TAIT: Kevin Martin's personality, passion for curling made me a fan |
Curling: you know, that sport, with rocks — really heavy rocks — brooms and played on ice. Not any kind of ice, you see. No. It has, above all things, pebbles.
For the first three decades of my life, I subscribed to the ideology that any sport — a legitimate sport, at that — involved skates, not black thingies you put on over your feet.
And then, goodness gracious, they’re not even tied up in knots.
Sticks. Not brooms.
Little pieces of rubber — pucks, which can be flung, here, there and everywhere all over the ice, not a rock that needs that tractor Uncle Pete parks behind the red barn for only the real big jobs.
My dad curled. But I wasn’t a big fan.
That all changed, though, in May of 1992 over a two-hour lunch at the Royal Glenora Club with one Kevin Ray Martin.
The Canadian Cancer Society had a new fundraising event — The Longest Day of Golf. Martin, along with Victoria Golf Course pro Kevin Hogan, television sports personality Al Nagy and insurance owner Kevin Shaigec, were asked to play golf as long as they could.
Martin and I began a friendship.
We arrived at Victoria Golf Course a little after 3:30 a.m. on the year’s longest day.
Martin? He was the first to show up, with the greeting to meet the day: “This is my Christmas morning now. I have so much fun.”
Then the four teed off, of course, all at once — and played until just after 9 p.m. When the sun went down, they had played more than 300 holes.
I could listen to Martin talk all day.
Slowly, but surely, his engaging storytelling of curling was infectious.
In fact, some 15 years later I was covering Martin and some of Canada’s best curlers in Canada when events were at the Saville Centre.
Martin was appointed to the Order of Canada in December for his many accomplishments as a curler, where he succeed in every level. A TSN poll named Martin as the greatest curler of all time, from those high hard shots that zoomed through the house, to those gentle touches a rock with the precision needed to put it in the exact position it had to be.
Raw talent, absolutely.
But he had the personality, salesmanship and passion to take a largely recreational sport — which, all by itself, is a great thing — to a lucrative business for those who want to take it to such a level.
It all begins with fun. And from sharing time with Martin, he certainly enjoys having fun.
There are far too many tales — all of them true — to be included in this journalistic bonanza.
But here are two.
Whenever Martin and I were at the same charity golf tournament, he was my caddy.
I played a hole from my wheelchair and golfers made bets on how many strokes it would take me.
Atone such event we lost my ball. Not in the bushes or the water.
Halfway down the hole, there was a gully which had a foot drop. We couldn’t see it from my sixth shot.
Martin found the ball and took me down in the narrow gully, steadied my wheelchair while I somehow got out of it.
The next story … well, you had to there to believe it.
When The Brier was in Edmonton in 1999, Martin and teammate Don Walchuck invited me to a game at Rexall Place in a suite;
My wheelchair couldn’t get me to where I could see.
So they grabbed me under the elbows and helped me walk into one of the seats when, much to my embarrassment, my pants fell down; when I stood up.
We all laughed — nobody harder than Martin.
Congratulations, my friend, for all you’ve done!