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Just when you thought it was safe
Posted: Thursday February 24, 2000 10:58 AM
Fingers cramp. Eyelids twitch. The mind reels. Yes, I am living la vida golf writer. Sure, you all think it's a glamorous job, chasing the sun and living like the Sun King on a bloated expense account. While certain Golf Mailbag writers of yore have been known to propagate this stereotype, in fact the golf beat can be a meat grinder. The last two weeks of my life have been the most wearying since, well, I'm so tired I can't even remember. I have just returned from a whirlwind trip across Australia, chasing a couple of stories. My head thinks it's tomorrow. My bowels think it's last Friday. I have only Aussie dollars in my pocket, and I'm all out of sense. I would love to share the exploits of my time in Oz, but the stories I'm working on demand a level of secrecy on par with the Manhattan Project. Anyway, just getting to Australia was the real adventure. I had to cover Pebble Beach before I could fly out, and therein lies the story.
As usual, Pebble was beset by a series of natural disasters, and I'm not just talking about Ray Romano. When high winds and heavy rains forced a Monday finish, and the network TV cretins pushed it back to 5:30 p.m. ET, this created some incredible problems for me (and, I hasten to add, the rest of the magazine staff). You see, SI is sent to the printers every Monday, with most stories turned in Sunday or Monday morning at the latest, and then edited, fact-checked, laid out, and given all the attendant color (i.e. pictures). By Monday night, say 8 or 9 Eastern, the entire issue is put to bed. Obviously I didn't have the luxury of waiting for the tournament to end to write my story. Red Smith on methamphetamines couldn't produce 1,500 words in an hour and a half (the drop-dead time for me to send was 7 p.m. Eastern). So it was decided that I would file a story Monday morning that could be moved down the editorial food chain. The problem was that, come Monday morning, there was still one round yet to be played. After Tiger Woods shot a 73 during Saturday's second round, to fall seven shots back of the leaders, I began focusing my energies on a story about the end of his winning streak, an outcome that looked virtually certain when he was still five strokes behind after the third round. Sunday night I banged out the story, staying up until about 2:30 a.m., which is actually pretty early on the eve of a deadline. Tiger went off at 8:40 Monday morning. I arrived at the press room at Pebble at 9, and immediately started working on a piece about his incredible comeback to win the tournament. I had no facts to go on, but I spent some time crafting a lead and tinkering with a few passages, just trying to get my game face on in case something crazy happened. When Woods failed to eagle either Nos. 2 or 6, and when Matt Gogel got off to such a hot start, I felt sure Tiger's win streak was history. So sure, in fact, I booked myself on a 3:10 Pacific flight back home to El Lay. I was beginning to sweat the time. (Monday night I was due to leave for Australia, on an 11:15 flight out of LAX, and I still needed to get home and pack, feed the fish, pay the bills, round up my scattered research materials, and perform my husbandly duties. Regarding the latter, remember, I'm used to working on deadline.) By midway through the back nine I was gorging myself on a free meal in Pebble's press dining area, sharing a table and the telecast with a significant portion of the golf writing firmament. We were all selfishly rooting against Tiger, for similar reasons. When he failed to birdie, let alone eagle, the par-5 14th, a little collective cheer went up from the table. Well, we all know what happened next. The moment Tiger's approach at No. 15 spun into the cup, all of us stood up from the table and, with barely a word, dutifully trudged to the press room. As I was settling into my chair my cell phone rang. It was our golf editor. "I don't think you're gonna make that 3:10 flight," he said, laughing devilishly. The timing was brutal. I was going to Australia to do two distinctly different stories, and had spent weeks emailing, faxing and calling agents, family members, tournament officials and, of course, various players to set up my time there. It was heavily, and intricately scheduled, beginning two hours after my plane touched down in Melbourne. There was no way I wasn't going to be on that 11:15 flight out of LAX. By the time the glacial Gogel missed his putt at 18, it was well past the scheduled TV-ending time. By the time he and Woods were brought up to the press room, it was 6:30. My story was due in half an hour. I pushed the send button at 7:23 Eastern/4:23 my time. I drove to the airport on two tires to make a 5:50 flight, the very last one that got me back to SoCal in time. I landed at LAX at 7:15, and dove in a cab for the 45 minute ride to the beach town where the Mrs. and I live. When I blew through the front door Coltrane was playing softly in the background, candles were burning, and dinner was on the table. It was a lovely scene. Frances and I sat down for a romantic 12-minute meal, and then I had get my life in order. I had to leave for the airport at 9:15, which was but an hour away. My better half had laid out tons of clothes on our bed for me to peruse, and after series of yeas and nays she packed my carry-on while I attended to a zillion other things. At 9:40, after a sloppy goodbye, I ran out of the house, and made it onto my flight by the hair on my chinny-chin-chin. After 15 hours in the air, and a liberal intake of the free Godiva and spirits in business class, I arrived in Melbourne at 10:15 Wednesday morning. My first interview was set up for noon, an hour's drive away, on the wrong side of the road no less. The adventure was to continue. Then again, maybe it was already over. Sports Illustrated golf writer Alan Shipnuck will take you On Tour each
Wednesday at
golfplus.cnnsi.com. Click here to send Alan a question or a nice, friendly comment.
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