I’m not exaggerating when I say that this one minute scene from the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational on Sunday kept me up last night thinking about it and laughing about it. Before we break it down, here’s the full video from the 15th tee, as Rory was nursing a one shot lead over Sergio:
First of all, this video doesn’t do it justice as to how far the CBS camera man had zoomed in on our soon to be very well known blonde friend (UPDATE: We now know her name to be Ashley Bongiovanni, and yes, she is a model: @ashbongiovanni) before panning out to, you know, the golf tournament. How often do you see a golf broadcast zoom in on a fan that hasn’t been hit with a wayward drive? WGN in Chicago is famous for showing the most revealing and best looking fans in between pitches during Cubs games, but the communication between the camera man and the guys in the truck here is truly something to behold. Think about it. They had to plan the perfect timing of the full zoom on her, and the slow pan out to get Rory in the shot right as he’s about to hit. Who knew CBS had a Nick Saban like eye for talent?
Then after Rory hits the shot, we get the now infamous clip (as of the time we’re writing this, the video has been up for 15 hours, and has been looped 170,000 times, as of Wednesday, August 6th, the vine has been looped over 500,000 times, as of Thursday, August 14th, the vine has been looped over 1.5 MILLION times, and stands as the most viral tweet we’ve ever had):
Blonde shorty doing all she can to get Rory's attention. #ChicksDigTheLongBall https://t.co/1UsLgC6k8s
— No Laying Up (@NoLayingUp) August 3, 2014
It’s perfect, I mean, it’s absolutely perfect. Watch how quickly she goes to pull her hair back, then holds it, as if she needed to give the Ulsterman a full view of her face and couldn’t stand the thought of a single strand of hair covering it up. Then as soon as he turns around, she drops the hair. Can’t. Stop. Watching.
Now on to our bro in the backwards hat. This poor guy. I’m just going to assume they are together (at least, at this point in the day yesterday, they were together). Now watch him smile at Rory as he turns around.
Seriously, look at his face! A part of him actually thinks that if Rory does glance their direction, that he’s actually going to look through the blonde practically begging for his attention, and going to acknowledge the bro in the backwards hat that out kicked his coverage.
http://twitter.com/dillonmays_/status/496058623551082496
Alright, now to the part that had me up until 1 AM waiting for the replay of the broadcast to reach this moment. Both Rory and Sergio are obviously right handed players, meaning the caddies are going to stand with the bags behind and to the right of the tee box at least 95% of the time. This is clearly the case here, as you can tell in the opening shot, there are no caddies or bags sitting to left of this tee box.
So answer this. When was the last time you saw a pro hit a mediocre shot, and then walk to the OPPOSITE SIDE of the tee box from his caddie and just stand there awkwardly with his club. With a narrow lead and over a million on the line, you can’t convince me that Rory didn’t know EXACTLY what he was doing. He’s even pretending to check the yardage book!
At this point, our bro friend is still smiling. This doesn’t last…
Now our bro is realizing how bad this plan was…
She’s checking to see if the bro is still standing there. Damnit, he is…
“Is is he turning to look at me again? Better go back to the hair….”
Now go watch the clip ten more times.
UPDATE: We were able to track Ashley down for an interview. Check it out here.
UPDATE AGAIN: Rory is now following Ashley on twitter:
YET ANOTHER UPDATE: He has unfollowed her. So you know he got those digits. Sorry, Backwards Hat Bro.
And while you’re here, check out Part I of our preview of the PGA Championship, and follow us on twitter: