Next Golf Tournament…Look For Me on the Couch!

Not sure how many of you made it out to the US Open during the past week, either for a practice round or during the real thing. But if you did, maybe you could help me out….what’s the appeal of attending a tournament in person??

I was out at Bethpage this week on Friday and Saturday, and boy are my legs tired! Seriously…it was exhausting. Attending a golf tournament is a lot of work for VERY little reward.

You have to keep moving if you want to see something other than the same shot over and over again (i.e., staking out a single hole and just sitting there all day), and if you choose to move around the course, you end up walking a mile in order to see just a few shots!

And forget about following your favorite player. Unless you love Jean Francois-Lucquin or Johan Edfors (both of whom are real players, I didn’t make them up….and they made the cut, too), you’re NOT going to enjoy following Tiger and Phil.

I attempted to follow Tiger on Friday for a few holes and only wound up seeing him UP CLOSE for a tee shot on 16 and in the fairway on 2….and that was over a span of an hour! Sure I saw him hit a few shots in between, but those were usually from 200-plus yards away while peering over ugly hats, bad toupees and billowing cigar smoke (dooooon’t get me started on the cigars…..).

Now don’t get me wrong, there were some parts of my two days at Bethpage that I enjoyed. But they came at the expense of watching players in contention. I managed to sneak off to the 600-yard 13th and watch a bunch of no-names tee off from about five feet away. THAT WAS COOL.

As a golfer myself, it was absolutely incredible to see just how hard and far these guys hit the ball while probably swinging about half as hard as I do. That to me was worth the price of admission right there, and it helped to ease the disappointment of not being able to see the big boys.

But on the whole, I was disappointed with my first experience at a big-time golf tournament. Some people I’ve talked to told me that the fact that it was a major definitely contributed to the lack of enjoyment factor.

I’m sure the miserable weather and horribly muddy course conditions didn’t help either. But I’m a huge sports fan, and I thought that I, if ANYBODY, would be prepared for the long slog that is attending the US Open.

But that wasn’t the case. Give me the NFL in January, a baseball game in a monsoon or sit me rink-side at an NHL game in a thong…I’m there.

You have extra tickets to the next PGA event rolling though the Tri-State area?....call someone else. I’m not interested.

I’ll be watching on the couch.

Matt Estreich for The Huddle