southwest of England like we did, or the southeast. North of England is a little too long a road to travel.

2. Get a good car

England loves manual cars, maybe because they don’t have traffic jams like we do. Actually they do, and it will get 1000x worse when the Olympics roll in next year. In fact, many Londoners are predicting the 2012 Olympics to be a utter and complete disaster due to London’s crappy metro and horrendously packed trains. Anyways, get a good solid car to head out into the country. We chose the solid looking Peugeot 3008 Diesel. It’s a GREAT drive this one.

3. See Castles

Castles are to England what Wats are to Thailand. You simply can’t go England without at least seeing one castle, preferable one in ruins and offering some really good pictures. Castles are embedded in England’s history; from the Arthurian Legends to Robin Hood to Rapunzel.

You can delve into the history of England with related courses from various Online Colleges.

But for us, who suck at learning, we took the practical route and headed west of London, we took the road to Dorset and came across this place called Isle of Purbeck, and there, Corfe Castle. It’s pronounced “Corf”, not “Corf-fee” which we were happily pronouncing until a local guy corrected us. Anyway, it’s a pretty amazing place. They say this was where Enid Blyton based her Kirrin Castle from the Famous Five books, from. No, Enid Blyton is not a golfer. She’s a children’s writer.

4. See the coast

England has some of the most amazing coastal lines you’re ever going to see. The southwestern part offers the Jurassic Coast, spanning hundreds of miles of wild English countryside. The South east offers the white walls of the Cliffs of Dover. You ain’t seen England till you see the coasts.

As we were in the southwest and pressed on time, we headed over to Lulworth Cove, which is one the most picturesque place in England.

We caught it on a nice day, especially in the traditionally gloomy mid-November. It’s a horse-shoe shaped cove offering some spectacular viewpoints into the English Channel. From there, it’s about a mile hike to another of England’s coastal offering, Durdle Door.

of course, being Malaysians, we opted for the short drive over to Durdle Door from Lulworth Cove. We caught it during sunset which gave some great views.

I took a hike up to the highest and farthest point of Durdle Door. From outer space, this would be where I was.

You basically look out and you see this:

To the left and right, you see this:

Actually, it’s not really advisable to climb there, as recently there was a death where some intrepid tourist, no doubt looking for the best camera shot of his life, plunged hundreds of feet into the waters below. It’s quite dangerous once the winds blow up there, so I had to be a little careful I don’t join him into the surf below.

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Where were you

11 am , 11 Minutes and 11 seconds on the 11 of November 2011.

Stuck in a meeting indoors, management update.

Instead of playing golf.

Which lucky flers were out on the course?

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The Greatest Hacker

We love it when Pros self-destruct.

But John Daly hasn’t been a pro for a long time, and it’s certainly getting to be a norm where he starts brain farting and blasting balls after balls into the lake.

What a character. But is he good for the game?

And I don’t know why there is no “John Daly Meltdown Wiki” up yet!