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Rory vs David Duval

An interesting following up to the post yesterday: apparently, one of our favourite hacker of all time, David Duval had taken up tweeting about Rory’s lame ass excuse and simply gave what I already wrote the same spin…however, to the 17,000 followers he has, as opposed to the 12 I currently have. And that includes both my dead dogs.

Before we start, let’s just say David Duval knows this subject really well. The greatest in the world, reduced to nothing. It’s like watching Bane break Batman’s back over and over and over and over…and in David’s case, over again. He is the epitome of the Great Failure. And yet, through all the 85s, the 90s, the lost balls, the hooks, the embarrassing duffs and missed tap ins…the former world number 1 never quit. He took all the embarrassment and he summed it up in one sentence, transcending every single wisdom there was in golf:

“Bad days and bad scores are part of golf. Don’t tee off if your ego can’t take it.”

Obvious reference to Rory the Quitter. David was pretty candid and it’s very interesting how he tweeted about it, because this is a guy who was King once, like Rory, but collapsed so spectacularly that they have written his story down for Paranormal Activity 5.

His tweets are as follows, with true translation based on our understanding of Duval’s cryptic language:

“Always keep fighting and trying.” – “Please, Rory, stop bitching like a girl and play the damn game, you stupid, spoilt little twit!”

“You never know who came to watch you play that day. How far they drove or from where they flew. That’s part of why I never quit.” – “Rory, you are a piece of trash. Garbage. People like me would pay millions to be able to hit the ball like you. I never quit, except when I was injured, sick, tired, fat, lazy, sleepy or have to take my kids up from school, or chillax with my wife at the movies. You useless, toothless Quitter.”

“Illness or injury are the only reasons not to finish your round. As a pro you should always post your score. It’s your responsibility.” – “Toothache is an excuse 6 year old kids give when they want to skip school. You just got paid USD78 million to play the game, you Irish Imbecile. And yes, I want to see your pathetic score, then at least, I know I could have beaten you, for the first time in my entire life. Give me your DAMN score!!!”

“Bad days and bad scores are part of golf. Don’t tee off if your ego can’t take it.” – “Egoistical Imbecile.”

“I am not in any way digging on Rory. Please don’t take it that way. I believe he would finish if he could.” – “I got a call from Nike saying they are going to pull away my USD738 per year sponsorship deal if I don’t post this up. Utter bullshit.”

Ah, David, we love you so much. Keep hacking and please, for goodness sake, give us something to cheer about this year!

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The Fall of Rory McIlroy

Maybe that's where Rory McIlroy should have left his Nike clubs. (Getty Images)

I know. We don’t kick someone when they are already knocked down. Neither do we write proper journalism or report when other websites and blogs do a better job at that.

But come on, Rory. You were our golden boy before you became the world’s golden boy. You were the great inspiration after suffering from a mental breakdown in Augusta, and then went on to win the US Open and PGA Championship. You became World Number One, ironically at last year’s Honda Classic, the very same event that yesterday, you QUIT. Frankly, we think the World Number One title was the first mistake you made. You’re not ready for it. Secondly, your relationship with that tennis girl, Carol Wozniaki. I mean, I get it. She’s hot. But it ain’t gonna work, because you guys travel so much, and her thighs are larger than yours, and she likely benches heavier than you.

I think we've all been here. (Getty Images)

Anyway, we know you are a hack. You’ve proven that even when you are capable of some ridiculously great golf, you are still a hacker. The way you play is streaky, like us. Your mental strength is as strong as a squid’s backbone, your swing, at its worst, resembles a python wrapping around a tapir. That’s giving birth.

But today, you are no longer one of us. You cannot even be lumped with the 832 million registered hackers around the world. Because you broke our one code of conduct.

YOU DO NOT QUIT.

Quitting is one of the WORST action a hacker can have. Why? Because in every round we play, things usually get SO bad, that quitting crosses our mind invariably. Invariably. When we hook our 10th ball OB. When we duff our bloody chip again. When we miss that 2 footer, for the 7th time, to settle for our quadrumulticle (+43) bogey. Don’t you think we have that thought as well, Rory? Don’t you think we are humans as well, with vestige of pride, especially when we observe the course resident monkeys cackling at us, and possibly, playing better than us? Don’t you think on the sixth hole of almost every game,we want to walk off because our game sucked so bad that even the python and tapir analogy does not begin to describe our retarded swings??!

But we don’t. Quit. That’s the law. No matter how badly we struggle, we keep at it, we continue on, we soldier on, because all around the world, millions of similarly skilled golfers are doing the same. There is fellowship in the fraternity of suffering. It shows we are martyrs for golf. Even when we are down in every game and we know our flight mates are laughing at us, and taking our lunch money.That’s the price we pay. That’s the measure of manhood in golf. We never say die.

Now, I know your skills are possibly better than ours. But this applies to you as well. The moment you desecrate this law, you fall lower than the lowest scum in golf. You become John Daly’s only peer in the Scum category.

And your excuse? We’ll pretend we didn’t hear that. It’s pathetic. It makes you look like a crybaby. And we all know it’s a lie. It’s a flat out lie. You should have just manned up and continued with the truth: That you sucked, you were humiliated, you are the world Number one but play like an idiot, you made a mistake by making a stupid decision to quit. Take the fine or ban and move on. At least, even John Daly never lied about his reason to quit. He honestly says he has no more balls, after dumping his entire bag of balls into the lake.

Rory McIlroy grabs his nose. I thought it was your tooth! (Getty Images)

Toothache? After all Tiger Woods have done to make golf a respectable, athlete’s sport, with some semblance of fitness in there, you sent it back to the dark ages with that statement. A world number 1. Quitting because his teeth is painful. They should strip you of your dignity and hang you out to dry and never let you represent the game of golf ever again.

This is written out of sheer disappointment, Rory. Not spite or malice. After supporting you throughout your rise to world number 1 (although you’re a placeholder until Tiger gets it back), you have betrayed the trust of every golf hacker in the world. You quit. You lied. And you chose Nike’s money over your own career. Tiger wins IN SPITE of Nike, not BECAUSE of. And Tiger never walks away, unless he’s injured. Even when he was playing like a twit. You should have thought about it before going to the dark side.

Rory McIlroy begin escorted off the course. (Getty Images)

You’re done, Rory. You might still be world number one officially, but in reality, you can’t represent golf anymore, because you are a quitter and a liar, and you can only take successes but not the failures. For all of Tiger’s mistakes off the course, he never sullied the name of golf like you did as world number one. To hackers, this is similar to Lance’s Armstrong’s lies and cheats, it’s not forgivable. You’ve disrespected the tournament, the people who paid to see you and overall, the game of golf.

Tiger, the game of golf needs you back!

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The Tiger Breakfast

I have recently started to try to get healthy by eating breakfast. A full protein breakfast. Previously, my breakfast was usually air. I read somewhere that a full protein breakfast can actually kickstart your day by jumpstarting your metabolism. Now, I am not a nutritionist, and it does sound a little skeptical that my metabolism which has been dormant for 20 years can be kickstarted back to life by breakfast. But I’m willing to see how it works.

In the same way, we are hoping that the Tiger win at Torrey Pines a week ago can actually kickstart Tiger this year to do what he has been absolutely failing to do since he won the US Open with one leg: WIN A MAJOR.

So now he has 75 wins. Big deal. So what if he beats out Sam Snead’s 82 wins? It would be nothing compared to beating Nicklaus’s magic 18 majors. Tiger will always be measured by majors, not wins. Wins are expected. These are part of being Tiger.

There was a story written by Hank Haney in The Big Miss, which I found quite fascinating, noting how Hank can be such a snake to cash in on Tiger after being dumped; but he wrote at one point when he was still with Elin, when he won a tournament and Elin wanted to throw a party to celebrate the win. He said, “E, that’s not what we do. We are not Jesper Parnevik, your previous employer whose house is the size of my Doberman’s kennel. We’re supposed to win. We don’t celebrate what we’re expected to do.”

You’d think people would be bamboozled by such arrogance but that’s what you need to be to be the best in the world. Tiger is not a nice guy, or a good guy. But he’s a darn good golfer and the only reason why golf has its own segment on ESPN.

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The Return (sort of) of David Duval

David Duval has always been the poster boy of gilagolf. Because he was so damn good when he was at his top, and he is now so damn lousy that our awe has frankly turned to pity. He’s still a hacker god to us, but you know, he’s probably a guy that has gone through what we’ve gone through: the humiliation of shanks, topped, duffed shots, more than he could account for. And you know how frustrated or angry we get because we know we can play better than how we played the last round? Like how generally my terrier gets angry when his shit is less large than his previous shit? Well, multiply that by a billion and we would get to probably 0.0000001% of what David Duval is going through. From the claret jug to the laughing stock. This is how far the mighty falls.

This year, it seems will be his 10th breakout year. Obviously he’s still delusional, which is why we love him as much as we can love a cuddly cactus. He’s so like us! Again, he has stated he wants to get back to PGA Tour. We believe that’s possible, with the same possibility that Dorchester Town Football Club can win the champions league. (It actually happened…in my Football Manager 2012 game). The great thing about it is (drumroll) David duval has a twitter account!! Follow it on @david59duval, which strangely has a picture of him at an American Football game, instead of golf. This probably shows that he’s only playing golf for the money I think, before the foreclosure of his home.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to get down on gilagolf’s boy, David. He’s my hero whether he’s a zero or not. He’s the reason why I wear Oakleys now, till the day I die. He’s one of the reason, besides the black dude, why I play golf, because I reckoned I could look cool like him and get me more chicks. But boy, has he been disappointing. It’s so tough to root for losers. I mean, I’ve done that for so many times, so I’m used to it. Juventus in Serie B. Liverpool now. Miami Heat during the Glen Rice, Alonzo Mourning eras. Tiger when he was playing like he had a badger up his butt. Federer when he F-bombed Murray on his way to lose another grand slam game. Lindsay Lohan, who looked hot and now look like a skank. The economy.

So many losers.

The problem with Duval is that he doesn’t seem driven to improve. Instead he tweets sorrowfully that he didn’t get invited (exempted) to the Humana Golf 2013 (previously Bob Hope, where he shot 59, and was 120 pounds lighter).

“So it’s official. I will not get a spot at the Humana.”
“I guess having the defining moment in the history if (sic) the event doesn’t matter.”

I mean, face it, DD, you are playing like crap. They have a better option giving your spot to Elmer Fudd, who doesn’t exist. So he probably won’t make the cut anyways.

We’re supportive of DD all the way, but instead of banging away on charity exemptions, play your way back into the game. Start from the bottom. Like Ty Tryon. It’s going to take a few years, but I guess there’s where Michael Campbell, Mike Weir and all these sad major champions are headed as well.

Go DD!

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Oh, What have you done, Rory?

Last year, Rory was just blazing the trail, breaking the record set by Woods on being the youngest for the second majors, by winning the PGA championship in record fashion. He was on top of the world, regularly blasting past Tiger in his drives and playing some incredibly ridiculous shot. As how Tiger had destroyed the dreams of Ernie Els, Phil Mickleson, David Duval and a host of others who would have otherwise been the finest of their generation, Rory looks to be the foil to defeat Tiger’s ambition to overhaul Jack’s record of 18 majors. Nothing looked set to stop Rory.

Except for one little word, that had levelled the playing field: NIKE.

Nike means the goddess of victory. It’s all very well and nice, but every sports person on earth knows that Nike makes the worst products and has the best marketing. They are absolutely horrendous in mostly everything: but when it comes to golf, it takes disaster to the next level. Nike, in other words, suck so bad that it makes professional golfers want to break their club and stab themselves with the sharp end multiple times to numb the stupidity. But Nike has one thing: MONEY. As it does, it regularly throws money at stars, who in turn convinces mortals like us that the Stars knows what they are doing, and we buy more merchandise that are over-priced and utilises child labor in Szechuan.

But Nike levels everyone  and brings great players like Rory and Tiger down to embarassingly normal standards. Don’t expect our sympathy though, because they get paid sh*t load of money. I.e their annual salary is the cumulation of our company’s earnings + our regional earnings + the GDP of all the third world countries combined.

Due to this, Rory missed his cut in the Abu Dhabi. Tiger played better though, but ended up missing the cut due to a mistake made on purpose, it seems, so he can go home early to catch the Super Bowl Conference Finals. I mean, it’s Tiger, how can he make such an idiotic mistake like not knowing how to freaking drop the ball? The only reason is that he has collected his appearance fees and has decided to scram out of there as soon as possible.

Check out these clips and decide for yourself if this year is gonna be an interesting season, as both the best players in the world has decided to use the worst equipment in the world.

You can’t see it due to the crap quality, but I watched it on TV and it’s the exact same shape as my specialist banana hook shot that is designed to go OB. It was horrible. Thank you Nike! You suck!

And in the same tournament, before Tiger decide to commit suicide with his stupid drop, he hit the worst shot of his career, a topped drive that skittered about 100 meters, and not passing the ladies tee box, thus he has to spend the traditional beer or coconut water to approximately 15,000 people watching him that day.

Boy, world number 1 and 2? Nike’s gonna bring you down!!

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Gilagolf Returns

To coincide with the return of the golf season (more on that in a later post), I’ve decided to come out from my semi-retirement from golf and have a go this week at the relatively benign Kinrara course with a couple of my usual buddies. There were a few things I’ve learnt, after hitting my last golf shot in August 2012, before being forced into retirement by a wrist injury.

1) The cortisone injection kinda worked. I don’t feel the niggling pain anymore in my left wrist and I’m able to cock my wrist properly again. Thank you, medical advancement!! Cortinsone is like a steriod injection, similar the the type that Lance Armstrong is now in deep crap for…but while I did it to get better, he did it to sucker millions of people!

2) After 5 months, the theory of Gilagolf remains: Hackers will never improve by playing regular golf, and neither would they get worse by NOT playing regular golf. Meaning, no matter how many or how little golf we play, there is NO difference. My buddies who have been hacking regularly while I was out of action are still scoring the same as when I left them last year. Myself, out for so long, even managed to play better than I was before, due to another Gilagolf Theory: The longer we stop playing, the more time we get to purge our toxic swing.

3) Kinrara sucks. They converted the drivable 4th hole par 4 to a par 3. That’s mean. Because that was the hole we could drive the green. Because they had to do maintenance. CRAP SHOOT kinrara! Now you have 3 par 3s in your front 9???! In a row?? I might as well pay for pitch and putt!!

4) I shot a 94, with a 48-46, and sprinkling with 4 pars. Not bad, for someone who hasn’t been to a course for 5 months.

5) My drive got better, except for a 2 holes where I duck hooked. But that was a huge improvement. My irons were ok. But my wedges were SH*T. Both my triple bogeys came from horrendouse pitches inside 70 meters after great drives. My bunker play was also crap, messing up an eagle opportunity with some retarded bunker playing. My putting was good though, bombed in a couple of 20 footers in a row for pars.

6) So what now? I won’t be playing that much golf for sure. But still it was good to be back hacking. I don’t think I will ever break 90 with the short game I’m having right now. In fact, it got so bad that I putted from 20 meters off the green because I just. could. Not. Freaking. Chip.

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A look at Les Miserables

Aside from golf, there’s another great passion in my life: reading. I know it sounds unbelievable, but my entire love for writing did not stem from English classes and lessons in my high school, which were so poor in SO MANY WAYS. It came from devouring books while growing up. And not just any books, but books that these days you’d use for paper weights: Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Dickens, Thomas Hardy et al. I was a teenager and my best companion while reading these suckers was a little Oxford dictionary. They don’t have that phrase “What the dickens are you talking about” for nothing.

One of the books I happened to come across before I knew there was a musical or now, a movie, was a book called Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. I enjoyed his Notre Dame de Paris, so I started reading all his books. Les Miserables was a 2000 page tome. It was massive. And it rocked. It was the best book I’ve ever read…and that’s not even in the original language. It was written in French. I read three different translations and contemplated taking up French in university to read the original manuscript.

I have read the book about six times, not counting the random chapter readings I’ll read for fun when I am bored. I’ve watched the musical live 5 times: 3 times in Australia and twice in West End…over two days in London. One with my wife, and the very next day when she was shopping, I watched it Again!

So, when the movie came out, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that even if I’ve been away from the cinema for 7 months already, I’ll worm my way in there just to watch this. Very briefly (since most of my gilagolfers readers have already tuned out, maybe):

Les Miserables the Movie (Spoiler):

What Worked

Jean Valjean – great acting and ok singing, except for the massacre of “Bring Him Home”. The song (which shouldn’t be sung at all in the first place because that wasn’t how Valjean felt in the book), is sung with full falsetto, not a screaming voice, Mr Wolverine!

Fantine – Super “I dreamed a Dream”. Must watch just for this.

New Song – “Suddenly” is absolutely fantastic and faithful to the book. This is so necessary because this just brought a different understanding to Valjean that the musical failed to do.

Faithful to Book – Lots of scenes depicted are from the book. Like the giant elephant statue where Gavroche emerges from and Valjean’s escape. Excellent tributes to the book so nerds like me can appreciate it.

Gavroche – Excellent depiction, but still no word about him being Ponine’s brother.

Cosette – Great singing, but character still too shallow…it’s not her fault, because even in the book, she wasn’t a great character. Although she’s the “Face” of Les Mis.

Borat as Thenardier – This was great casting. Excellent villain.

What Did not Work

Eponine – Samantha Barks is way, way too hot to be a poor “wretched child” as described in the books. And looks too well-fed. But Way. Too. Hot. Marius must be either blind to prefer Cosette to this Eponine (especially when she’s drenched in rain), or he’s secretly gay.

Javert – Should stick to acting, not singing, Mr Crowe. He was terrible in singing.

Marius – Still so unlikeable, from the book, musical and movie. You wish he’d just die quicker.

Pacing – If you’re not familiar with the story, it’s a bit tough to follow. I saw like some people leaving and some asking, “WTF is this la?” halfway through.

OK, that’s it for my completely non-related to golf post for the year.

Happy New Year Gilagolfers!

OK, one more shot of Eponine. Way. Way. Hot. Especially. In. Rain. Yowzah.

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A Very Merry Christmas

To all Gilagolfers who may or may not be celebrating, here’s a merry christmas to all you hackers out there, and to another year of thrashing golf courses with our horrible swings.

2012 has been the most memorable year for me in terms of family and with the addition of a screaming little kid. But totally forgetable in terms of golf, where injuries after injuries sidelined me for so long.

The recent procedure seems to be working much better, but the doc says no more golf until next year.

I guess in time for CNY golf hacking then! Here’s to our 69s in 2013! As in the golf score, not the other…thingy!

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Mercedes for Sale

Trying to sell my Mercedes 200K, W204 AvantGarde (the one with the large merc emblem at the front), December 2008 registered. I’ve only got about 20K per year mileage on it, so it’s pretty low (compared to when I was working with Cyberjaya where I had 40K on my Nissan).

Anyway, the time has come to change to a family friendly vehicle like Toyota Wish or Innova.

Let me know if anyone interested: gilagolf78@gmail.com

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The Healing Begins

To some who might be wondering what the heck happened to Gilagolf, the answer is simple.

Baby. Injury.

Not injuring the baby. As in Baby, and then injury. I think the injury is related to the Baby, but I’ve already had it coming, spending hours on the laptop thrashing out reports, proposals, R&D and what-not just to get the moolahs in every month to pay bills. The problem with having your business is that you can’t sit on your butt doing nothing and still get paid…like what I used to do back in good old corporate life. Of course, I had to suck up a lot more than now, but I can generally worm my way away from work onto a golf course at my heart’s content.

No longer.

Anyway, I was playing just horrendous golf due to, ummm, a post traumatic synovitis — in the doctor’s terms. And possibly some mental meltdown as well. I was overswinging and coming way over the top.

The funny thing was that on the range, I was hitting it fine. For some strange reason, once on the course, my swing retards itself into an unknown mixture of Jim Furyk and a chimp high on ecstasy. Seeing that my game was already on its way to become a 100+ game again, I decided to take myself out of things since August and haven’t touched my clubs since.

I finally went for the small procedure to fix my synovitis. Basically, I allowed the doctor to inject me with some unknown liquid to turn my bones to adamantium. Or maybe. I don’t know. He said a lot of doctory stuff I didn’t understand. His handwriting was like egyptian hieroglyphs. So I did a procedure where he stuck a long needle into the most painful part of my hands, and using ultrasound, guided that freaking needle here and there, poking through tendons and nearly touching bones. As in, it wasn’t just poke and done, it was a good 10 – 15 minutes where I had the freaking needle in my wrist going here and there, and listening to him go, “Whoops, that’s too tight. Let’s reverse.” What the h*ck?? You’re talking about my wrist here, not the other thing that comes into most men’s mind.

Once done, splinted my wrist, pat my back and he said, “No golf for at least two weeks – to a month.”

What the heck. Looks like my 2012 golf is over. Hope to get back on the course before CNY then.

Stay tuned!