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The talk of Tulsa
TULSA, Okla. -- It's so hot here my eyeballs are sweating. The only decent time to play golf in Tulsa is 10 p.m. Luckily, across the street from the swank Holiday Inn where all of us media scum have been sequestered there is an illuminated par-3 course. On Tuesday night I played as part of a sixsome that included a couple of SI snappers, a Golf Digest scribe, and a pair of newspapermen. It was jolly good fun. Wednesday night, for a change of pace, we worked off dinner at a nearby fun center, riding go-carts, taking turns in the batting cage, and playing air-hockey and pop-a-shot. Yes, it's been a real grind so far this week. Actually, I got a lot of work done the past two days. Tuesdays and Wednesdays at the majors are ideal for the idle golf writer, as a parade of top players come to the air-conditioned press tent to pontificate on matters large and small. Tuesday's lineup went like this: Duval-Els-Garcia-Love-Mickelson-N. Price-Eldrick. It's great to slump in the back of the room and take in all the miscellanea. For instance, Mickelson claims to be enjoying the weather. "I love it when it gets hot out here," he said, "because what happens is the ball goes a long ways and it goes straighter. You don't have the same density altitude. [NOTE TO ON TOUR READER: I am not making this stuff up.] You don't have the resistance against the golf ball, so it doesn't seem to cut or draw near as much." Gee, maybe Phil will actually hit a fairway or two then. Listening to DL3 run down how he's spent the last two months -- "I got to turkey hunt for the first time in my 15 years on Tour. It was a nice break" -- I was struck by how easily a promising season can go down the tubes. You will recall that Love got off to a torrid start on the West Coast, and, in part to preserve his $500,000 King of the Swing bonus, he added an extra tournament on the coast, playing six out of seven weeks. Not a good idea for so brittle a body. By the time he had blown back-to-back 54-hole leads in San Diego and L.A., Love was feeling numbness in his fingers, the result of a bulging disk in his neck. He took a couple weeks off in March, but trying to keep his edge for Augusta, he hit too many balls while at home. Then he went to The Players Championship and laid an egg, missing his first cut of the year. Love was so spooked he added Atlanta the next week, and his body broke down during the 36-hole finale. He limped through an M/C at the Masters, and has hardly touched a club since, trying to let his neck heal. Not the ideal prep for the Open, but says Love, "I'm trying to use David Duval as a model." As in, a banged-up Duval didn't play for three weeks heading into the Masters, but was fresh enough to coulda/shoulda there. As for Duval, he was in fine fettle during his inquisition with reporters. He's got his game face on, and I expect him to contend this week. I also like the vibe Sergio was putting out -- quietly confident and ready to go. Tiger, meanwhile, was as relaxed as can be, and he continued his amazing streak. No, not four majors in a row, but a sixth straight year of talking without actually saying anything. The guy is a machine. By far the highlight of all the early week Q&As was Thongchai Jaidee, a 31-year-old qualifier who is the first full-blooded Thai to play in the U.S. Open. (Take that, Tida.) "There's been jokes about the fact Tiger is half-Thai and I'm all Thai," Jaidee said. "So the world hasn't seen what a full-Thai player can do." This was said with a laugh, of course. Jaidee was a pleasant, self-deprecating fellow, but he's not a fluke. The guy has won three tournaments worldwide, and is presently second on the Asian Tour's Order of Merit. Not bad for a guy who didn't turn pro until 1999. Up until then he was serving in the Army as a paratrooper. "I jumped out of perfectly good airplanes voluntarily," he said, drawing a laugh, "and the discipline and focus that I found in the military there, I use the same principles and apply them to my golf preparation." Jaidee is obviously not ready for the cushy life of the PGA Tour. At his hotel here in Tulsa he has been sleeping on the floor, with a rolled-up towel for a pillow. "The mattress is too soft," he explained. "The pillows are too soft. It's a completely different thing." I'm afraid our friend Thongchai is going to find the opposite to be true on the golf course -- it is going to be much too hard. But at least one wary scribe will be rooting for him, anyway. Now I must hit my sagging mattress, to dream of skydiving and turkey hunting and dead-straight 2-irons rifling through the hot, humid air... Sports Illustrated senior writer Alan Shipnuck periodically waxes about life On Tour for CNNSI.com. Click here to send him a question or a nice, friendly comment. |
