Published July 05, 2009 12:20 am - It is early evening Saturday at Westwood Park Golf Course and it is the calm before the storm, literally, so everybody believes, outside near the scoreboard and inside where Anthony Kim and Tiger Woods, on television, duel for the lead at Congressional Country Club.
Redemption on the greens
Commentary
By Clay Horning
The Norman Transcript
It is early evening Saturday at Westwood Park Golf Course and it is the calm before the storm, literally, so everybody believes, outside near the scoreboard and inside where Anthony Kim and Tiger Woods, on television, duel for the lead at Congressional Country Club.
Rain may be coming.
Lightning, perhaps, too.
The kids who run the grill are running a tournament within a tournament on the chalkboard that typically promotes the day’s special. Instead, it is a leaderboard charting the progress of four other grill employees playing the Westwood Invitational in real time.
Ah, technology.
Eleven over through 27 holes, somebody named Sean leads somebody named Josh, who is 17 over through 31.
Meanwhile, I’ve learned that I, myself, have been a topic on the second day of the tournament and not because, flipping my club to the ground after chipping across and over the fifth green, my sand wedge caught the hardpan just perfect and snapped.
Because if I’d wanted to break a club, it would have happened 5, 20 and 30 minutes later when I missed less than six feet of putts, combined, in the space of four holes.
The yips were back on the front nine Saturday, but what everybody wanted to know was how I’d managed to catch up to my second-round playing partners 275 yards off the first tee rather than on the tee box.
Thinking my time was 8:50 a.m., I didn’t respond when they called my name at 8:35 and continued eating breakfast, a fanstastic burrito with all the works. Upon finishing breakfast, and after spending about a minute in the bathroom, I walked outside at 8:45, only to learn I had an 8:40 time.
There you go.
If the Westwood Invitational wasn’t run by a bunch of great people and was instead run by guardians of the game intent on killing the spirit of the game, I might have been disqualified.
As stories get around the grounds of Norman’s venerable municipal track, mine got around, too. For the record, I was in the bathroom about 60 seconds. Not 15 minutes.
That aside, looking forward to one more round of golf, one more date with five hours in searing heat and one more chance to prove to myself and the scoreboard watchers I know something about this stupid, crazy, dumb and unforgiving game, I know not what to think.
Because the game is also redemptive and for a change, that was the story I finally lived on the golf course again.