Our 15 minutes...

In what has become an annual tradition, Sarah, Ben, and I hit the links last weekend to watch the AT&T National tournament in DC. More commonly referred to as the Tiger Woods tournament, the weather was perfect for a 4th of July weekend with temperatures actually below 90 for a change. The crowds were thick for championship Sunday, with a showdown brewing between host Tiger Woods and Anthony Kim in the final pairing. If you've never been to a pro golf tournament, or more importantly ever followed Tiger Woods, there are a couple of things you should know. In the AT&T National on Sunday, there were around 46,000 people present. If those people are all spread out among the entire golf course, then there would be no problem with great views of the action. Of course. in the Tiger Woods tournament with Tiger Woods in the lead, pretty much 95% of the people are going to try and follow Tiger. In order to get decent views, you have to either camp out on one hole for the entire day, or if you try to follow you have to jump ahead by 2-3 holes after seeing him. After meeting up with Duncan, Jeremy, and Matt in the morning, we went all in and decided to follow the Woods/Kim pairing in the afternoon.

Our big claim to fame that day was actually getting into the TV coverage. After returning home that evening, we searched the TV coverage in crystal clear HD and were able to find ourselves a few times during our quest to follow Tiger. Our onscreen time was probably less than 5 seconds total, but who said you had to get all of your 15 minutes in one chunk?

The first time we were caught on camera was a very small portion of the screen during a Tiger putt on #5. If you look very closely (I put in a convenient arrow) you can see us in the upper right-hand corner and a big reaction from Ben after Tiger misses his putt (you'll need to click on the picture to get the full view):





Although we didn't get on camera for this, probably the most exciting thing that happened to us was almost getting hit by Anthony Kim on the 6th hole. We were not even watching that hole and were probably 40 yards off the fairway in a grove of pine trees when his ball landed in between us and ended up rolling right next to us as we walked toward the 7th hole. We got a close up view of the action, and avoided getting kicked out of the tournament by resisting the urge to pickup or kick the ball. Unfortunately though, we were standing behind the cameras and didn't quite make the tv coverage.

In our second appearance on #13, you can see Sarah, as well as the rest of the crowd is very serious awaiting Tiger to putt. Ben's hat also makes an appearance below me if you look closely.




In our third and best appearance on #17, Sarah and I offer Tiger some advice on a tricky putt:



All in all a good tournament, and although it is postponed the next two years, I'm looking forward to the US Open in 2011!