Hendren's Hyperbole! Episode 17 -- Mucho gusto, me llamo Golfdom?

Welcome to Hendren’s Hyperbole broadcasting live from the beautiful Dominican Republic! What an awesome country! Well, at least the drive from the airport to the resort and the beach at the resort is pretty stinking awesome! We are going to go play Golf Punta Blanca, a Nick Price design today and hit Corales, a Tom Fazio course at Puntacana Resort, tomorrow. I love vacation! Nothing to do but golf, drink, eat and lay on the beach! I'll share some photos and stories on the golf down there next week.

In my last post I reluctantly stated the obvious. As much as it pains me to say it, I am officially off the Johnny Vegas bandwagon. Because I am on vacation I am not logging the usual amount of golf watching, so I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to share a story involving one Mr. Johnny Vegas.

A few months ago, when Johnny was playing golf with a little passion, Seth called and told me he had secured me a spot to take part in a mass media phone interview with Johnny Vegas, Camilo Villegas and Angel Cabrera. Needless to say I was pumped! I was going to get an opportunity to ask my boy Johnny Vegas a few questions... or so I thought.

I asked Seth if the phone interview was going to be in English. He told me the first half of the interview of going to be in Spanish and the second half was going to be in English. No worries, I just have to listen to a few questions and answers in Spanish and then it would be my time to shine, my time to earn my keep here on The Golfdom Daily.

I spent some time writing down a few questions to ask, things I thought I could use as material for my post. Needless to say, I had some awesome questions, and was ready to roll.

Also working in my favor was my wife. Erica has a minor in Spanish so I convinced her to take a few hours off work and listen to the interview with me and translate some of the interview I couldn’t understand. Foolproof plan, right? Not so fast.

The interview started and I had no idea what was going on. Is this Spanish? The extent of my Spanish speaking and understanding ability is what I learned from the band Sublime’s song “Caress Me Down.” You know the one: “mucho gusto me llamo Bradley!” I know that means, “Glad to meet you, my name is Bradley!"

That’s it. That is all the Spanish I know and unfortunately my name isn’t Bradley and neither was anyone I was interviewing. This is when I turned to Erica and said “What are they saying?” Erica proceeded to shush me, because she was trying to take in every word. After a few minutes I asked again "What are they saying, come on, hook me up!”

To add insult to injury, I heard them mention "Golfdom" by name (apparently, "Golfdom" in Spanish is "Golfdom.") -- so maybe they were talking about me. Maybe they were talking about my awesome questions! Perhaps they were even asking my question! (I had emailed a question in before the actual interview.)

This is where the whole interview started falling apart, at least for me. Erica told me they were talking too fast and it had been a long time since she had to translate anything. Basically, she tried her best but was no help. CRAP! Oh well, on to plan B, the English portion of the interview...

I waited and waited and waited, listing to what I am sure was a riveting question and answer session. All of a sudden I hear several people say “gracias!’ one after another and then there was a click and the phone was dead.

What just happened? The interview ended without an English portion? SERIOUSLY! SETH TOLD ME THERE WAS GOING TO BE AN ENGLISH PORTION! I just wasted the last hour of my life!

I was sort of pissed but then Erica started laughing and suggested I try to get an English transcript. Brilliant! All the great ideas I take credit for usually come from my better half.

Unfortunately, I was unable to get an English transcript despite Seth's email to Johnny's PR person. So instead of getting to read about the awesome interview I had with Johnny Vegas, you get to read about what a train wreck the whole interview was.

I should have known after that debacle Johnny Vegas was going to break my heart and run over me with his “bandwagon.” But hey, at least I got a good story out of it!

-- Matt Hendren