Flight

An airplane needs speed to fly. Without speed, the wings can’t generate enough lift to overcome the force of gravity and the plane will never leave the ground. But you must be careful when flying, especially smaller single engine planes, that you don’t climb so fast, at such a steep angle that your mass outweighs the force of your engines and you stall out. Doing so would send your aircraft plummeting to the Earth.

It’s also important to note, in just such a case, that the thing to do…by the book…is the thing that instinctively makes the least amount of sense. The best thing to do, in the event of a stall, is to point the plane’s nose toward the ground. True, it sounds like this is the last thing you would want to do, basically you’re ensuring that you’re going to impact the ground all that much sooner. But the thought, the aerodynamic theory, is that in pointing your plane to the ground you’ll fall faster and generate just enough of that precious speed to once again give your plane the ability of flight.

Of course, all of this assumes you weren’t already too low to the ground when the stall began. And that you don’t wait too long to pull up. If either of these two scenarios occurs then it’s going to be an awfully bad day and one that no parachute is going to save you from.

Tiger Woods –The Masters

The last golf game I purchased was “Tiger Woods 06”, I can’t swear to it, but I don’t think I ever completed a full 18 holes. There were so many things bad about it I really can’t begin to list them all here.

Since then, I’ve rented or borrowed a couple of newer versions of the game, and really…not much improvement going on. But after reading several glowing reviews about Tiger Woods – The Masters, I decided to give a shot. The cheap way of course, I downloaded the demo.

To my surprise, it actually FELT like a pretty solid golf game…even if the demo was really way too short to get a full feel of the game. But since it’s a pretty historic moment that a company can get Augusta to license their course in a computer game I figured this may be my only chance to virtually play Augusta.

So I jumped in and bought the thing. Even paid full price, shocker.

I’m very happy to say, “Money well spent.”

It is a very solid golf game with a gorgeous presentation, and a plethora of game choices.

I’ll hold off on a long rambling game review and just go with “If you’ve ever enjoyed golf, and you’ve got a 360 I highly recommend picking it up. And soon, or you’ll miss out on one of the cooler features “Play With the Pros” where they pull in the current PGA golf tournament and you get to really feel the players pain while they try to play in 30 mph winds or face the glass greens of Augusta.

Tiger at the Masters

Tiger Woods is at the Masters again. Sure a lot of things have changed since his last win at Augusta, mainly the fact that a lot of his squeaky clean image was a big disguise. He may have had more mistresses than major tournament wins (which is saying a lot). But honestly, I'd really like to see the guy in one of those God awful green jackets one more time.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not condoning his extra-marital activities, but the truth is...I think golf, the sport, NEEDS him to win. When golf is at it's best, there's always a small, very small handful of people that play as superstars. From the days of Bobby Jones, to Sam Sneed, to Jack and Tom...and then..for a while golf lost it's iconic figures. It was anybody's tournament any given weekend. Sure there was a relatively core group that was likely to pop up in the top 10; people like Fred Couples, Greg Norman, Curtis Strange; but no one consistently really dominated the game like the earlier legends.

While that may sound like an ideal, "fair" situation it doesn't give anyone anything to "look forward too" for the next weekend. People WANT stars, especially in a game when 95% of the time the players are playing as individuals.

Then along comes Tiger Woods. A child prodigy. Someone that seemed born, made, destined to play golf. All eyes were on him as he dominated college and amateur tournaments shattering records all along the way. He really had all the pressure in the world on him from the very instant he turned pro, and he didn't disappoint.

From straight out of the gate he shot to the top of the leader boards, winning tournament after tournament. And with each win his legend began to grow. If Tiger was leading on Sunday morning everyone else was playing for second place. He could make a charge on Saturday from anywhere in the pack with an almost mythical quality. He didn't choke. He didn't make mistakes. When it came to golf, he was perfect.

Golf was fun to watch. No matter where things sat at the end of the day on Friday, everyone wanted to see when and how Tiger was going to make his charge this weekend. A good deal of this performances, and that's what they had become...performances, bordered on inhuman. It was amazing to watch.

But on November 27, 2009, (coincidentally my birthday), the whole world found out that when it came to life, he was far from perfect. He had a wife, and kids and had cheated, repeatedly, many, MANY times.

Jack Nicklaus once said, "Golf is 90% mental." If that statement was ever in question, all you have to do is take a brief look at what happened to Tiger's golf game post November 27. You'd think Tiger had had one or more of his arms or legs amputated when he crashed his Escalade into that tree. He couldn't manage to win a tournament. Even worse, for a while, he had trouble even finishing a tournament.

Golf's Hercules had had his hair cut. He was indeed very human after all.

But like I was saying, people want super stars. They need heroes and larger than life, inhuman characters.

In the movie "The Legend of Bagger Vance", Will Smith's character is talking with the protagonist of the movie, Randolph Juna. This is a character that supposedly played artful golf then was sent off to war where he lost the majority of his platoon in  battle. And went he returned from war, he had 'lost his swing'. Will Smith's advice to Mr. Juna could pretty much be taken straight to Tiger. "The Randolph Juna you was, you ain't ever gonna be. Ever....ever."  

So, like the fictional Juna, Tiger has to reinvent himself. The 10% physical part his golf game he's still got. He's just got to work on getting back more of the 90% that Jack talked about. And I hope he can do it, before it's too late. Sure, he's proved he's not perfect in a big way. But I miss the old Tiger. I enjoyed watching the old Tiger tear a golf course to shreds and embarrass a field of the world's best golfers, making them look like high school freshmen. At times, it was in a word...magical.

I'm a strong believer in magic and we could always use a little more of it in the world.