If you are like most humans with a Maple Leaf passport and a penchant for opting for the path-most-often-traveled, you’ve found yourself fantasying what it must have been like for “Sid the Kid” to win gold for Canada.

 The rush and the crush, the shock and the awe, the light and the being…that perfect moment when all you intend and all you dream, bloom.

Most of we, the huddle mass, unfortunately act as if the torrent of base pleasure that reduced 23 jaded multi-millionaires to tearful exultation is not our rightful domain. That heroic accomplishment only exists in pixilated form, out of our grasp.

 Ask yourself if would Sid have been as happy had the stands been empty and the cameras off? Would he have been as happy with a tattered jersey and teammates of questionable skill and unquestioned desire? I believe he would. He was no more and no less a man realizing a dream and the size of a dream does not matter.

The question we have to ask ourselves as we labour at the joys of our life. Are you happy with what your efforts have created? If it were hanging around your neck, what colour would it be? And what does this have to do with your Golf?…maybe nothing…but only if your Golf dreams mean nothing to you.

While I am not privy to the Nielsen ratings for this week’s WGC –Match Play event, judging by the chill winds blowing through the McDonell-Stollery household, they mustn’t be too impressive.

Yesterday, whilst settling onto our milk/crayon/apple juice stained couch, I dared to grab the abandoned remote to sneak a peek at the Casey – Villegas match. There was a reaction, to say the least, from the assemblage of wife and brood.

Brouhaha does not fairly describe the outpouring of (loud) indignation that erupted from each member of our curtain-climber brigade. Our youngest, all 25 pounds of him, stood on my lap and barked “hawkey, hawkey, hawkey…” straight into my left eyeball. My oldest spun around and gaped at me with a look that may only be described as the pre-cursor to the “Dad, you’re way out of line” speech he will be perfecting in the decades to come. Our middle child, least deft at the art subtle protest, immediately summoned Mother Bear into the room with cries of anguish not usually heard outside the Tower of London.

My darling wife bolted into the room and beheld a semi-circle of irate youngsters closing in on their stricken father, each urchin in his own way attempting pry the traitorous remote control of my hands.

“What’s going on!!..” she cried.

“Dad changed the channel and now we can’t watch hockey!!” they screamed

(At least that is a partial sampling of the noises-that-sound- kinda-like-words that erupted from the boyos.)

“OK, Ok…” my beloved pleaded, hands raised in the universal sign for enough already!!!

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Before I continue I must clarify a few points…

1. 1.       The TV has been hardwired to Olympic coverage since….I dunno…mid-January for the love of God!
2. 2.       It was a 30 second glimpse at a golf tournament, a sport I thought the whole household loved.
3. 3.       The hockey game I was interrupting was women’s relegation….China vs. Switzerland.

Now…as a much as I want my sons to grow up with proper respect for other cultures and traditions I cannot figure out how they had a dog in this fight.

Moving on…….

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As my wife stood glowering at me, my mouth agape in surprise, amusement, and a smidgen of fear, I realized that even the most principled of arguments on my part could not have carried the day. The Olympics are the embodiment of a sports marketers Nirvana. The Olympics are a time when it does not matter what fringe sport you put on TV, or under whose banner an athlete competes, the willing audience laps up the polished package of emotion on High Definition images.

Naturally the remote gathered dust for the rest of our waking hours, the Casey-Villegas match lost 1% of its total Canadian audience, and the boys returned to cheering for colourful laundry on the TV.

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For the navel-gazing popular sport major-domos do in times of economic turmoil, the real danger that the NHL, NFL, MLB, PGA Tour et al face is if the so-called fringe sports conspire to hold the Olympics annually rather than 4 year cycles. Can you imagine if 2-man luge or short-track speed skating had 20 days of uninterrupted hysteria every mid-winter? We might be faced with the prospect of Don Cherry moonlighting on “Moguls Night in Canada” and Johnny Miller dryly opining on the “choke” factors in Nordic Combined.

Don’t think it could happen? Could you please explain this one seeming conundrum?

Scalpers and Cross-Country Skiing

I want to wake up now…I’ve had enough of this dream.

(Schadenfreude – Shameful joy….man, the Germans have a word for everything!)

I admit that a part of me longed for the day when the Great Ship Tiger Woods would scrape the reef.  In my mind’s eye Tiger would run aground on some ethical or statistical shoal and be humbled. We, the assembled mass of mere golf mortals would all point in awe at the, oh so human flaw Mr. Perfect had revealed. Tiger of course would patiently repair his damaged reputation and continue his mythic progression.

I admit some part of me has dreamt of such an occurrence….but this is ridiculous.

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Not once have I felt anything resembling sympathy for Tiger. Any fragility or fault he has previously shown has been a mere ripple in the tide, only worth noticing for it incongruence to the monolithic norm. I feel it now.

Make no mistake, Elin and the brood will suffer for this long after the furor has died, but Tiger has shattered more belief in the goodness of humanity than a dozen Law Schools. I feel for him for what has lost and, quite frankly, the transcendental nature of the myth that he has broken.

It is hard to fathom a more consequential destruction of a public persona than Tiger’s meltdown. Consider the recent past:

• Bernard Madoff – Rich man cheating the system….has anyone even read Das Capital!?
• Bill Clinton – He was known as “Slick Willie” before the sex scandals and, while made a laughing stock, was viewed as a slightly more disreputable politician that the standard model.
• Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, etc… – We knew, we didn’t know, we didn’t care, wait….we care…I guess….
• Hugh Grant – Wow…an Hollywood actor in a sex scandal…next

Of course we put on a good show of being alarmed at their behaviour but deep down (ok shallow down) we were merely disappointed that they were not able to adequately restrain themselves from behaviour we knew was endemic to their position or personality. With Tiger we are just plain shocked.

I feel sorry for the man in the red Nike (for now) shirt because from his grasp has passed a reputation unmatched in modern culture. He has, seemingly with wild abandon, destroyed this veneer of hard won flawlessness. Beyond account and measure, he has smashed the dreams of his father and the naiveté of his fans….

I for one sympathize with a man who has really lost all that may be important to him. I all also mourn the fact that we have lost a brilliant example for our children of a person who ,through hard work and relentless expression, had it all.

I wish it could all go back to the way it was, schadenfeude is a truly bitter wine.

If intensity, fervor, and dedication were fossil fuels, J.C. Cunningham would be the Alberta Oil Sands.

Never in the 11 years that I shared his work space did I ever see him relax or take a moment for granted. So hard wired was his work ethic that even when we were in our cups, dressed like hobos, and watching the sun set at a 2 star hotel in Florida, he would lazily swivel his head, stare me straight in the forehead and say…

“Hey….Hey!!…what if  we tried….” And he was off to the races

Rarely in my life have a met someone more driven, more focused, and more aware of his place in the world than the man form Uxbridge. When I first met J.C. he had been at Angus Glen for a little less than a year, shuttling between a lucrative bartending job at the local Jack Astor’s and doing semi-grunt work for a fledgling Angus Glen.

The first week I was at Angus I asked him point blank why he wouldn’t stay with bartending and shelve the low pay-early start-long hours of the glamorous world of golf. This was….how you say…insulting to a man who I would come to know and respect for his perseverance and singularity of purpose. He was not at this grass-clad Grand Central Station to start small and stay small….and he didn’t. He rose to be General Manager of the most successful public course of its generation….and he did it despite owning the golf swing of arthritic giraffe.

He has left Angus Glen to apply his entrepreneurial drive to projects of his own creation and vision. I am happy for him, I feel privileged to still call him my friend, and I hope one day soon when the world breaks the right way for him…I will be there to ride on the yacht.

John Daly has been dying for 15 years . Odd that even with the recent death of another hyper-talented and pathologically self-destructive icon, Michael (weird waters run deep) Jackson, that we don’t feel a greater sense of dread.

 Were John Daly to be found dead in 2 star hotel next week, who would utter a single vowel of disbelief? Many of us who have followed his soap opera since his epic arrival in the early 90’s queasily treat each new reported episode with as much wonder as dismay. How much longer can he hold on?, how much more can his mind and body take?, how much longer will we care?

Having watched other personal downward spirals from near and far, I know there will come a time when nearly all of us will extinguish that light that shines just for John Daly. We will cease to be even morbidly curious and turn our away lest we witness the very worst. 

And what will we tell our youngsters of John as they reach for fame and fortune? My hope is that we will tell them that every day they make a choice about who they are and who they want to be…

And John… I don’t expect that he will understand our apparent betrayal, mostly because there will be someone there to tell him that it is not his fault.