Limping Tiger to take on a guy we'd all like to meet
Today's U.S. Open golf playoff will look sort of familiar.
In fact, I might have been hooked up with the competitors at some time on the first tee at Buffalo Grove Golf Course.
You know, one of the players is limping around on a bum leg and the other is balding, overweight and over-aged.
On top of that, the older guy is named Rocco. PGA Tour golfers aren't named Rocco. Bartenders, bouncers and boxers are.
PGA Tour players are named … well, the only one that matters much is named Tiger. By the way, he's the one hobbling, grimacing and groaning in the Open on a surgically repaired left knee.
So that's the deal today, 18 holes for golf's national championship between Tiger Woods and Rocco Mediate.
Even Tiger fans have to consider pulling for a man named Rocco.
Mediate is the 158th-ranked player in the world. At 45 years of age he would be the oldest U.S. Open winner ever. Oh, did I mention he's pear-shaped?
On the surface -- Torrey Pines Municipal's South Course near San Diego -- this is as one-sided a matchup as imaginable.
Maybe the only way it could happen is because Woods' bad knee prevented him from running away from the field.
Or maybe it happened because a public course was site of the 2008 U.S. Open, and Mediate looks like a public-course player.
Tim Russert's death Friday inspired discussion over the appeal of famous people who remind us of ourselves.
That's Rocco Mediate. I don't know whether he emerged from country clubs or corner pubs, but he sure seems like a guy you'd like to have a beer with.
All of us older, paunchier, balder guys can relate to this guy's golf game just as so many everyday working folk could relate to Russert's political analysis.
"Rock's one of the nicest guys, super-nice," Woods said. "Not one guy out here doesn't like Rock."
So today Tiger, as ruthless an athlete as there is on the planet, will try to beat his nice friend's brains in.
Woods said, "We'll talk a little bit but we'll understand we're trying to win a U.S. Open." Mediate chuckled, "I don't think there's much I scare him with."
Anyway, Mediate is like that jovial guy at your local public course who can smile and crack you up with a joke after a bad shot -- his or yours.
That's pretty rare among PGA Tour players. They all can play and chew gum at the same time, but few can laugh and maintain a game face at the same time.
Then there's Tiger Woods, who even on a recovering knee is buff enough to bench-press all of Mediate's ample being.
"I'm playing against a monster (this) morning," Mediate said without a hint of exaggeration.
Yet the guy named Rocco played well enough to force the monster named Tiger to make a missable putt on Sunday's final hole.
When it dropped, Mediate said on NBC-TV, "Unbelievable … I knew he'd make it."
That's what Mediate will be up against today -- a monster on a bad leg that opponents, fans and the media still expect to perform the unbelievable.
Maybe the guy named Rocco's best hope is to whack the guy named Tiger across the bad knee with a 5-iron.
Isn't that often the strategy at the neighborhood 18?