Honda Classic Eye-Openers
A few weeks ago, I went to the Honda Classic at PGA National with my friend, Elaine. Lucky for us, we had received complimentary passes, which saved us $40 each. We also took a shuttle from her house, which saved us another $30 in parking.
Although I’ve been to many professional sporting events (football, basketball, baseball, etc), I have never seen the pros play in a golf tournament. I’ve attended charity events with pro golf players, but a golf event of this magnitude was new to me.
What did I expect? Well, for one, I was shocked by the thousands of people strolling along the green. Elaine and I weren’t really sure where to begin. We saw folks gathering at various holes, even though the golfers were miles away. What were we to do?
We walked around for a bit, looking for her friend, Mark, who gave us the tickets. He would be volunteering in the driving range or the putting area. Of course, there was more than one driving range and more than one putting area.
In the meantime, we ran into her brother, Michael, and his wife, Adrienne. Her brother is a very well-known chiropractor in South Florida, so he gets lots of perks. Lucky for him, he had scored VIP tickets to watch the tournament from the Bear Trap.
After striking out several times, we found Elaine’s friend. He looked to see where things were at and directed us to Hole #10. Here we watched Tiger Woods golf just a hop, skip and a jump away from where we were standing. Not bad. I wanted to sneak a picture, but two folks around me had already been scolded for whipping out their cell phones. I took a few pictures further down the green, but of course, we were not as close as when we had witnessed Tiger’s first drive. I guess sometimes you just have to put the camera away and enjoy the moment. Because I love taking pictures so much, this can be difficult for me. However, just being can be far more important than documenting the experience (lesson #1).
After watching Tiger finish this hole, we ventured up to the non-VIP area of the Bear Trap. Here, we had a perfect view of the golfers. We anxiously awaited for Tiger to make his way to our hole. Why? Because he was the only golfer we knew by name. In this instance, neither of us knew him personally.
We waited, and we watched. We rolled our eyes at the rude ladies who blocked the seats beside them. We found 
ourselves front-row seating. Finally, we saw Tiger’s partner, Luke Guthrie, enter the green. I got my camera ready as I had already scoped out the perfect picture. And then we learned Tiger had bailed a few rounds after we had watched him play.
This was news to me, and very fascinating. Although Michael had the prime seats, he missed the action. We were lucky to have caught Tiger before he had dropped out due to “back issues,” which translated to a bad game. Wow. So many folks had paid a lot of money to see him play, only to miss him. I found this concept to be pretty interesting. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to leave the office when I am having a bad day? Or, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to brush my mistakes to the side and chalk them up to being out of sorts? I was shocked at how easily Tiger could quit his game. At first, I was a little disappointed as I’m not a fan of “quitting.” But then again, isn’t it better to walk away when you keep hitting the wall? He wasn’t going to win this game, so why waste his time an energy? As I cruised down 95, my mind bounced around these thoughts, reshaping my reality.
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