"Tiger Woods Hit by Toddler", Aston Makes the News

Well it’s almost official we signed a contract to buy a lot at The Cliffs High Carolina, Tiger Woods' first golf course design in the USA. This weekend marked the Inaugural Property Release for High Carolina and Tiger was there to spend it with us! We are still high on excitement.

Justin Smith, our Sales Agent Mark Van Natta’s assistant, was very diligent in finagling a way for us to stay at the Grove Park Inn despite being booked for weeks. Friday afternoon we perused the lots one last time and had an excellent lunch in the event tent atop the mountain at 4000+ft above sea level. Friday night was a cocktail reception at the Grove Park with a presentation on the Cliffs at High Carolina. There we met Jim Anthony (Founder and CEO) and his family, with whom we had the pleasure of sitting with. Aston did exceptionally well staying up past 9:15pm at an adult party. There was one other 21 month old boy named Hudson there with whom he made friends…mostly because Hudson had all his Thomas the Train vehicles there. The two of them played trains for almost an hour on the outside patio by the fireplace during the presentation…Thanks to Hudson’s Trains, Babs chasing after him, and BB’s watchful eye, Friday night was manageable!

The big day, Saturday, was perfectly choreographed by the Cliffs. Aston did well but he was unfortunately stuck in a very adult situation that caused some chaos.
This is how the day broke down:

-9ish Breakfast…a full breakfast spread, smoothies and all…so yum
-10ish Contracts were looked at for the first time (Babs read thoroughly)
-11ish Tiger and Jim Anthony came out on stage and talked candidly about their endeavor
-12ish Tiger came around to each table for photo ops (professional only) and to briefly chat…he had 50 other tables to attend to. Our Table was 2nd so we just talked briefly and never got a good photo
-12ish Lunch a whole new 50’ spread of food came out, with two bars set up (remember this is in a tent) while the festivities continued
-1ish BB asked Jim’s wife, Vicki, if we could get another, more formal, photo. Vicki was able to track him down because her son wanted one too.
-1:20ish The ‘Incident’ occurred. Photo #2 was attempted. Jeff was holding Aston in his right arm, with Tiger also tucked close on the right. Just as photos were snapped and video cameras rolling, Aston back-handed Tiger in the face/chin/mouth/teeth area with his metal HotWheels truck (famous truck shown in 1st picture of slide show). It all happened so fast as Tiger yelped, recoiled backwards, and Asty threw his truck at the camera crew in front of us…I was MORTIFIED!!! …all captured on film and hundreds of witnesses. The incident was mentioned in this CNBC article. He is referred to as “the toddler who swiped Tiger”.
-1:30ish Photographer tracts us down and says we need to take a third photo because Tiger’s head is snapped back in reaction to Asty’s blow, but is really funny and she will be sure to send it to us. She said she would find us after the group photo and bring us to Tiger’s private VIP section of the tent so others didn’t get envious…I wanted to hide…I didn’t want another photo!
-1:45ish We signed the contract to buy Lot NM-7 (Narrows Mountain Section, Lot #7) and were given a coupon for $500 to spend at the Nike Golf merchandise tent…a nice surprise! We picked out items totaling $550 but they gave it to us anyway!
-2ish The Group Photo was taken outside with Jim Anthony’s family, Tiger Woods and all 45 families who bought the first lots.
-2:30ish Photo #3 was taken…a success! Tiger was very cool about the whole ‘Aston Assault’…he laughed when he saw us again…he was told by the VP of the Cliffs that we had dressed up as his family for Halloween and he thought that was a riot! Jeff made sure Aston’s hands were free of cars, and had raisins instead…not much damage can be done with raisins.
-3ish We left the event tent and Mark took us to see our lot one last time…

With Mark’s help, we decided that we made the right decision with NM-7. Babs always liked that one best. It is very private. It has access to the trail system, a creek, near and far views…we are very happy.

News articles of interest:
-CNBC article and video: talks about Aston’s Assault and good video clip at bottom
-USAToday:
-Bloomberg:
-Golf Channel:
-CNBC another video: shows all of us when camera pans