Fun with Phil

Looking back I realized I never wrote about when we all went to the HSBC World Golf Championship last year at Sheshan Golf Course. It was a great tournament made even better when it became the Katie and Phil mutual admiration society. I never would have thought that we could top the experience, but the first couple of days of this year's tournament is turning into just as wonderfully momentous.

Unfortunately, Larry is in Singapore this week and will only be able to attend Sunday's round. Fortunately for Katie, I am a mother with whacked priorities and allowed her to miss two days of school so she could rekindle her relationship. Seriously, the odds he would remember her should have been less than zero, but by God, the man spotted her after he walked off the first tee during the Pro-Am, and exclaimed, "Hi there! How have you been?" and gave her a big high-five. Are you kidding me?!?! His caddie had already given her a ball. We could have gone home then quite happy, but we headed over to our lucky spot from last year, the 7th green. From that spot we had a clear view of every single player. As the groups came through, we applauded politely. We were the ONLY ones there. Every single player smiled, said 'hello', and/or gave Katie a ball. By the time Phil came by, she'd already gotten four balls. We followed Phil in as he played the next two holes and as he came off the 9th green, he gave Katie a nice fist bump.

After we had a quick lunch we headed over to 18. The players were either finishing up or walking over to one and had to pass by us. Katie got quite a few autographs; Retief Goosen and Adam Scott were hurrying through, but the volunteer workers took a liking to Katie and grabbed her tournament hat and got the players to autograph it as they were walking.

We were cutting it close in terms of time as we had to be home by five, but Katie wanted to try and get Phil's autograph. The crowds were getting bigger and rowdier, but we found a spot and Phil spotted his buddy and signed her special Calloway hat. No sooner had he left then Tiger came through. People were jammed up against us as he neared us and Katie was getting crushed. Tiger was no more than two feet away when Katie starting crying and the body guards yelled at the crowd "Ting" (chinese for stop). When they did that, Tiger looked up, saw the scene and walked away. Yes, we were upset, but I'm glad he did as truly the crowd was scary.

I told Katie that it was time to leave, but as we were walking past the clubhouse Katie spotted Phil. She asked me if I thought he would take a picture with her. I told her "Let's find out". She walked over to him, waited for him to look up and asked. He said "Of course. Please, let her through." I just about swallowed my heart and almost bumbled the whole thing by not having my camera ready, but he waited with his arm around her. Ok, now our day was complete.

I contemplated not even going the next day, wondering how could it be any better. Katie wouldn't hear of it.

More to come....