The father of my high school team’s Goalkeeper is a chef at East Lake, so my ‘keeper scored Ismail and I two Clubhouse passes to the Tour Championship. We headed out there late Saturday afternoon because Ismail had a T-Ball Game earlier that day (2-2, HR, 3B, 4 Putouts including an unassisted double play). It took forever for us to get to the Course from the Turner Field shuttle site because the shuttles were all backed up with people already leaving for the day.

We finally arrived at the course almost 45 minutes after leaving the Ted. We first came across the putting green and Jim Furyk was taking some putts, so we watched him for a bit. Ismail decided that he wanted to get some autographs, so we hung around there for 30 minutes or so and he ended up getting Ernie Els and Robert Allenby. He could’ve picked up a few more, but he got antsy and wanted to go elsewhere.

We briefly went into the Clubhouse just to see what it was like and then we walked around back and found a spot to sit down in the shade and see Vijay Singh taking drives on the practice fairway. Next, we made it over to the 17th hole and watched a few groups come through, including Sergio Garcia. Lastly, we made it to the 16th hole where we saw Mark Calcavecchia’s group play and then Tiger’s. The gallery to watch Tiger was at least five deep all the way around the green. As a Social/Cultural Geographer, I found it very interesting how many African-Americans were walking the course with Tiger. When I was a kid, I almost never saw many non-whites at these tournaments. Of course, Atlanta is 70% black, so I was wondering if African-American crowds are anywhere near as large at other tournaments in lily-white communities as they were at East Lake. Over at Oakland Cemetery, Bobby Jones is probably turning in his grave.  

After watching Tiger hit from the 17th, we made our way back to the Shuttles. Although we were only there two hours, we were exhausted from the earlier T-Ball game and all of the waiting, walking and riding that were required. I wasn’t quite sure if Ismail would be old enough to have a good time there; now I know that it probably will be a few more years before I take him again.