Tiger Woods in Romania

Posted: 17/03/2008

More than likely you missed a recent bit of astonishing news. The information, very brief in length, came from a small local television station on the east coast of Florida. I happened to be watching that station because while I was on business in Florida my rental car's transmission conked out. An engine part had to be ordered, forcing me to check into a motel.
Lying on my bed that night, periodically dozing from a long afternoon spent in Florida's heat and humidity, I began to flip channels on my in-room TV.

Suddenly a familiar face appeared - that of the golfer Tiger Woods. I was about to hit the remote button when something caused me to stay put.

Woods, it seemed, was being interviewed on a street in a Florida community whose name I did not catch. Woods apparently lived nearby.

The TV reporter, an anxious, nervous young woman wearing too much makeup and too few clothes, clearly looked to be on her first professional assignment, which seemed odd considering who was standing in front of her.

Woods himself was standing in the doorway of a dry cleaning shop, which seemed even odder, since Woods clearly can afford to hire people to drop off or retrieve his golf shirts and slacks, if that's what he was doing.

The reporter began the interview with a series of questions: Do you like to play golf? Have you ever won a tournament? Do you play miniature golf?

Dutifully, Woods answered each question with a yes or a no. If the questions pained him, he didn't show it.

The reporter eventually realised that having the world's wealthiest athlete respond with one word probably was not going to yield much of an interview.

So the young woman then asked Woods something that might involve a more thoughtful answer: "What do you do with your money?"

A look of surprise crossed Wo ods' face. But instead of walking away from the reporter for being so personal, he said, "Well, right now I'm buying some real estate. You know, maybe a country."

I blinked, wondering if I had heard Woods correctly. What did he mean? Was he kidding the young woman? It was hard to tell by his tone.

The reporter, however, sensed nothing except a scoop.

"What country?" she probed.

"Oh," said Woods, "I don't know, something not too big. I've got my eye on Romania."
I sat straight up in bed. Had I heard what I thought I had?

Having lived for two years in Romania, and knowing you could count the number of golf courses there on one hand, and not include two of your fingers, I wondered what might have drawn Woods to that faraway land. Did Tiger Woods have an unexplained fondness for ciorba de fasole? Did he secretly yearn to own a flat in Craiova?

The interview seemed to end at that point, and I fell back in bed. But I couldn't fall asleep. Could Tiger Woods be serious? Or was he just having some fun?

I had no idea, but I was determined to find out.

When I returned home from Florida, I went straight to my computer and Googled "Tiger Woods Romania." Nothing.

Then I called a friend of mine, a sportswriter who follows the PGA Tour. I asked him if he knew anything about Tiger Woods planning to purchase an entire country.

"What have you been drinking?" he replied.

When I told him of the TV interview, my friend said, "Tiger's got the money to do that. But it seems crazy. It doesn't figure. What's in Romania for him?"

I said I didn't know.

My next step was to try to find the television station in Florida, and attempt to get a copy of the tape of that bizarre interview. For three days I made telephone calls. But I could find no listing for a TV station in the town where I spent the night or any places close to it. In fact, no one who worked in the broadcast business in central Florida knew of any such station or the interview.

"Listen," one station manager told me, "Tiger Woods never gives on-the-street, ambush interviews. Everything has to go through his agents."

Had I been imagining all this? Dreaming it? Early that night in my Florida motel room I had eaten some mangos. Did I get a bad one? Did a rotten mango cause my brain to think wacko thoughts as I snoozed there on the bed?

I didn't know. Perhaps I'll never know. But just in case, each day I continue to read the news carefully. I'm searching for developments, possibly even a headline that might read,

"Nike Logo Installed Atop Palatul Victoria." Sursa articol: Vivid