Ryder Cuppin'

This weekend I'm crossing a pretty big item off the bucket list by attending Saturday's matches of the Ryder Cup.  (Here's a disclaimer for pretty much this whole post:  I'll be attending....assuming American Airlines doesn't screw me over.  Long story short: the pilots and the company are in the middle of a pretty big labor beef, so only 55% of flights are arriving within 15 minutes of their scheduled time, and 5-7% of their flights are being flat-out cancelled-- when a 1% cancellation rate equals a horrible day for an airline.  I'm not supposed to arrive in Chicago until 9:30 tonight, and if something flight-related happens that bones me over, and I miss tomorrow's matches....shit is gonna get real.  End of disclaimer; for the sake of this post, let's just assume everything works out and I'm on the grounds of Medinah at 7am tomorrow.)

I've been to the '02 PGA Championship, a practice round of the '05 Masters, the '06 PGA, and the '09 PGA...but nothing like the Ryder Cup.  Normally golf is a gentleman's game, and respect must be shown equally to all competitors.  But the Ryder Cup.....break out the champagne glasses and muthafuckin' condoms!  But seriously, to the layperson who might not know much about golf, the Ryder Cup is a completely different animal.  There is way more boozing.  There is a 900% increase in people wearing the American flag as clothing.  We as spectators are allowed, nay, encouraged, to heavily cheer the Americans and mildly heckle the Europeans.  The golfers, who are normally playing only for themselves, and as a result are usually straight-laced and don't show much emotion, are suddenly screaming and fist-pumping routine birdies as they play for their country.....it's fantastic.  My favorite sporting event besides March Madness.

A little while back, I chronicled my love for Jason Dufner-- the golfer who constantly chews on the course, tweets about gambling on football, makes fun of Jay Cutler on the reg.....

....AND COMPLETELY OUTKICKED HIS COVERAGE WITH HIS WIFE.  Actually, I don't know if 'outkicked his coverage' goes far enough to describe how far over his head he married.  What a stud.  Some member of the media tweeted this picture the other day, asking his followers if they thought Dufner 'overmarried'....and Dufner tweeted back with the response "Why would you ever UNDER marry?  Duh."


Right now, the only thing keeping Dufner from being my favorite golfer is that I've put in 17 good years with Phil Mickelson. I'm like a middle-aged husband, shooting off some serious sparks with the new temp in the office.  But I won't consider a divorce, since I'm mostly happily married, and what would we do with the house, you know? And all that paperwork, custody battles....not worth it. But I definitely still daydream about that temp. 

ANYWAY, no joke:  I had a dream the other night that Jud and I were standing off the 12th hole, and on his way to the 13th tee, Dufner walked over to me and asked to bum a chew.  Now I'm going to try and make this happen, and if I'm somehow successful....I fucking hope the Mayans are right.  I wanna go out on top.

So let's all think positive thoughts about my flight tonight, OK?  I haven't been on a plane in over four years (Weird, right?  I feel like that's an absurdly long time) so I'm hoping I have some good plane karma built up.  Granted, the last time I was on a plane, on my way to Vegas, I had a visibly pregnant woman ordering me Morgan Diets the entire flight, to the disgust of the stewardess, since I was trying to cheat the 'one drink at a time' rule, but any possible bad mojo from that can't carry over until now, right?  That statute of limitations has to have expired by now.

Oh yeah, almost forgot....

USA!  USA!  USA!  USA!