Sporting Short Stories, and Tall Tales
If you like your Sport a bit like your Mac Donalds; Rich, Fat, and tasteless; then the K- Club County Kildare, was the place to be this Year. Real tans, big cigars, even bigger egos. Vintage wine and Pink Champagne. Big breasted blonde’s and brunettes, and that’s just the players and their wives. It’s enough to make you want to weep, throw away your social security number and beg for a tour card. Golf is the last refuge of a sporting scoundrel. With nick names like ‘Tiger’ (Woods) El Nino (Garcia) Meaning Hurricane in Spanish; You could be forgiven for thinking you just wandered into a combat zone.
The only combat on show here is from the legions of adoring Golf fans, who jostle and Joust for the best vantage points. Looking slightly relieved to have forsaken their arrival outfits which made them resemble the cast from a Biggle’s movie, the Americans arrive on Tee to a rapturous welcome. The European’s however are made of sterner stuff and make the Land of a thousand welcomes, seem distinctly unfriendly. To call this Gentleman’s past time a Sport, would be a bit like claiming Hannibal Lector was President of UNICEF.
The formalities well and truly over it’s down to the cut and thrust of intense competition. That is if you call whacking a small ball around a perfectly manicured Golf course.. intense! Our fearless Gladiators throw their bodies on the line, and at the first sign of fatigue jump into their Golf Carts. The European’s emerge victorious as the ‘Tiger’ proves he isn’t Celtic. Thankfully apart from a few broken finger nails and a few very badly damaged blades of grass, all our fearless combatant’s live to fight another day.
To the curious Irish onlooker, raised on the tales of the legendary Warrior Chu Chulainn, and the fearless hurler Christy Ring; it all seems a bit Strange ‘Curtis. As the shrewd Vulcan might have observed in his Inter-Galactic travels, aboard the famous Star ship. “This is Sport Jim, but not as we know it!”