Michael Phelps knew exactly what he was going to do to us, and he did it anyway. After causing swim fans to get all hot-and-bothered with a Tweet on Sunday about “Tomorrow is a new start,” which would coincide with the beginning of NBAC practice for the new season, it turns out he probably wasn’t talking about swimming.
Instead, he is in Europe this week to play in the GolfSuisse Credit Suisse Gold Pro-Am Omega European Masters tournament in Switzerland.
He will play in a group with Steve Urquhart, an executive at the Swatch group, Richie Ramsay a European pro, and Peter Carlisle, his agent. Phelps is listed as a 23.0 handicap, which ranks him considerably better than many players in this tournament. That’s as compared to the American Century Championship celebrity tournament in Lake Tahoe two weeks ago, where despite being a featured celebrity, he wound up 2nd-to-last with rounds of 96, 101, and 102. He only beat “Larry the Cable Guy” in a tournament that was won by former NFL’er Billy Joe Tolliver with rounds of 74, 70, and 71 (the field was almost exclusively professional athletes current and former, with Larry the Cable Guy being one of only a very small handful who wasn’t).
There will be two other Americans in the tournament: Peter Uihlein, who is a pro, and Alfredo Paramico: one of the world’s leading watch collectors.
This Pro-Am will be loaded with the high-powered and high-valued from the world of business, predominantly, and with Phelps and his agent there, one would imagine that it will be as much about business contacts as it is about golf.
Call me cynical, but I think he meant for that first tweet to cause everyone to be all atwitter. Why be so confusing on a public tweet if that were not the case? I think he likes to yank his fans chains. This is similar to the last comback rumor where he tweeted “just a joke”. Then so called “journalists” such as Chris Chase of USA today run with it. My 14 yr old nephew is once again all wound up about a “comeback”.
Sounds like Phelps is using every bit of his celebrity leverage to go at this golf thing. Obviously, it’s not exactly a smooth transition. I think we can all start to rule out the 2016 games as a viable option.
First of many posts tagged “Larry the Cable Guy,” I’m sure.
Swiftly followed by “leading watch collectors.”