DEFENSELESS STARS

Security here at the Games isn’t too tight. But even for an always-relaxed Brazil, what goes on in this facility is out of whack. Even the scanner, through which all the luggage of television and press normally passes, is not working. The course, on which the world’s million-dollar golf stars perform, is easily accessed after a very conventional backpack inspection. If you want you can carry anything you like, even a medium-sized bomb – the security guards won’t notice. Although, taking into account the specifics of the competition, a folding lounge chair would be much more useful here.

Welcome to golf, the most unusual of all Olympic sports!

When the editorial office informed us that it would like a report from the competition, which after 112 years returned to the programme of the Games, the journalist’s soul, exhausted from the disorder of local life, rejoiced. The imagination pictured a cozy country club, well-groomed green fields, a shady recreation area, waitresses with full glasses of champagne. Okay, we could even do it without champagne… But in fact it turned out quite differently. Charlie’s aunt from the movies would have added “Brazilian style” at that point.

The Olympic Golf Center is a new neighborhood, not quite finished yet. Unfinished high-rises pile up around it with crane arms sticking out. The newly excavated turf squares at the entrance to the site have been dug up. They have already faded from the scorching sun, though. Some parts of the course, or, in golfers’ terms, the green, are separated by paths covered not with gravel, as usual, but with sand. In the best case – lined with some local variety of tumbleweed. And so, crowds of fans and journalists walk, limply lifting their feet, in clouds of dust.

ABOUT THE DANGERS OF TOUCHING OTHER PEOPLE’S PROPERTY

The golf course is separated from the fans’ area with a thin cord. A whole procession of people, reminiscent of a gypsy camp, moves around the course. The golfer himself, his caddie, an assistant carrying a bag of clubs, a girl carrying a sign with the player’s name and his place after the previous day’s tournament. A cameraman with a TV camera, another TV man with a microphone, several referees, a security guard. Everything is like a poem – a picture, a basket, a bag… A crowd of fans follows them in some distance. The first procession slows down, the second freezes as well. A stop, a brief meeting with the caddies, a whack of the club on the ball, a rustling sound of applause. And both processions set off again.

Following the crowd of fans, I tried to figure out how they could see the flight of the ball. It’s good to watch golf on TV, where the trajectory is indicated by special graphics. But in real life? Snap – and the ball flew somewhere in the sky. Where did it land, or did it land at all? But people are applauding, so they see something there…

While I was thinking, a ball rolled under my feet. Right on the spectators’ path, outside the fence. My first impulse was to grab this souvenir and slip it into my pocket. My second impulse was to kick it back into the field, as I usually do with a naughty soccer ball. But something stopped me. Now I understand what – it was the instinct of self-preservation. If I had given in to my instincts, a huge scandal would have been unavoidable. The country’s enemies could have even written that a Russian journalist was trying to sabotage the Olympic competition.

That’s how we looked at each other. Me at the ball. The ball looked at me. After about two minutes, some guy came running over and stuck a wire with a red flag strung on it in the sand. A minute later the TV crew and a security guard came over. Soon the rest of the convoy gathered around us. Everyone was looking at the ball with respect and even apprehension, as if they had found a grenade. The umpires pulled the sticks out of the ground with the twine that separated the field. The playing area merged with the spectators’ area.

Finally came the mistress of the ball, Swedish Nordqvist with her caddie. She looked at the crowd with a skeptical look, motioned to move aside with a gesture. The circle of people got a little wider. Snap! – and the ball went back into the sky, and both processions followed their usual route. At no Olympic rally have I ever seen an athlete closer to his business than at a golf course.

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Each summer, one of the finest golf clubs in the United States hosts some of the world’s strongest golf professionals as they compete for the Wanamaker Trophy.

Launched in 1916, the PGA Championship soon became one of the biggest events in the sports world. The tournament has hosted 71 golf courses in 25 American states. Since 1994, the PGA Championship has attracted the largest number of players in the top 100 in the world and has consistently boasted the strongest lineup in the world. The 2002 PGA Championship, for example, held at the Hazeltine National Golf Club in Minnesota, set the all-time record for the most highly ranked participants with 98 of the Top 100 golfers.

The idea for the PGA Championship was born in the mind of store owner Rodman Wanamaker, who felt that an association of professional golfers could have limitless marketing opportunities. Wanamaker invited several prominent players and other influential members of the golf industry to a luncheon held at the Taplow Club in New York City on January 17, 1916. The meeting of a group of 35, including the legendary Walter Hagen, resulted in the founding of the American Professional Golf Association, The PGA of America.

During the meeting, Wanamaker hinted that the formed organization should have its own traditional professional tournament and offered to invest $2,500 and various trophies and medals into a future prize fund. He felt the tournament should follow the same pattern as the British News of the World Tournament – played in Great Britain from 1903 to 1979 as a match play tournament, while the British Open and U.S. Open (still one of the four most prestigious tournaments) played 72 holes to decide the winner, or Stroke Play as they are today at most professional tournaments.

Wanamaker’s proposal, however, was accepted and seven months later the first ever PGA Championship was held at Siwanoy Country Club in Bronxville, New York. British-born Jim Barnes and Jock Hutchinson of famed Scottish St. Andrews met in the final round. The former won 1-0.

In 1958, the format of the competition was changed – now golfers determine the strongest in the stroke play, or the game on the score of strokes. The organizers of the PGA Championship were, as it often happens, forced by the interests of television – to attract a larger audience it was advantageous to have more groups of well-known golfers and contenders on the field at the climax of the competition.

Until the 1960s, the tournament was usually held in July, the week after the British Open Championship, making it nearly impossible for athletes to participate in both majors. In 1965, the PGA moved its name to August, and since 1969 it has had its permanent place on the calendar – in the middle of the last summer month, four weeks after the Open Championship. The only exception was 1971 – then it was held in Florida in February and for the first and last time in its history, it was not the final, but the opening major of the season.

The PGA Championship is played mostly in the eastern United States – only ten times in its history has the tournament moved west. The 2011 season welcomes the world’s best golfers to the redesigned Highlands course at the Atlanta Athletic Club in Johns Creek, Georgia, 23 miles north of Atlanta.

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Fifty years after (no, not Yuri Gagarin went into space) South African Gary Player became the first overseas player to win at Augusta National Golf Club, his 26-year-old compatriot Charles Schwartzer won his first major there. The 26-year-old posted a final score of 14-under par, two strokes ahead of Australia’s Adam Scott and Jason Day.

The South African started the final round as one of the chasers of the tournament’s undisputed leader, Rory McIlroy. He, along with three other golfers, was four strokes behind the Northern Irishman. But Sunday was definitely Schwartzel’s day. He was also getting plenty of help from his competitors.

The South African made a birdie on the first hole and an igloo on the fourth. His bogey on the fifth didn’t faze him… After pausing for a moment, the 26-year-old from Johannesburg kept par for the next ten holes and carded four birdies in a row on the final four. Schwartzel completed his triumphant performance at the Masters with an 18-foot putt.

“By the 15th hole, I was in a pretty tight spot, and I had to do something,” Schwartzel said. “It was a very exciting day. So much noise! The atmosphere is indescribable. Just phenomenal!”

In general, the leader of the competition changed no less than 15 times during the final round. Woods was the first to cause confusion. The most popular golfer of today, who hasn’t had a tournament win in 17 months, started with birdies on the second and third holes, but bogeyed on the short fourth. Birdie putts on the sixth and seventh and a terrific putt on the eighth, made possible by two amazing strokes into the slide and a neat putt from 10 feet. On the ninth hole, Woods, even after hitting a sand bunker, miraculously saved par and gave himself a chance to break the drought. But that didn’t happen. The American made a bogey on the three-par 12th hole, missing by just a couple of centimeters, but couldn’t make it right on the rest of the field. The American could make the much-needed needle on the 15th hole, but he settled for a birdie and parred the rest. He ended up sharing fourth place with Australia’s Geoff Ojilvy and England’s Luke Donald in fourth place.

By the way, Donald, the triumphant winner of the traditional Par 3 Contest showdown on the Wednesday before the main event, was at one point poised to take a big win. But fatal for him was the 12th hole where he, who sent the ball into the water, was recorded a double bogey. Argentinian Angel Cabrera and South Korean Kei Jae Choi, the 2009 Masters champion, also shared an interim lead, and soon all eyes were on Scott, Schwartzel and Day.

Scott took the lead after a birdie on the 14th hole and a superb tee shot on the 16th brought him closer to becoming the first champion from Australia, but while his compatriot and final round partner Day performed a birdie on the final two holes, Scott himself was unable to surpass par there. In the end, one of the Green Continent’s representatives carded a 67 in the final round, the other a 68, and that wasn’t enough to knock off the trailing Schwartzel.

Rory McIlroy is unlikely to want to remember this Sunday. The 21-year-old gripped the lead after the first round and consolidated his lead to four strokes at the end of the third. But the final day of competition was a nightmare for the star from Northern Ireland. Only one birdie to four bogeys plus two double bogeys on the 10th and 12th holes! In the end, it took Rory 80 strokes to make it past the par-72 course, his worst score of the day.

McIlroy finished only 15th in the final scorecard. And The Masters title went not to Northern Ireland, but to South Africa. Now representatives of the African, not a small European country, own half of the majors – the winner of the Open Championship, recall, since the summer of 2010 is Louis Osthuizen. And by the way, taking into account the fact that last year the US Open was won by Northern Irishman Graham McDowell and the US PGA – by German Martin Kaymer, we can state that the Americans now do not own titles of any of the majors. For the first time since 1994.

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Alvaro Quiroz hit a home run in the fourth round to win the tournament in Dubai which attracted all the world’s top golfers. The Spaniard was one stroke ahead of Denmark’s Anders Hansen and South Africa’s James Kingston in the final scorecard.

Before the final day of competition, Quiroz shared a provisional fourth place with six other golfers, including Tiger Woods, with a -7. Quiros began his final round with a tee shot on the second hole and two birdies on the third and fifth, but grabbed a triple bogey on the seventh as his ball got stuck in a tree. Could victory be forgotten? No, it wasn’t! The decisive moment for the Spaniard came on the 161-yard 11th hole, which is where he registered the ice – he overcame the par-3 hole with a single stroke. “It was a perfect shot,” the golfer said at the end of the event. – It happens once a year.”

But even after his hole-in-one, Quiros was still losing to Hansen, who entered the final round as one of the leaders. The Spaniard birdied the 16th hole and par-bogeyed the rest two holes to pull ahead of the Norwegian who was struggling to recover from an upset bogey on the 15th hole. To add, both Kingston and Hansen had a chance to advance to the playoffs, but the former missed from 30 feet and the latter erred from 40.

Quiros, 28, won his fifth European Tour title and first of the 2011 season. What’s more, with this victory, the 28-year-old Spaniard topped the Race to Dubai, the official European Tour standings. He moved up in the world rankings from 37th to 21st, the highest ranking of his career.

“I’m very proud of myself,” the 28-year-old golfer said. – I think I was able to handle difficult situations well. I have to admit that the ice on the 11th hole was probably the most exciting moment of my career. It’s like the last piece of birthday cake. It gave me a chance to win the tournament.”

Northern Ireland’s Rory McIlroy, who had led for the first three days of the tournament, made five bogeys on Sunday with three birdies, posted a +2 and ended up just tenth.

Tiger Woods was just two strokes behind the leader with seven holes to go, but he sent his ball into the lake on the 18th, got a double bogey and ended up being one of those to share 20th place. The great American hasn’t known a tournament win in 15 months.

World ranking leader Lee Westwood could also have hoped for a high score, but after conceding a pair of three strokes on the last two holes (his ball got stuck in a tree on the 17th just like Quiros and went into the lake on the 18th just like Woods), the Englishman slipped to 15th place.

Martin Kaymer performed even worse. The 26-year-old German, who had a chance to top the world rankings if he had placed first or second in Dubai, ended up finishing only 31st.

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