Brian's "Tradition Unlike Any Other"

The couch potato in me (which controls about 95% of my personality on a Sunday afternoon, and at least 75% the rest of the week) had a very interesting and enjoyable day. A little after 1:00 I thought I'd sit down and watch the Twins game, since I decided my honey-do list wasn't nearly as long as it probably should have been. As it turned out, the composer of the honey-do list already had control of remote and was curled up under a blanket in the corner of our sectional lounge about 10 minutes away from drifitng off for an early spring snooze on a drizzly afternoon. I guess we both decided that our couch potato personalities -- make that our sectional lounge potato personalities -- would win the battle of good versus evil on this day. Of course we all know, good always prevails in the end.

So with the remote stopped for the time being on Animal Planet, we watched an episode of River Monsters, a reality series that I highly recommend, if you haven't seen it before. Yes, reality TV sucks, but there are a few exceptions if you watch cable instead of network TV. Anyone for Pawn Stars? Anyway, we watched the end of the episode on Snakehead species, which I had seen before, and then next also the episode on Bull Sharks that inhabit fresh water rivers in South Africa. I've seen this one before, too, but sharks are always worth watching, no matter how many times you've seen them. By the way, for the trivia buff, the largest fish ever caught in fresh water, according to the episode, is a bull shark in this very location in South Africa. It's a man-eating predator that seems to leave humans in this river alone, for whatever reason - go figure.

Okay, so after a while, Mama has now dozed off, and during a commercial break, I ended up on the Twins game, hoping their offense would finally wake up and get some momentum going in what has been a slow start to the young season. Obviously, that didn't pan out, so luckily I remembered that the final round of the Masters was going on, and that's where the afternoon got real interesting. You know, I absolutely love golf, even though I only get about five chances to play every summer, if I'm lucky. And, I've always enjoyed watching golf on TV, even though I haven't taken my chances to do that in a long time either. Well I wasn't tuned in more than a minute or two, when a no-name South African made an amazing bump-and-run chip-in from probably about 100 feet to birdie his first hole of the day. I was hooked now - no pun intended, since I was just watching River Monsters a short while ago.

Watching the early coverage of the front nine of the final day of the Masters, great shots were being turned in by several players, and they all seemed to contributing to what would turn out to be quite a log jam on the first page of the leaderboard. In fact, said South African had another unbelievable shot on the 3rd hole when he holed out his approach for eagle after spinning his ball to the back left, straight toward the cup -- back, and to the left....back, and to the left.

Everyone seemed to be off to a good start - everyone except the third round leader, that is. God bless the heart of Rory McIlroy, whose day would turn into a complete disaster, after starting the day with a four-stroke lead, but finishing 10 strokes behind the eventual champion. Six-over-par on the first three holes of the back nine to many of us is nothing new, but for a Masters tournament leader with just 9 holes to go, well, let's just call it a valuable learning experience.

So anyway, with the exception of McIlroy, yes, everyone else seemed to be off to a good start, and that everyone included the myth, the legend, Tiger Woods. Notice I didn't mention "the man" in that cliche' colloquial sequence because Tiger Woods the man is still not much worth talking about. However, Tiger Woods the GOLFER, in my opinion, is still very much worth spending a Sunday afternoon keeping an eye on. And I'll tell you what, when Tiger made up 5 strokes in his first 8 holes, I believe I said at the time, boy, he's gonna win this tournament. Well okay, so that didn't pan out, but I for one was glad to see Woods making some noise again -- or more specifically, making the crowds of spectators make some noise. I think everyone watching thought Tiger would continue his amazing day on the back nine, but when he missed a few opportunities, that he normally would not have missed, it became clear that he'll have to wait one more year for his fifth Green Jacket.

But that didn't mean there wasn't other excitement to watch. What'd they say, something like 8, maybe 10 golfers, had at least a share of the lead on the final day? Many of those were guys that people who don't follow golf every week have never even seen before, let alone perhaps guys they've even heard of. There weren't many household names in the bunch, but man, could these no-names make some golf shots! Several of these young players made great runs, but the best of them all, and the one that should be remembered, was the run of four straight birdies to finish the tournament by Charl Schwartzel, the "kid" who started the day with two absolutely amazing shots on the first three holes, a rather ho-hum performance, although still with very few mistakes between the 4th and 14th holes, and a finishing performance literally reminiscent of Jack Nicklaus, exactly 25 years after his storied back-nine run to win in '86. I've never heard of this guy until this weekend, although I guess he was ranked 29th in the world. For me personally, I would have loved to see a battle of big names coming down to the wire, but as it turned out, a battle between six or eight lesser names, plus one huge name, was about as good as I could have otherwise hoped for on an afternoon that was conducive to sectional lounge potatoes all around our area. Certainly a lot more interesting than the Twins, who finally showed some life in the 8th inning, but lost 5-3 to the Athletics. Even my wife, who was awakened after a while by one of our little dogs walking across her face, was a quite riveted by the Masters, despite asking a few times if we could watch anything else.

As I think about it, my afternoon started out watching the pursuit of bull sharks in South Africa and ended watching a young South African golfer out-perform them all, in a tournament that also featured a final-round collapse by a third round leader that reminded many of another "Shark" (Greg Norman), an Australian who coughed up third round Masters leads three times in his career, and although 3 other Aussie's had a great final day, that country is still left without a Green Jacket.

You know, all this talk about Australians and South Africans makes me think the only way to finish this day is to throw in Lethal Weapon 2. If you're a movie buff, or at least a Mel Gibson fan, you'll know what I'm talking about. Have a good week. FORE!!!