Once again, my number three child is competing in the Post-Standard Amateur Golf Tournament.  He survived the first two rounds of play to proceed to his home course of Bellevue Country Club tomorrow.

I’ve been following Charlie while he competes, walking 18 holes at Kanon Valley Country Club in Oneida and another 18 at Drumlins East in Dewitt.  I’m exhausted.  I’ve got blisters on my right toe and when I saw the 8:27 am tee time at Bellevue in the morning, I made a pre-emptive request to join in on the back nine.

Charlie and I have a running joke.  I tell him how fortunate he is to have inherited his good looks from the McCann side of the family even though he could pass for a twin for his dad.  Once, when I went to Steve’s house to pick up Charlie I saw Steve approaching the car and wondered what he wanted, only to see it was Charlie who was walking down the path.  That’s how much they look alike.

I also tell Charlie how proud I am that he’s such a disciplined player.  He works harder at the game than anyone I know.  I pat myself on the back for introducing Charlie to the sport and Charlie goes along with the ruse thanking me for all the equipment I bought and the lessons I arranged and the golf academy I discovered because I actually had nothing to do with it.  Steve is 100 percent responsible for Charlie and golf.  I thought it was a dull sport and kids should be waterskiing or something, and now look at him.

As usual,  my child is teaching me more than I am teaching him.  For years I watched Charlie suffer terribly during competitive play.   I wanted to take the pain away and bring him to something that feels good like a water slide at Disney because that’s what mommies do, but he would have none of it.  He was miserable on the course but elated in the car and it was that elation that brought him back for another day of suffering.

I wondered why the heck he plays a sport that does that to him.  He swears under his breath and sometimes above it for most of the course.  Sometimes I see him hit a shot into the woods and I wonder how on earth he’ll get out of this one.  Mostly I wonder why he would even want to.  I would crumble into a ball on the ground and cry.

Today Charlie hit one of those shots.  On the 12th tee at Drumlins East, he drove the ball into a forest and took a provisional “just in case” shot if the five of us; the three players, Charlie’s dad who was caddying, and I, could not locate the ball in the woods.  Well Charlie found it and it sat where no golf ball ever should sit unless you’re a person who combines golf and deer hunting in the same outing.

He stood at an awkward angle on the hill, squished between trees like he was identifying wild mushrooms and he looked up at the flag which sat at an impossible angle from his spot and swung.  ”Pop”.  ”Crunch!”. The ball made it as far as two feet before hitting a bush.  If he wasn’t going to throw himself onto the ground after that I thought I’d better.

Charlie hit it again and got onto the fairway,  the commuter highway for golf balls.  Charlie was back in the game, albeit at a terrible deficit.  With nerves of titanium I think he eventually sunk the ball into the hole at two strokes over par.  His final score for the day was 76, enough to propel him into a third round at Bellevue tomorrow.

As the mother who instinctively wanted to protect her son from failure and disappointment, I have come a long way.  I now know why Charlie loves this game  so much. It’s the satisfaction that comes from getting oneself out of trouble.

That’s what we all do, don’t we?  In the game of life we find ourselves in awful predicaments and wonder what do we do now?  Charlie, and all competitive golfers do this every time they step onto the first tee.  They get themselves in trouble and they work themselves out.  There is no honor in walking out of the woods and into the parking lot, or in crumbling into a ball and crying at the hopelessness of the work ahead.  They call up the grit and they push through the anger, disappointment, shame and fear to get the ball into that dumb hole.  We should all perform as well as a golfer stuck in the woods.

I’ll be rooting for baby Charlie at Bellevue tomorrow.  If you want to join us, just look for the middle aged woman with a camera in her hand and tired legs and a handsome young man who gets himself out of trouble again and again.

If ever we had a shot at bringing Tiger Woods to the PGA event at Turningstone, this should be the year. He  still has a ways to go to rehabilitate his image with the fans even though he is credited with increasing television ratings for the Masters this year by 50 percent..

It’s no coincidence that golf’s premiere American event was book-ended by Tiger in the beginning and Phil Mickelson at the end; the philanderer with the lovely blonde wife losing to the family man with the lovely blonde wife.  In fact, there is a strange physical resemblence between the two women. A year ago, the tabloids might have focused on who is prettier?  This year none of that matters.  It’s all about life and death, love and fidelity, admiration and humiliation.

Elin didn’t walk the course with her husband this year because Tiger didn’t deserve her.  Amy Mickelson didn’t walk the course because she’s too weak from fighting breast cancer.    Going into the Masters we wondered if Tiger would rise or falter and indeed, the early press focused on his strongest start yet at the venerable course.  How fitting that by today, we were all so over Tiger.  Phil Mickelson offered up the better story, the one we can all respect, a man so in love with his strickened wife he goes out and plays the best game of his life.  Love does conquer all, even a tawdry tabloid tale.

On this final day at Augusta Tiger was little more than a footnote.  No green jacket this year.  Just more hard work on and off the golf course.  Much was made of his comfort level at Augusta, yet how comfortable could he be without his family?

That’s why I think this year we have our best chance at bringing Tiger Woods to the PGA event at Turningstone August 2nd through the 8th.  The resort is famously family-friendly with activities for wives and children.  Not that everyone here would even care about Tiger Woods.  He let a lot of people down since his last appearance at the Notah Begay Benefit event last summer, an event where his involvement with an attractive young lady was reported in the New York Post.

Tiger has a good relationship with Oneida Nation President and CEO Ray Halbritter, and fellow PGA golfer Notah Begay. He would do well to return some of the goodwill and invest in the smaller events on the tour as he continues to repair his image.

Two weeks and a dozen mistresses later, Tiger Woods is in a free fall.  I feel so badly for him.

When the first escort went public I wrote a column about how typical it is for some powerful men to want it all; the prestige, the wife, the cute kids, the mistress.  But this is different.  Tiger’s wife Elin is rightly getting all the support.  In seclusion, away from adoring fans and advertisers but no farther from what he has done than his own pulse, Tiger Woods must feel quite alone.

I’m as much absorbed in the coverage of Tiger’s predicament as I am in the drama itself.  For once, every supermarket tabloid with Woods and his wife on the cover seems worth the $3.99.   The brainy ABC news anchor Charlie Gibson finds Tiger’s story intriguing for its elements of Greek or Shakespearean tragedy.  The women on The View debate whether Tiger should consent to an interview to repair his image.  Financial channels discuss how the PGA will survive without the man who is the sport of golf.  Saturday Night Live did a hilarious satire last weekend of how other unfaithful men like former Presidential candidate John Edwards, South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford and former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer are bitter because their stories of infidelity don’t get attention anymore.

Some advertisers are now dropping Woods because he no longer represents what they sell, like the financial house Accenture trying to build trust with its customers in a recession.  Of the many adjectives that describe Tiger Woods, trust is probably at the bottom of the list now.    On the other hand, a 30-something amateur golfer proudly wore his Tiger Woods hat on the links the other day.  Interviewed on the news he said he wears the hat because of Tiger Woods the golfer, not Tiger Woods the man.

The gorgeous foreign-born wife, the stricken, hospitalized mother-in-law, the voice mail begging a mistress for help covering up because the wife is calling unfamiliar phone numbers, the $12,000,000.00 post-nuptial agreement, and the confounding expectation Tiger Woods thought he could keep his dalliances a secret indefinitely: How about those kiss-and-tell mistresses?  Tiger told each one he loved them most and they seemed to believe it.  Why?  Was it the Midas touch or something completely lacking in the girls, or both?  Combine the realms of corporate with marriage, athletics with sex, hero status with money and jeez, there’s something for everyone in this mess.

Unlike people lashing out with anger on message boards,  I’m fascinated by the pathology of what happened to Tiger.  How could a man  so disciplined in his sport be so utterly sloppy with his love life?  Dismissing it as sex addiction or steroidal powerful-men-who-lust  touches the branch but not the root.

When psychotherapy uncovers the reason for Tiger’s behavior, it will surely be the one element of this story Tiger manages to keep to himself.  Against a flood of personal and embarrassing revelations, at his core, Tiger Woods is still a man of mystery.

I mean that figuratively of course.  If you actually come up and pinch me I might have to slap you, unless I’m in a real good mood and then I might invite you to do it more.

OK.  I’m in a great mood.  I’m still wondering how the heck I landed this most plum assignment of a career that isn’t even a career anymore.

My son Harry and I were Honorary Observers for the PGA Turning Stone Resort Championship on Saturday.  This is an experimental program begun three years ago by the Pro Golfer’s Association, essentially to reward big donors with a walk inside the ropes of a twosome.

All I’ve donated is my broad smile and enthusiasm, but so far it’s been enough to get me back to the Empowerment Fund each year, the Charity Arm of the Tournament, which has raised one million dollars for Central New York non-profits since its inception three years ago.

Harry and I were assigned to follow players Jimmy Walker and John Senden who politely understand this is designed to build the PGA and they go along with things, but essentially we are nobody to these guys.   After teeing off, Jimmy approached Harry and me, introduced himself and offered his hand.  That did it.  We rooted for him from that moment on.  That simple gesture was all it took to sway our collective energy his way.

We followed the PGA rules carefully.  Honorary Observers are to walk along with the other spectators, only we are just inside the ropes instead of just outside.  After nine holes our PGA liaison wanted to give us even better access, suggesting we stick with the scorekeeper, the man who carries the sign behind the players.  Are you kidding?  You mean follow him right up the center of the fairway?  We won’t get arrested?  Or shot?  OK!  We’re in.

So if you want to know what it’s like to follow PGA players as they approach a tee with spectators all around I’ll tell you it is major thrilling.  You feel like you’re in an ocean of green and there are eyes in the distance, everywhere.  It’s so cool and you feel real proud.

Except on the 15th hole when we weren’t standing in the right spot.  You see, you can’t get ahead of the players on any shot and they always get a head start to the next shot.  Plus their legs are six feet long and they walk fast anyway.  Harry and I looked like Olympic speed walkers trying to keep up because we’d look goofy actually jogging along the fairway like there’s some emergency.  We did well pretty well with our speed walking until the 15th when we just couldn’t get to the other side of the tee on time.

At that moment we learned players have eyes in the back of their head because as Harry and I discreetly moved far behind the tee to get to the regulation side, John Senden turned around, singled us out and asked us to stand still.  OK.  You know how you felt when you were 12 and the teacher told you to deliver something to another classroom and the Principal was walking in the hall at the time and scolded you for being there?  That’s how we felt.

No sweat.  When Jimmy Walker stepped up to take his turn, aware Harry and I had been singled out to freeze, he motioned for us to continue to our place.  Way to go Jimmy.  We knew we loved you for a reason.  Later Harry and I joked how our friends would want to know if the players said anything to us, such as “give me your phone number and let’s go out for a beer after the round is over”.

“Oh yeah” we mocked, “They talked to us.  They told us to get out of their way”.

So the next day I was in my house in Syracuse, staining my living room windows when the call came from Turning Stone.  There was a miscommunication at the course and could I please come right out to be Mistress of Ceremonies for the Award Ceremony in just two hours?  You kidding?  H- – l  ya.

As if my Empowerment Fund credentials and parking pass to Lot 5 were not enough, I got clearance to drive directly to the Clubhouse, like where the PLAYERS AND THEIR FAMILIES HANG OUT.   I generously avoided the “Player Parking” signs and took a spot in the back corner, just as the head of security arrived to apologize for missing me at the gate to escort me in.  Ann Spencer, the Tournament Director, pulled up in a golf cart and suggested we take a seat in the dining room to discuss the five sentences I was scripted to say for the ceremony once a winner was determined.

We walked past State Troopers and Oneida Security and into the dark paneled dining room overlooking the 18th hole and the setting sun and the Golf Channel setup on the porch outside.  The Golf Channel coverage played on a big flat screen TV over the buffet spread of prime rib, pasta salads, bread, and baked potatoes and just over the little pumpkins painted and signed by the player’s children.

The service is world class, just like home I thought, only I provide the service.  After our meal and a quick chat it was time to walk to the V.I.P tent, adjacent to the Clubhouse, also overlooking the 18th green and a magnificent amber sunset, to find Oneida Nation Representative and Turning Stone CEO, Spiderman, Superman,  Genius visionary Ray Halbritter in the V.I.P tent.  Instructed to stick by Ann, I stood way out of my league at Ray’s corner with his mother and top echelon of the Turning Stone.    All dressed up for an Award’s Ceremony I was important but not that important.  I thought I should be indoors with fellow Empowerment Fund Committee Members watching from behind the glass.  Tim Petrovic walked outside after his tie for third place to thank Ray for a well-run tournament.

You probably heard what happened next; players Matt Kuchar and Vaughn Taylor ended the competition tied for first.   A playoff began with both players repeating the 18th hole, but they tied again.  They went to the next hole but ran out of daylight.  Everyone, including the exhausted Turning Stone staff, was told to return for an 8:30 am start today.  Asked once again if I’d be willing to return in the morning I said “H – - l ya” to myself and nodded in the affirmative.

Another day, another buffet meal in the Clubhouse.  Matt Kuchar’s wife and two little children ran around the carpeted dining room as increasing numbers of Turning Stone staff sought refuge from the deteriorating weather conditions to watch the six-hole marathon on the Golf Channel indoors.  Kuchar won the duel; his reliable smile reminded me of Carmelo Anthony’s Championship season with the Syracuse University basketball team in 2003.  In a match of equals a smile can sometimes give you the edge.

So I’m still smiling now, several hours later, after a dignified ceremony recognizing the Oneida People and props all around for the best field of players and most dramatic outcome yet,  Matt Kuchar even taking the microphone from Ray Halbritter at the end to add words of appreciation to the Atunyote grounds crew for doing everything they could to manage the course in unmanageable weather conditions.

A crush of photographers shot everything that moved and I was asked to pose for a photo with Ray Halbritter and Matt Kuchar.  When I get the photo I’ll frame it and send it down to my 20 year old son Charlie who’s on the golf team with the University of Tampa, so he can tell all his friends “yeah my mom hangs out with Matt Kuchar”.

I’m smiling at all of it.  Smiling so broadly you might even get away with pinching me.  Literally.

The third annual PGA Tour event at Turningstone begins this week.  For the second year in a row the forecast calls for great golf and not great weather.  This is a terrible shame because Central New Yorkers tend to put off outdoor events until the weather improves but it’s a long way until May so I say put on every piece of clothing you own and come anyway.

Oneida Indian Nation President and CEO Ray Halbritter and his top notch staff worked years to get the PGA to consider our region.  It is testimony to his enormous skills and the fact that you just can’t say no to this quiet but brilliant man that Halbritter succeeded.

The first year brought weather from the Gods.  It was sunny, sparkling, warm and brilliant every day of the tournament and Halbritter had a sore back from all the pats congratulating him for not only bending the PGA, but the jetstream too on that inaugural event at Turningstone.

But last year the Oneidas were not so lucky.  Nearly every day was chilly or wet or both at once.  A few intrepid fans stood by the ropes, watching the pros make the most frustrating game on the planet almost look easy, but Halbritter had to be disappointed if not sympathetic to the turnout.  The PGA was watching too.  If we can’t show up to the most beautiful golf course within a hundred miles to cheer on the players and support this event, we’ll lose it.

Now it’s happening again.  The forecast calls for chilly temperatures and plenty of rain.  It’s understandable that with all the fear about unemployment, diminishing bank accounts and swine flu running amok and ending the world this winter, many moms will put their foot down and say Dad and the kids are prohibited from standing outside in the cold.

Well this mom has some other advice.  There is no evidence that standing in the cold brings on a cold.  Just go.  It’s a thrill.  You can’t watch these men whack a little ball all over the place and not marvel at how quickly they convince it to go in the little hole over and over again.

Bundle up.  Bring a hat, bring your most weather- proof walking shoes, gloves.   Let’s show the PGA and the players we’re grateful they selected our beautiful little corner of the world for a few days of golf.

The play begins at Atunyote Thursday morning.  You can get ticket information at the turningstone website.  I hope to see you there.