"If you can't overcome that it really eats at you and you can dig yourself a deeper hole," Covic says, adding that he'll never forget a few howlers of his own, like the time he completely misread the Wellington wind while playing for the Wanderers and watched in horror as a shot bent 90 degrees and trickled past him.
There is something Einsteinian about that patch of woods, as if the Institute for Advanced Study, which is across the street, is experimentally affecting the trajectories of tee shots and approach shots, bending light.
Woods's tee shots bent, but he did not break stride.
Powerful, important visitors have just arrived in the Pacific Northwest, vilified here as big shots bent on global domination (in three of the last four years, anyway).
At this occasion and based on the operating experiences of the recent years, several new features were introduced: the scan mode was changed from during-pulse to shot-by-shot; the bending magnet was modified from 107° to 253° (pretzel-type); the exploitable scanning width was increased from 40 to 80 cm.
Magnifying glasses are provided to let us feel like hot-shot connoisseurs, bending in to delectate in the nuances.
Both players realized that the ball died quickly on the wet clay, almost as quickly as their legs from running after drop shots and bending at the baseline.
Dempsey got the ball from Jermaine Jones, put a brilliant move on Ghana's Boye to get deep into the penalty area, then left-footed a low shot that bent across the front of the goal and banked in off the far post.
In the 34th minute, Morgan equalized with a brilliant left-footed bending shot that sneaked inside the far post.
He scored twice, first on a stabbing header and then on a bending shot that left the Osasuna goalkeeper pounding his fists into the turf.
