The Secret World of Golf Groupies - Essay Sample

Introduction

Tiger Woods isn’t the lone golf player with roistering issues. Retired participants and current caddies tell Gerald Posner about the game inside the existent PGA: The ‘Party Groupie Association. ‘ Plus, Posner on sole inside information of Tiger‘s new prenup.

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The daze environing the Tiger Woods disclosures this past hebdomad had a batch to make with his carefully generated squeaky-clean image. But about as much the game and civilization he came from golf, with its elitist, state nine birthplace and paunchy, white, middle-aged partisans. At the professional degree, nevertheless, there‘s a secret underworld non unlike many other major conference athletics: a Daily Beast probe turned up groupies, roistering and wild sex as a cardinal component for many participants on the PGA Tour.

I spoke to eight retired golf players, current caddies, and ex-PGA workers. All spoke on the status of namelessness. In the instances of the former participants, some earn attending fees for certain charity events or have good friends who are still playing, while each of the others whom I interviewed have go oning concern relationships with the PGA or earn income from tourneies that they are non willing to put on the line by traveling public.

Lizzie Skurnick: What Tiger‘s Mom Saw These beginnings recounted narratives of ‘hounds ‘ or ‘wild workforces ‘ inside the little professional fraternity. One of the names that came up the most: John Daly. Some of the narratives are good known, such as when he passed out rummy at Hooters or showed up at one tourney with abrasions on his face from an angry married woman ( he‘s on his 4th matrimony ) . What isn’t publically known is that in 2006, Daly‘s autobiography originally included several ardent adult-only adventures. Beginnings say that concern advisers thought the stuff far excessively lively, even for Daly, and talked the golf player out of it. Whole subdivisions were cut from the first bill of exchange including mentions to 3s, and his then-wife Sherrie installation cameras on his circuit coach to discourage sex with groupies.

As with the NBA, NFL and Major League Baseball, golf players like Daly log a batch of clip on the route, off from households, ensconced in gilded hotel suites. A top golf player might make up to 20 one-week tourneies a twelvemonth.

More of import, there‘s no deficit of enticement. With participants holding to gain at least $ 500,000 yearly to maintain their professional position, it‘s small admiration that some adult females attracted to jocks might happen their manner to a golf tourney alternatively of a hoops game. The participants even have a name for these adult females: PGA, or Party Groupie Association.

If a participant finds a miss interesting, it‘s the caddy who might really do the contact. I‘ve been told ‘Look around the ropes, ‘ ” says one caddie. ‘See who is easy on the eyes. ‘ ”
Harmonizing to the ex-players and the caddies, the simplest 1s, and normally the newest, are alleged ‘gallery miss, ‘ the prettiest miss at the tourney who get an outstanding arrangement at the front line of the ropes that set off the witnesses from the participants. If a participant finds a miss interesting, it‘s the caddy who might really do the contact. ‘I‘ve been told ‘Look around the ropes, ‘ says one caddie. See who is easy on the eyes.”

Caddies often pull the prettiest miss out of the autograph line, frequently offering a private confab with the pro. The caddy so frequently serves as the go-between. Players ne’er give out their telephone figure or contact information, alternatively tilting on the caddy as a sure organizer. It partially explains why some caddies get paid so good frequently, with a per centum of the profitss to transport a bag and justice interruptions on the green. For case, Steve Williams, who is Tiger‘s caddy, has been with him since 1999, Tiger even attended Williams ‘ 2005 nuptials. Their fiscal agreement is secret, but it‘s evidently generous: Williams has been able to get down his ain charitable foundation to assist junior golf players in his native New Zealand.

But most of the miss who hang out looking to bed a golf player doesn’t wait on the fairways. Tournaments are a multi-day matter and walking around the class after a coveted mark isn’t the best manner to set down him.
Some of the miss become tournament voluntaries, ‘ one retired participant Tells me. ‘That manner they can run errands, or drive the participants to the drive scope or other topographic points. It‘s the best opportunity for a one-on-one.

Others who are more intimate in tournament life quarrel invitations to PGA dinners or particular tournament societal events. And the ‘real pros,‘ says one ex participant, ‘know the hotels and resorts where every participant is remaining. It‘s non that hard to find.‘

You‘d be surprised if you check the bios of all the pros, ‘one caddie tells me, ‘how many say they met their married woman at this or that tourney. ‘That doesn’t intend that every married woman who met her pro golfing hubby at a tourney was a groupie, but it‘s another mark of how much societal and extracurricular life is portion of the pro circuit.
My beginnings said that clubhouses sometimes resembled frat houses, with golf players interchanging in writing narratives of the old dark‘s adventures. Players talk about ‘the 19th hole, ‘ or nickname a miss willing to hold anal sex a ‘double bogy. ‘ A ‘water hole ‘ is anyone who performs merely unwritten sex.

About everyone I spoke to said Tiger Woods had a repute, since the mid-1990s, as a womaniser ( calls to his agent were non returned ). When he was off the circuit for some of 2008 because of hurts, the immature and fine-looking couple, Spain‘s Sergio Garcia and Colombia‘s Camilo Villegas, had flocks of immature miss following them. I heard ribald narratives about top participants, including Daly ( his agent besides didn’t return calls ). Two of those interviewed claimed to ‘know ‘ that one of golf‘s aces, and his married woman, were swingers, a rumor that persistently makes the unit of ammunitions on the Internet and is repeated even by other golf players on the circuit.
One individual to whom I spoke had personal experience with pro golf players boasting about a dark of sex, and so utilizing a prescription pep pill like Adderall or Ritalin to acquire traveling the undermentioned twenty-four hours for the following unit of ammunition ( such drugs are banned by the PGA since July 1, 2008, and while there is random proving for drug usage among participants some ridicule it for being easy to hedge ).

Conclusion

So Tiger Woods certainly seems to hold a batch of company in the golf player‘s acting severely section. The large difference: no 1 else on the circuit has made $ 1 billion based on a repute of flawlessness.
Gerald Posner is The Daily Beast‘s Chief Investigative Reporter. He‘s the award-winning writer of 10 fact-finding nonfiction bestsellers, runing from political blackwashs, to Nazi war felons, to 9/11, to terrorist act. His latest book, Miami Babylon: Crime, Wealth and Power? A Dispatch from the Beach, was published in October. He lives in Miami Beach with his married woman, the writer Trisha Posner.