It's no longer all about the Tiger
I always knew the golfing landscape had changed but this week at the season's second major the U.S. Open I experienced it first hand.
There was a time when the incessant buzz in the media center at these kind of events was all about not whether Tiger Woods was going to win but by how many.
How those times have changed! Of course, the American can instantly point to the fact he's still world number one (though Phil Mickelson's closing in on him fast) but there's no doubt the man who once dominated the majors and the build-up to them has been upstaged somewhat.
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Armchair diary : The first week’s ramblings of an exhausted fan
CNN Hong Kong Operations Supervisor Matthew Booth will attempt to watch every match from South Africa on television. Can he do it without being fired/divorced/committed to an asylum? Follow his updates here, as he becomes more and more incoherent from extreme sleep deprivation
Hong Kong, China - So my wife Veronica has started feeding me multivitamins to keep me alive.
"I don’t want to spend our post-World Cup holiday in Malaysia with you sick and asleep."
Fair enough.
The first week of my TV watching epic has passed in a bit of a spongy blur. It feels like a long time since Robert Green decided to give the Americans a sporting chance, since the Germans became the first ones to work out how a jubulani works, and an age since the Swiss showed Beckenbauer what a brilliant idea ‘kick and rush’ can be. What a week it’s been.
Elephants are soccer giants
Knysna Elephant Park, South Africa - The real giant of soccer isn't Ronaldo, Kaka or Messi - it's Namibia, a four-ton orphaned elephant with serious dribbling skills and a placid temperament unlike many of the stars on the human fields.
At the Knysna Elephant Park in South Africa, orphaned elephants have been kicking a soccer ball for years. This year the playing pachyderms have gotten into the spirit of the World Cup.
It's not just fun and games, though. "It's cognitive development therapy for them," says park manager Greg Vogt. "Soccer and playing with the soccer ball brings in an element in the relationship between each of the handlers and the elephants. Every elephant is an individual, a specific personality and every handler has his own personality."
