You may have heard people talk about Retief filling his pants over a short putt on Sunday, but now real concerns for food safety are emerging on the European and US Tour’s. Having worked as a food safety consultant for the past ten years I know a thing or two about food poisoning. And all the gym and range work in the world can’t help a professional golfer when, on the first tee, he feels his tummy gurgling and ass going into lockdown mode.
With the European Tour set to visit the United Arab Emirates and India in the next few weeks, the Irish contingent need to be vigilant against a dose of gastro which could scutter their chances.
A bombing at the oval office, so to speak, isn’t unheard of on Tour. On the eve of the Accenture Match Play Championship 2003, David Toms was hospitalized with food poisoning. He reportedly spent the whole night taking the Browns to the Superbowl. Still extremely weak the following morning, he managed to avoid testing the plumbing long enough to defeat Alex Cejka in the first round.
More recently, in 2009 Phil Mickelson was ravaged by a severe dose of the squirts at the WGC-CA Championship at Doral's Blue Monster that left him requiring two bags of IV fluids and a trip to the Sears underwear department. He recovered to squeeze past Nick Watney by one shot, on the last very sore hole.
Stevie: “where did all the flies come from?”
Even Tiger himself has gotten some action (food poisoning that is). At one tournament in 2003, Tiger was sickened by some bad pasta that caused him to test the backboard through the night and on during his final round. Woods still managed to win the Bay Hill Invitational, proving that not even E.coli could deter him from his ultimate goal, finding the on-course portaloo to get down to some urgent paperwork, before Jason Gore.
Margaret from the VHI in Kenya: Having the Trotsky’s was “like, Oh My God”.
All this comes in the wake of the news that emerged on Irish TV screens over the Christmas of Margaret from Cork who developed a very bad dose of the trots towards the middle of the second week of her honeymoon in Kenya. Such was the fluidity of the situation, Margaret in her own words, described thinking that getting sick in Kenya would be “like, Oh My God”. Luckily for Margaret she had her VHI card which the Kenyan authorities knew straight off. It’s not clear whether the Kenyan’s had mistaken VHI for VIP but Margaret ended up getting royally treated in a Nairobi hospital to the extent that she even had her own wipers after punishing the porcelain. Had the incident happened three weeks earlier Margaret could have ended up on a trolley in a corridor at the South Infirmary crapping into a recycled Corn Flakes box. All’s well that ends well however and now Margaret is back to work sticking pictures of Elephants up on the wall of her home in Mallow. She has also kept up the acting skills she learned in the advert, appearing as a Romulan in Star Trek and in the James Cameron epic Avatar.
