Word of the Day
Concatenate (v., kun-KAHT-en-EIGHT)
To connect things together, perhaps into a series. It doesn't have to include cats, but if you can manage to join multiple cats into one, be our guest.
Gif of the Day
MoviesPartiesDanceMy, what red hair you haveFlowing with the rhythm
Link of the Day
Sergio Garcia wins The Masters
On the list of things we don't care about, golf is solidly in the top 3. (We tend to agree with Dave Barry.) However, we've always had a soft spot for Sergio Garcia—call it nostalgia for his amazing burst onto the scene as a 19-year-old—and yesterday, after many near-misses, Garcia finally won his first major tournament.
It's a special moment, and The New York Times' Karen Crouse does it justice with a magnificent article:
The Arnold Palmer of Europe was Seve Ballesteros, who was very, very good when he hit his drives straight and even better when they went crooked. In 1980, three months after Sergio García was born, Ballesteros won the first of his two Masters titles.
Like generations of American players who loved Palmer, García grew up wanting to be like the swashbuckling Ballesteros, whose influence on García’s golf and his life was immense. Nearly six years after Ballesteros died of brain cancer, on what would have been his 60th birthday, García conquered Justin Rose, Augusta National Golf Club and his demons — not necessarily in that order — to win the 81st Masters.
Though Garcia and Rose are long-time friends and Ryder Cup teammates, they could not be more different in the way they approach courses. Rose is the artist who studiously stays inside the lines; Garcia is the one who paints by feel.
But on the first hole of the playoff, García was the one whose drive found the fairway while Rose’s ball ricocheted off a tree and came to rest in the pine needles, in front of a pine cone. Rose’s pitch landed short of the green while García stuck his approach to 12 feet, eliciting a thumbs-up from Rose. He gallantly hung back to give García the stage to himself, allowing him to bask in applause that had been building for decades.
After Rose tapped in for bogey, the spotlight belonged to García, who rammed in his birdie attempt, and then squatted in relief — or maybe disbelief.
It was the first Masters since 1954 without Palmer, the golf’s first global ambassador, and there could have been no better tribute to his legacy than the partisan American crowd sweetly serenading a Spaniard as if he were its own.
You can read the whole article at The New York Times.
SportsGolfSergio GarciaThe MastersAt LastPanache