Sports, Pride, and Life

When asked what he would do if he won the British Open, Northern Ireland's Darren Clarke responded frankly, "I won't be sober for a month!"

How Can You Root Against this Guy?

Stock the bar.

The 42 year-old Clarke, lover of fine wine, cigars and fast cars, had a mantra going into the week; "Don't let your golf game determine your attitude, let your attitude determine your golf game."

Sounds easy, but to someone who lost his wife five years ago to cancer and last contended in a major a decade ago, Clarke wasn't just contending with the wind and rain at Royal St. George's Golf Links.  Clarke was teaching us perseverance.

He held the lead after the first two rounds.  But for someone with so much on the line, Clarke never stopped smiling, joking, and interacting with the crowd, even silencing their cheers so that his playing partners could play their shots in silence. Darren Clarke was teaching us how to win with class.

"Bad times in golf are more frequent than the good times," he said. "I've always been pretty hard on myself when I fail because I don't find it very easy to accept that. And there's times I've been completely and utterly fed up with the game."

The advice from friends & family were always the same.

"Get out there and practice and keep going, keep going, keep going," Clarke said. "And that's why I'm sitting here now."

So how will the British Open victory change Darren Clarke? It won't.  

"I'm a bit of a normal bloke, aren't I?" Clarke said.  "I like to go to the pub and have a pint, fly home, buy everybody a drink, just normal. There's not many airs and graces about me. I was a little bit more difficult to deal with in my earlier years, and I've mellowed some. Just a little bit. But I'm just a normal guy playing golf, having a bit of fun."

I think his "fun" might've determined his fate.

The Thrill of Victory is always balanced by the Agony of Defeat 

"Don't give up. Don't ever, ever give up."

-Jim Valvano, NC State Championship Basketball Coach and founder of Jimmy V. Cancer Foundation

The USA Women's World Cup team had given it's fans the ultimate script.  Fight tooth and nail, scratch and claw, see your future, be your future.  They won in dominating fashion early in the tournament, and fought their way into the finals with one of the most inspiring victories over Brazil [and the officials] playing a woman-down for over 45 minutes, yet finding a way to get to penalty kicks and beat 'Goliath'.

Choke Solo

You don't win titles in semi-finals.

The USA dominated the first half in yesterday's final.  They could've been up 3-4 goals in the first 20 minutes of play, but they forced the issue.  They were bigger, faster, and stronger than Japan, but instead of exercising patience and utilizing their advantageous skill sets, they were sloppy.  Physically, they overwhelmed the Japanese. 

Don't underestimate pride. 

Japan was focused, tenacious, and determined. Homare Sawa, Japan's captain and the leading goal-scorer, said, "I want to inspire courage in our country with our play."  

For a country coming off some horrific natural disasters, those are fighting words. And Japan fought hard. Coming back TWICE, once in regulation and again in extra time. The USA had a chance to put away an opponent early and they didn't do it.  In sports, if you let the underdog hang around, you give them the confidence needed for an upset. 

If Sunday showed us anything, it's that obstacles are always there, people are always speculating and criticizing, and the only thing you can control is your attitude, determination, and tenacity. 

How far do you want to go?  

So Money

I like money. I like golf. I like taking people's money playing golf. Someone get me this country club money clip. It reeks of the waspyness I've come to expect from Brooks Brothers. Well done fellas. 

Official Leisure Radio

After posting my thoughts on music and telling you how important it is to a well balanced life, I figured I had to prove it to you.  I'm a Pandora freak. Love it. Swear by it. Have it on at home, in the car, headphones, etc. I'm dabbling with a new app called DubSet, which I will have a full review on later in the coming week or so, but I have a gift for you on a Monday!

I have a few stations on Pandora, but the one I work the longest on is "Fitz FM". Spanning over 6 decades of Rock, Hip Hop, Motown, Pop, Soul, R&B, Jazz, etc. (No country. Sorry, going to have to cry somewhere else.)

It's my daily interaction with Pandora.  I'm always giving it feedback, so it's a combination of all the music I listen to fueled by ADHD. Put it on wherever.  It's appropriate for all occasions. Hope you enjoy it.


Click here to listen to Fitz FM

Music in my day...

I woke up to a massive thunderstorm this morning. Haven't seen/felt one like it in a while. It gave me some time to catch up on my music. I threw up a link on twitter to some great stuff: click here.


So in the midst of downloading, listening, organizing, reorganizing playlists, and syncing the iPhone 4 more times than was necessary, I started thinking.  Yeah, scary thought, I know.


At what point do you become the person you feared, i.e. the aging-hipster who constantly says, "music today sucks!" or "why the hell is this shit popular, there's no talent?!" etc?  I listen to some new stuff, but not too much.  Actually, it's just new albums by artists I discovered years ago (strokes, interpol, tv on the radio).  But instead of claiming there isn't anything out there, I had a new theory on musical taste in relation to one's age.


At some point we get lazy. Some people just don't care and listen to terrestrial radio and are content in their adult-contemporary saturated lives. I could write endless blogs on how I can't fathom people who don't love music. I feel like everything has a soundtrack. Anyways, we get content in our taste at some point between the late teens and mid-twenties and instead of discovering newer artists, we start to look back and listen to the acts that influenced the artist we originally enjoyed.

'You don't know me, but I'm your
braaaathaaaaaa'

So, inevitably, we get to a point where we just dismiss new music because we don't have time to get into it.  It's easier to just claim it's terrible.


It definitely doesn't have anything to do with the fact that everything today is overly-produced, can't be performed live, has no melodic qualities, is done on a computer, is decided by suits looking for the next american idol, and has a budget dumped into marketing more than anything else.


Nah, that can't be it. I'm just getting old.