SAN FRANCISCO -- If this is what the antidote to starvation looks like, there will be plenty of golf-deprived cities standing in the voluntary bulimia line.
Famished for big league golf, San Francisco proper hadn't hosted a PGA Tour event in four years. Judging by the turnout at Harding Park Golf Course, both inside and outside the ropes, it took about 10 minutes Thursday to grasp why the tour made the canny decision to place the Presidents Cup matches in the City by the Bay.
While the P-Cup doesn't quite deliver the electricity that its Ryder Cup counterpart often commands, a better combo of glamour and glommers has rarely been seen attending any golf event. If not, quite possibly, ever.
As Woods was cruising along with partner Steve Stricker, destroying their foes to win 6 and 4, the city's sports stars came out to take a gander at the most dominant athlete on the planet and his traveling band of associates. And these were not just garden-variety jock-sniffers, either.
At one point, Stricker looked over and saw Barry Bonds, baseball's career home run king, watching their alternate-shot match. Right about then, Michael Jordan -- who is serving as a volunteer assistant on the U.S. team -- tooled past in an electric cart.
Talk about a confluence of firepower. Woods, Jordan and Bonds at that instant were within 30 yards of each other, representing the most impactful, jaw-dropping talents in their respective sports in the modern era. Stricker could hardly argue that point.
"Wow, that's true, and I hadn't thought of that," he laughed.
In purely local parlance, they would be as iconic as the Golden Gate, Coit Tower and Alcatraz. Bonds would be the latter, of course.
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Players had their heads down for the most part, though it was hard to miss some of the sports dignitaries who were hanging around, taking advantage of their status to get a point-blank peek at how the best in golf ply their trade.
"I definitely saw Barry Bonds hanging around out there," Geoff Ogilvy said.
Ogilvy might be an Aussie, but he certainly knows Bonds. Same for his American wife, Juli, who participated in what might ultimately rank as the most surreal moment of the entire week.
Bonds, who jumped under the ropes accompanied by his publicist on the first tee -- it was unclear whether he was invited, but given his stature, nobody kicked him out -- was standing behind the seventh when Juli Ogilvy and Elin Woods walked up and briefly stood next to him.
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| Michael Jordan is one of a number of former sports greats on hand. (Getty Images) |
This being San Francisco, the one place where much of the populace still reveres him, Bonds was greeted warmly as he tagged along with Woods' group. At one point, NBC analyst Roger Maltbie trundled over to say hello.
"He plays almost as great as you used to hit," Maltbie said to Bonds, while pointing toward Woods.
With surprisingly humility, Bonds was having none of it.
"He plays better," Bonds said. "He's got more championships."
He won't face perjury charges on that front. Woods, leading the Americans charge on Day 1, teamed with Stricker to crush Ogilvy and 18-year-old Ryo Ishikawa in the marquee match, with Woods improving to 8-2-1 in the alternate-shot format in the P-Cup matches.
Bonds was hardly the only sports celeb getting a gander at Woods. Jim Plunkett, who led the Oakland Raiders to a Super Bowl and attended Stanford, watched from outside the ropes. Speaking of Stanford, B.J. and Bo Wie, whose daughter is perhaps the biggest name in women's golf and is still enrolled at the Palo Alto school, were also among the Woods-Stricker gallery.
"Our house is just down the road," B.J. said.
All roads led to Harding Thursday, it seemed.
He hung around, too, though it was so crowded on the first hole, former L.A. Lakers great Jerry West might have needed to throw a few NBA-style elbows to clear some room.
The laundry list on the opening tee included bathroom-fixture gazillionaire Herb Kohler, multiple major championship winners such as Peter Thomson and Dave Stockton, former U.S. Open champion and San Francisco native Ken Venturi, upcoming Ryder Cup captain Corey Pavin, plus the usual assortment of golf bosses like tour commissioner Tim Finchem and PGA of America chief Joe Steranka.
You know there are some serious Hall of Famers on the course when a guy like Greg Norman isn't getting a second look, which was the case on the first tee. While everybody was milling around the opening hole, watching George Bush the Elder pose for photos with that winner's trophy, West sauntered up and stood behind the tee box.
West, who has recently become a key figurehead associated with the tour event at Riviera, at one point in his career was as nearly big in his sport as Jordan, Bonds or Woods.
One media wiseguy saw West and cracked, "Jordan's not even the best shooter here anymore. The [NBA] logo just showed up."
In all, it was a starry assembly that trumped what was going on inside the ropes, frankly. The big boys on display for the day found it all a bit flattering.
"It's cool to have those figures out there to support the game of golf," Phil Mickelson said. "That shows the reach that golf is starting to have."
