By Jim Moriarty
Photos By Stephen Szurlej
May 9, 2008
DEAR TIGER,
Greetings from Charlotte. Well, you missed it, bro. Johnny Harris and the Dancing Wachovias had the Maybach fired up and waiting, and they were real disappointed you couldn't make it. On the other hand, some of the guys seem concerned you might be pushing it a little, trying to get back too soon. They think you should take all the time you need. Nothing is more important than your health, at least I think that's what those shrugs meant, though I confess it's not easy to read body language. Anyway, get well, big guy.
Just a suggestion, but you might want to Satchel Paige this Anthony Kim kid who won his first here. The list of folks younger than 23 who have won on tour is short and stout. Guys like Crenshaw, Ballesteros, you. Paige said, "Never look back, something might be gaining on you." Well, AK-47 is dangerous. Kim's still a little bling-o-licious with his House of Sabbatini belt buckle and maybe he did join the tour last year with a little bit of L.A. street brat in him, but the kid is learning how to flat play golf. Did you know he's got Mark Calcavecchia's caddie, Eric Larsen, on the bag? What's the deal with that? I thought you and Calc were buds. Apparently, Calc told Eric he could make a boatload of money with the kid, and he'd be an idiot not to try it. You know Calc, he's the Panama Canal of boatloads of money. So far, these guys have a second at Hilton Head and now they throw a headlock on first at Quail Hollow, which Eric said is just like Harbour Town except all grown up, which is kind of the way the kid seemed, too.
You know as well as anyone, you have to golf it around Quail Hollow. Even at 7,442 yards, you can't just bang away at it which is why you like it, too, right? At any rate, the kid was talking about the greens at the Hollow and how sometimes it's better to have a 30-footer uphill than a four-footer from above the hole, which is the same for all those Oakmonts and Winged Foots and Oakland Hills-type places, not to mention Augusta National where he's going to be playing next year, which means he's figuring out the big stages. Heck, your buddy, Mark O'Meara, is one of the guys who advised him last year in that Merrill Lynch Shootout when the two of them played together. And I thought Marko was your man. What's the deal with the posse?
Whatever. It's started to kick in for the kid. After he smoked the field, he said, "I think if I had won last year, my practicing would have gone down to even less and there wasn't much [for] it to go down. I might have been playing on the Hooters Tour. It might have been the best thing for me, just to get slapped in the face and realize that I can't win out here without practicing and giving it my all and focusing on every golf shot and on every practice round. You know, all that stuff is behind me. I was an immature kid last year, and I feel like I've grown up quite a bit, and I think that helped me so much this week, so much this year and, hopefully, in the future." Sounds like a man to me.
What I'm getting at is, you might want to watch this one close. You know, he's 22 and you're 32, and Watson was 10 years younger than Jack, and Jack was 10 years younger than Arnold and, well, you get the picture.
All the kid did was stomp a pretty good field the way Lucy and Ethel danced with the stars through a vat of grapes. Let's see, it says here he finished at 272, 16 under par, and won by five over Ben Curtis. Yeah, that Ben Curtis. I'll get back to him. AK-47 had it to 18 under and a seven-shot lead with those last three holes to play -- which means he made one of the scariest finishes on tour look like yesterday's sushi. Couple of walk-off bogeys and he was outta there.
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