Most of you know by now that I'm a sports reporter for the local cable company in my area. We specialize in high school sports and we don't discriminate which means I get some rather unenviable assignments at times. So last week I got sent to a high school golf match between two local teams that were in first and second place respectively in their conference. Not the best thing I've ever done, but certainly better than having to watch two small school girls' soccer teams play all of regulation and two overtimes to a scoreless tie. I've done that and I'd rather get punched in the throat by Mike Tyson while simultaneously being lit on fire than have to do that again. No disrespect to soccer players, your game is just really, really boring. Anyway, let me explain how my job works so you understand the situation. As of right now, I don't do any live broadcasts. I just put together a package of highlights of the events I cover, very similar to what you'd see on Sportscenter. So when it comes to covering golf, we don't follow them for the entire 18 holes because that'd just be ridiculous. We try to get there for the last 6 or 7 holes which still gives us more than enough footage to find a couple of highlights.
That being said, on this particular day the golfers teed off at 2:45 so my cameraman and I arrived just before 5 o' clock. We were actually a little later than we had hoped, but I wish we had been much, much later. When we got out onto the course, we found that the first group was just finishing up their front nine. As we followed them to the tenth tee, there was a group of four men hitting their tee shots which means the high schoolers were forced to wait. As we sat there, I struck up conversation with the kids, asking them if they had been playing behind these guys all day. They told me that the men were on the first tee when they got there and they'd been forced to wait at every subsequent tee since. It turns out the golf course scheduled another tournament that day that ran all the way up until the beginning of the high school match. Long story short, the kids played until it was pitch black. They played so late that the last group wasn't even able to finish, they just took pars for the 18th hole because it was impossible to see anything when they got there. The craziest part is that it was a close match. The way high school golf works is this: Each team has 10 golfers that play the full round. When the round is over, they take their best 5 scores and add them up. But the scores aren't tallied until everyone has finished. So everyone knew it was a close match, yet they had no other choice than to give the final two players on each team a par for the last hole. The winning team ended up with a six-stroke victory which would have been impossible to make up on one hole, but they didn't know that at the time.
Now do me a favor: Take a moment to think about that..............Does anyone find that as absurd as I do? This is an official varsity contest people. That's like two high school basketball teams showing up for their game and having to wait for a bunch of old men wearing head bands to finish their pick-up game. Then they'd start the real game, but they'd only be allowed to play for a few minutes before having to let the old men throw up some more air balls. There would be no scoreboard, just someone keeping track of each team's total, but not telling the players the score. And that process would continue over and over until the kids had almost played the entire game. But instead of finishing, each team would just add ten points to their total and hope they had done enough up until that point to win the game. It's completely bogus. It reminds me of high school and even some college tennis where the players make their own calls and keep their own score. I mean I covered a state playoff tennis match and they didn't even have umpires, just some official that basically served as a mediator if there was a disagreement. I actually feel bad for those golfers because their sport gets no love. But, then again, we are talking about golf, the thing that most people do on their day off. Now let me get back to watching Roger Federer absolutely tool on this no-name cat, Juan Monaco in a match that didn't start until almost midnight.
*Russell Wilson for Heisman*
"I think there's--he's the main guy and then there's probably four or five of us that are--I don't know. Maybe we need to do just a tag team effort or something, join forces, you know, like Power Rangers or something." -Andy Roddick, after losing to Roger Federer in 2005...I still love Roddick even though he rocks Lacoste on the court
-Brusk Dollas
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