Yesterday a friend and I went to dinner at my favorite local brewery, where she made the mistake of asking about my recent trip. Well I started chattering about it while we were still in the car, continued while waiting to be seated, through ordering our beers and food and a good 3/4s of the way through the eating. To my friend's absolute credit she fought off watching a movie in her mind while I talked on and on about Elk and his damn caddy (first thing he said to me? "Oh you're staying on St Charles? I hear all the witches come out at night- you'll fit right in."), hanging out with Turnesa and telling him the story of watching him win in Vegas and Jessica spilling her coke all over while he made his final putt, sitting on the 17th green on the final day and watching Charles lose his shot at his first win... Anyway, my friend would pipe in with little questions every so often when I stopped to breathe. I was telling her about meeting Emeril Lagasse and that he was playing with Parker McLaughlin, one of my favorite golfers, and she says,"Okay so what makes someone one of your favorite golfers? Is it scores or personality or what?"
What a question! I'm almost embarrassed to admit that about half of the guys on my radar are there simply because they're cute or I saw them at a tournament and they talked to me, but I still can't really explain why a certain golfer becomes a favorite. I like Rocco Mediate because I happened to catch a couple interviews with him and I just liked him. I've already talked about Charley's huuuge smile and crazy blond hair sticking out of his hat, Moore's headband in Vegas, joking around with Quigley at the BHCC- all just little things that jumped out to me. I like the guys who aren't the biggest names, the ones who I'm used to seeing at the tournaments I go to. I guess I just like characters, cute guys and underdogs, and really, who can blame me?
Ben Crane just recently made my list of guys I follow. He's from Portland (about 3 hours from me), and Jess and I watched him for a bit while we were at the Zurich. We actually ended up chatting with his coach for a couple holes (who was such a cool guy- we kicked ourselves for not figuring out some way to keep in contact with him), we always love getting "insider perspectives" from people. Anyway, for Crane that was all it took. I watched him a bit, made some sort of quasi-third degree connection to him, and now he's highlighted on my custom PGATOUR.com leaderboard. So needless to say, yesterday I was psyched. I was gunning for him this morning, but he's sitting at +1 today, -6 total. But I also know that scores flip flop all over the place, and more often than not they're completely different when I get home from work and check than they were in the morning. In the meantime I'll be mentally cheering on a long list of favorite golfers from the cafe today, hoping Chopra is birdie-ing it up while I'm pulling shots and steaming milk.
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