Number 1 Rors - The Awesome Ascension of Mr. McIlroy

Tiger Woods had the best final-round of his life at the windblown Honda Classic today, though he ultimately finished tied for second behind Rory McIlroy.  Some are saying it feels like the "dawn of a new golfing era," but before we go there,  let's look back, two... two-and-a-half years... to late September 2009.

A mere month before the ill-fated intersection of an Escalade and a Fire Hydrant,  golf was Tiger Woods and everyone else. He had no sustainable rivals.  Rory McIlroy had just turned twenty and was winding up a year of firsts - first win, first Masters, first Players Championship.  I wrote the post below at that moment in time, and rediscovering it today brought back the decidedly more innocent era when Tiger reigned supreme and Rory was the impish Ulsterman who swilled Champers and celebrated victory with his childhood sweetheart.

Rory McIlroy's Autumnal Weekend... Under Monty's Watchful Eye - September 29, 2009

 He wore dorky cool looking shades and whispered into his cell phone.

I'm guessing it was his girlfriend on the other end, wondering how things were going in Paris. Girlfriends do tend to wonder about such things... it's part of normal girlfriend behavior... particularly if you're dating a rapidly rising star like Rory Mcilroy... and you're only 16, like Holly is.

At Saint-Nom-La Breteche golf course, the weekend featured a pure cerulean sky and forests tinged with a warm ocherous glow. The International field was energized and upbeat, and the boys were getting on really well. However, for young Rory the mood this dazzling Autumn weekend was tempered by the disquieting presence of Colin Montgomerie.

Monty was in Paris to assess players for his 2010 Ryder Cup team and was already irked by the absence of a few guys he felt should have been in there, but weren't.

Rory also realized that his own reckless statement about the Ryder Cup was still fresh in the curmudgeonly captain's mind as well. It had been a careless thing to say; to refer to the revered Ryder Cup as an "exhibition match".

Yes, for a brief moment Rory had found himself channeling Tiger...then quickly realized Tiger would never have made the statement publicly. So there had been the backtracking, the smoothing things over, and on the surface everything seemed to be OK on this Autumnal French golf course, but Rory wasn't completely at ease. 



Once the matches got underway, and a fifth consecutive victory began to seem likely for Great Britain/Ireland, Rory felt like he could finally chill, and by the time he got to his match with Henrik Stenson... the match he wanted all week... he was able to win it, and win accolades from the international assemblage of top golfers. What's more, the once skeptical Mr. Montgomerie was now saying he wanted Rory Mcilroy out first for the Europeans at Celtic Manor... Rory would be asked to lead the charge as a Ryder Cup rookie.

So finally, in the waning Sunday afternoon sunshine the impish Ulsterman got to enjoy a bit of that idyllic weekend in France. He swilled champagne right out of the bottle and called Holly. Told her he missed her... and his new Ferrari. She laughed, the way shy 16-year-olds do. Knowing her boyfriend was destined for greatness but not knowing quite how to feel about it.

As for Rory himself, he's headed to Scotland and the Old Course at St Andrews for the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship. Implausible as it may sound, he finds the Old Course easy. After all, he's played it 15 or 20 times... and the worst he's ever scored there in either his armature or professional career was a 69.

There's so much more I could write about Rory Mcilroy and his unique gift for golf. It'll be fascinating to watch him evolve... from this indian summer weekend at the beginning of his career... to whatever lofty heights he may reach over the next decade.

Photos: Stuart Franklin/Getty Images ❀ ❀

Naked at the Golf Course - A Naughty Fad Hits the Fairways

Remember planking?

About a year ago it was quite the fad.  For several months you couldn't go anywhere on the internet without running into the image of someone's rigid body, face down arms with arms their sides, in an incongruous location.  The craze was completely global, and for a while people were planking everywhere, from the Pyramids of Egypt to the floor of the NY public library. The more dexterous among them could be found perilously positioned in overhead luggage bins, on top of towering billboards and high in the branches of trees.  Golf courses presented creative plankers with numerous options, as well. 

However like most internet memes, planking's popularity was short lived, and after spawning some interesting off-shoots, ( teapotting - owling - Tebowing) it's settled into internet oblivion where it will languish while other fads step up to enjoy their fifteen minutes. So along comes... Dogging.

In fact, dogging's been around for quite a while, but it now seems poised to reach planking-like levels of popularity.  With dogging, the supposedly staid and solicitous Brits have taken things to a naughty new level, and they've got one golf course doing some emergency reputation management.

Dogging... in a nutshell... is a variation on planking that incorporates sex, nudity and some very social networking.  Also included are elements of swinging and voyeurism... all in the great outdoors.  As with planking, the object is to produce a photograph... or video... that will ultimately be posted to the internet.  But an effective "dogging post" must illustrate a sexual situation, either with nudity or with something a bit more graphic blatantly pornographic. Unlike planking no particular body position is required, though, not surprisingly, some degree of rigidity is often featured in dogging posts.

Once practiced almost exclusively in cars at rural parks, or on isolated lover's lanes, dogging has transcended those cloistered confines and is now taking place in public parks, suburban parking lots, on village lanes... and on golf courses.  Till now, most of the "golf dogging" was done on anonymous fairways or in ubiquitous pot bunkers, but last week Lincoln Golf Center in Thorpe-on-the-Hill, found itself in a rather embrassing position when a curvaceous female dogger boldly flaunted her assets in front of their facility's sign... and then posted photographic proof on her "dogging profile page".  Not to be outdone, several of her fellow doggers made a beeline for the golf center and posted similar shots. Now the family-friendly course is scrambling to "clean things up".  Hopefully legitimate patrons will understand the situation and continue to patronize the center.  Meanwhile, with evidence that dogging is finding its way to the US,  course owners here may want to stay alert to avoid their own dodgy dogging dilemmas.

By the way, in case you're wondering how this fad came to be known as dogging (I certainly was), it seems "walking the dog" was often used with unsuspecting spouses as pretext for clandestine encounters that resulted in cyber-exhibitionism.  As the practice became more popular it came to be known as dogging... and the rest, as they say, is history.