At the age of 9, Alex Cejka and his father fled communist Czechoslovakia, escaping by heading west through three or four countries. The journey was more like a 'vacation' for Cejka who said at the time he really didn't know what was going on.
He and his dad got away on foot, by train, by bicycle and they even swam across the Rhine River. They wound up in Germany, where they settled in Frankfurt. That's where Cejka really picked up golf, getting his first clubs and taking his first lesson.
As a young golfer, Cejka probably wished he'd fled to a country with kinder role models.
Asked when he got serious about his golf game, Cejka shared this story with the media on Friday afternoon.
"I think it was when I was of 14 or 15, it was the (Bernhard) Langer boom," Cejka said. "He just won the Masters. Of course in Europe he won like three, four, five tournaments every year. He came to play the German Open in Frankfurt and every year back then, I think the mid-'80s, '88, something like this, and of course I watched him.
"I skipped school and I watched him even in pro-ams, and he was my inspiration," Cejka continued. "He was the only German guy who was on Tour, the only German guy who won tournaments, the only German who won a major, so that was inspiration, and I watched him wherever I could."
Sounds inspirational enough.
A few questions later, another intrepid writer asked about the first time young Alex met Mr. Langher. And this is where the s*&^ hits the fan.
"The first time I met him - well, I don't want to call it met him," Cejka said. "He was playing in Frankfurt, a pro-am. There was nobody there, just a couple German pros. I was a young kid, and he was a superstar, but nobody knew that he was coming, no press, nothing. He was in the Frankfurt golf course and it was raining so hard, and I was following him 18 holes.
"I remember the first time I approached him on No. 9. It's a long par 4, the amateurs are like 50 yards ahead hiding in the trees with their umbrellas, and he goes on the tee, everything is like wet, and he takes his rain jacket off, and I'm like in school, "Mr. Langer, can I hold your jacket?" And he just looked at me and threw it in the water on the tee.
"For a young kid, this is your hero, you want to touch something, whatever. So I followed him 18 holes, he shot like a 1-under-par. After the round I told him, "Great round." I expected that I'd get a ball or something. Nothing, he just walked past me. That's not typical Bernhard Langer; everybody knows he's a nice guy.
"I told him, of course, the story a couple years later when I played with him and he couldn't remember this. But that was kind of the first time I saw him and I admired his career. And then when I got on the European Tour we played a lot of practice rounds together, a couple times in the tournaments, so that's how I got to know him closer then."
Wow. Even Tiger Woods manages to sign a glove mid-round when he smacks an old man in the shoulder with his tee shot. If Cejka doesn't win this weekend, this cautionary tale of poor role modelry will have been spoken in vain, and Mr. Langer will be portrayed as an ass in by the American media.
"Alex Cejka, driven by the memory of a Bernhard Langer brush by when he was just a young lad, was in command on Sunday at The Players Championship, but the German couldn't shake the discouraging memory of that jacket floating in a shallow pool that day in the Bavarian countryside so many years ago. He knocked three shots into the water on No. 17 and his dreams were again washed away."
Sie sind ziemlich grober Herr Langer.