The pertinent statistics from Chris Wood's first-round 66 at the PGA Championship went like this:
Five birdies, no bogeys, four pairs of pants.
Yes, four pairs of pants.
The Englishman had a round to remember for all the right and wrong reasons Thursday in Louisville, Ky. On the 11th green at Valhalla Golf Club -- his second hole of the day -- Wood bent down to read a putt and felt the seam of his gray trousers rip straight down the seat. It wasn't a small rip, either.
"Quite a big hole," he said.
Wood steadied himself long enough to make the putt, then went to the 12th tee in a most uncomfortable predicament. He was teeing off with his rear end facing straight toward the gallery.
"Can you imagine?" Wood said of some of the things he heard. "I'm 6-foot-6 with a massive hole in my trousers in America. ... It's the most embarrassed I've ever been on the golf course."
After teeing off on 12, Wood explained his predicament to a marshal, borrowed a pair of rain pants from playing partner Johan Kok and darted into a nearby portable toilet to change.
Unfortunately, Kok is about 4 inches shorter than Wood, so it was time to change into another pair of borrowed rain pants behind a tower near the 13th fairway. Wood sweated it out in the humid Kentucky afternoon in those rain pants until the 17th hole, when his manager, Stuart Cage, brought out another pair of pants.
Cage had hurried off the course and back to their hotel, which is about 6 1/2 miles from Valhalla. He rushed into Wood's room in search of pants -- or so he thought.
"The lady I walked in on got quite a shock," Cage said dryly.
Cage eventually made it to the right room and collected a thin pair of cream-colored pants for Wood. That was fine, except for the fact that he was wearing black briefs.
At that point, what did it matter?
"It was just a case of laughing at it," Wood said.
Just give it away
Another great moment in botched ballpark giveaways occurred last weekend at Citi Field in New York.
According to Philadelphia sports blog Whiz Wit, the New York Mets had a toy truck giveaway Sunday sponsored by W.B. Mason, which also happens to be a corporate sponsor of the Philadelphia Phillies. At least one of the 15,000 trucks given away actually featured a Phillies logo by accident.
The Phillies logo on the driver's side door of the truck could barely be seen. The Mets logo on the packaging was prominently displayed, highlighting the production error. According to WPVI in Philadelphia, the Mets giveaway was not supposed to feature any MLB team's logo on the door.
The producers of the trucks, Hit Promotional Products Inc., released a statement Wednesday with what they believe happened. It turns out the Phillies have had similar giveaways in the past, most recently July 26, and it seems at least one of the trucks created for those games found its way into Mets specific packaging.
Other botched giveaways recently included the Colorado Rockies handing out jerseys with All-Star Troy Tulowitzki's name spelled incorrectly. That was followed by the Yoenis Cespedes T-shirt giveaway by the Oakland A's two days after he was traded to the Boston Red Sox.
QUIZ
What is Chris Wood's highest finish in one of golf's four majors?
ANSWER
Wood finished third at the 2009 British Open.
Sports on 08/09/2014