Virginia Is For Families

The Tiger Woods drama continues to evolve. They say that this is a good time to be investing in real estate. It’s a buyer’s market and there are lots of properties out there looking for someone to love them. Obviously. And it’s good to see Elin Woods doing her share to keep the economy going as she reportedly purchased a house down the street from the one with the battered fire hydrant.

And she also bought a home back home in Sweden too because her parents want her to take the kids and return to them. Remove yourself from the hot clime of Florida our beloved daughter! Leave your hot (but unfortunately) insane husband to his philandering ways.

I don’t know if any of this is true. I just hear things on television like everyone else and shake my head. There are some things that I’m very tired of seeing and hearing on the tube. Especially at dinnertime. The commercials for Viagra and the rest all happen during the dinner hour when some people sit around with trays while they watch the television.

Bad idea. I’m so tired of hearing about the four hour problem while I’m eating pasta or chewing on a piece of lettuce. I could be more explicit but this is a family blog.

I’m tired of the ads for car repairs too. Get your car repaired for free! They fail to mention that you have to send them an unspecified amount of money every month even if your car doesn’t need repair. It’s like those repair policies you can purchase every time you buy electronic equipment.

This is going to break! You better buy some insurance! Well maybe I should look for a better product then!

I’m not going to buy Tiger Woods products anymore. At least not until he gets his stuff straightened out.

He may need to see a professional and even take some medication along the way. But I doubt it will be the kind that causes the four hour problem. It may be the kind that stops people from destroying fire hydrants in the middle of the night. It may be the kind that helps someone who has many repressed emotions from suddenly exploding them in the atmosphere like a gas main with a major leak.

We live in a crazy world. There is precious little sanity coming our way from our media resources. It’s up to us to manufacture it on a daily basis and share it with each other. Which is why some folks blog. Oh those are the kind of blogs I like to read!!

Too bad I can’t read them while I’m eating dinner. Or maybe I can! It may be time to hook up the computer to the television set!

And cancel the cable!! Could this be a future trend? Will we shut of the flow of mindless material into our homes ? We don’t answer the telephone any more when strangers call and try to sell us stuff. Will we protect ourselves at long last from the television commercial too?

Eric Clapton/ The Best of Eric Clapton

Play- Knock On Wood (Album Version)

Tiger Woods, the world’s number one golfer, apparently missed a short drive the other day with his Caddy and ended up in the trees.

Why is this news? It’s not the first time he has missed a drive after all.

Oh wait! He missed his driveway.

And then there was the collision with a fire hydrant.

This was probably the first time he ever hit one of those. The force of all that water shooting out of the ground could probably lift a car straight up in the air.

I’m just wondering if he wasn’t distracted by something.

I am reminded of the time that President Clinton and Greg Norman were hanging out together and The President fell off the porch and tore up his right knee. Maybe Greg was with Tiger early Friday morning.

Maybe Greg was talking to Tiger and the same sort of thing happened.

The results are eerily similar. In the first case you had Bill Clinton lying on the ground looking up at Greg and wishing he was someplace else.

And in the second case you have Tiger looking up at Greg and wishing Greg was someplace else.

To be fair, however, it seems unlikely that the distraction that caused Tiger to miss his driveway was Greg Norman. Maybe he was just not feeling well and he wasn’t being very careful.

What do you think happened early Friday morning to Tiger? He hasn’t said much about it so there’s room to consider all sorts of stuff. The imagination runs wild especially during a long holiday weekend .

It’s Florida after all. And a hundred miles or so away is the coast of Florida. And we all know what lies out there in the mysterious waters just east of the mainland.

The Bermuda Triangle!! That’s right sports fan! It just may be that Tiger went for a ride far, far beyond his front yard and his gated community in the early morning hours.

Maybe SOMEBODY wanted a golf lesson and they didn’t quite know how to ask. So they beamed him up to the space ship and out to sea and a fabulous golf resort that doesn’t even show up on radar or even OnStar. He was back in his driveway fifteen seconds later after playing eighteen holes (their time) but they didn’t quite get him in the right spot when the they beamed him down.

Would you want to tell everybody what you had been doing if this happened? Of course not. Who is going to believe you?

Nobody. Well maybe a few people.

But enough of this foolishness. Imagination has its limitations.

Many of us cannot imagine how difficult it is trying to live a normal family life when the whole world knows who you are and watches your every move with interest.

Raising young children is a very challenging task for any young parent. They sometimes cry or scream for no apparent reason. They are little germ factories and are often up at odd hours of the night when they don’t feel well. They will turn your life upside down without even trying.

And the journey from being a young adult to being a middle-aged parent only takes a few years. Relationships between husbands and wives can change dramatically during this time. Many of the things we enjoyed about our husband or wife may seem to have vanished.

It’s a trip to the twilight zone in short order.

We wish Tiger the best as he tries to extricate himself from his predicament. And there’s only a couple bits of advice I can give him. In the words of a former President who had a similar mishap. . .

Keep It Simple.

And in the words of the great Ray Charles. . .

Let’s go play some golf.

Play Oh, What A Beautiful Morning

And he has stress fractures too. But he tore his ACL last year after the British Open. So he has been playing on a torn ligament for almost a year! Here’s what his father, Earl, had to say this past weekend in a commercial for Nike about his son:

I’d say, ‘Tiger, I promise you,’” Earl says as we look upon his son’s unmistakably steely gaze, “‘that you’ll never meet another person as mentally tough as you in your entire life.’ And he hasn’t. And he never will.”

Earl, of course, died some time ago but his words are still around. And now we are starting to see exactly what he meant when he said those words.

Tiger did have surgery for cartilage damage.

“He did not play overseas late last year for the first time since 2003, hopeful that rest could allow him to play more this year. But the pain intensified through the Masters, where he finished second, and Woods said the cartilage damage developed from the ACL injury.”

–Yahoo Sports

So his damaged ACL brought about some cartilage damage and he had that fixed. But the damaged ACL was not repaired. Why? Maybe because it would have required him to stop playing golf this year. He would have missed the US OPEN.

This year’s US OPEN is special for Tiger. He grew up in the area. He has won a lot of tournaments at Torrey Pines.

“Although I will miss the rest of the 2008 season, I’m thrilled with the fact that last week was such a special tournament,” Woods said.

So he walked around on a torn ligament for almost a year so he could play in THIS tournament. It’s not going to get better by itself. He knew he would have to have surgery but he postponed it so he could play this past weekend. And then he found out he had stress fractures too! The doctors told him not to do it according to his coach Hank Haney.

“Tiger looked at the doctor and said, ‘I’m playing in the U.S. Open, and I’m going to win.’ And then he started putting on his shoes,” Haney said. “He looked at me and said, ‘Come on, Hank. We’ll just putt today.”

Tiger made his knee worse by postponing his ACL surgery. He dealt with the pain in order to play in the US OPEN.

The question is did he INCREASE the risk to his golfing career by doing things the way he did them. I guess it just depends on how much his knee can take before it becomes dysfunctional.

I doubt that anybody knows the answer to that question. But it’s clear that Tiger is not being too cautious about his situation.

Apparently life is a lot like the thirteen hole on the final round of the US OPEN to this great champion. He should have laid up but he went with the wood even after his adversary found the tall grass. He was hurt by that decision. He had to go to a playoff.

And then he won. He moved off the thirteen majors and all the unlucky inferences you can draw from that number.

He doesn’t believe in luck. He believes in Tiger Woods.

He believed that he was going to win the US OPEN.

And he did. Along with six or seven other tournaments. Now he can rest and do his rehab. So he can come back next year and win some more tournaments.

Don’t be surprised if you see some of the PGA pros on the tour with this guy taking up bowling next year. It must be incredibly demoralizing to wake up today and realize that you haven’t won any tournaments while Tiger has been winning a bunch with a torn ligament and other damage to his knee and leg.

I’d say, ‘Tiger, I promise you,’” Earl says as we look upon his son’s unmistakably steely gaze, “‘that you’ll never meet another person as mentally tough as you in your entire life.’

And he hasn’t. And he never will.”

*

*

Father’s Day this year was something special. Beth took your blogging buddy out to breakfast and I was able to enjoy lots of treats that you will not find at the local fast food place. And then we wandered over to the Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens for the special event they planned for the day.

I have some photos to share of the antique cars and Harley Davidson motorcycles. Also a really cool dragon fly! Some of them are posted at Photo LinkLove which has enjoyed or endured depending on your perspective another face lift. I really think this will be the last one for awhile since it incorporates everything I had ever hoped to do to it.

And then there was Tiger Woods and the US Open! Talk about golfing excitement! Tiger put on an incredible show as he fought his way to the lead on Saturday, came out on Sunday and immediately gave it up when he played the first hole as if I had taken possession of his body and then fought back again to tie the leader on the last hole.

So it’s not over yet! We get to see eighteen more holes today. Father’s Day is extended this year for another day! How cool is that? Do you think I can get someone to take me out to breakfast again before the golfing resumes?

Probably not. Tiger hit some amazing shots over the weekend. He was putting shots in the can from all over the place and the crowds were going nuts. And viewers all over the world were no doubt jumping off their couches and doing the same thing. It was a great day for golf.

And Tiger was hurt too. His recent knee surgery is still in the painful stages when pressure is put upon it. And a golf swing will put lots of pressure on it. At some point yesterday the number one golfer admitted taking the number one pain killer and stopped grimacing in pain. But it was an adventure.

We still can’t figure out why he hit a driver into the thirteenth hole after Lee Westwood put his ball in no man’s land and had to take a drop. Why?  And then on the next hole he hit an iron when he should have hit a wood. Why again?  And he lost a couple of shots for what reason?   But that just made the ending even more dramatic as he made a birdie from a hundred yards or so to send the tournament into overtime.

Tiger is a new father himself these days. Maybe that’s why he was sinking putts from all over creation. I don’t know. But it was a lot of fun and a golf tournament many of us will never forget. Want to see a photo of a cool car?

*

*

*