Jonathan Manafo

If you’re a follower of sports at all you’ll know that Tiger Woods is on a huge roll. He’s won 5 straight not including his second place finish before the streak began. What’s amazing about this is not only the wins, but that they include 2 Major championships and a World Golf event. If you play golf or not you have to appreciate the consistency dispayed in this athelete. Golf is a funny game…amazing and crazy…up and down…good and bad. To be able to play this well for that long a period of time is a great example of focus, talent, strength and raw skill.

So why write about this? First, I’m a huge fan as some may already know and I get a kick out of following this guy. But also I must say that I want to learn from people like Tiger. I want to be able to work at my game (not just golf, but life, work and ministry). Tiger says that he can always be better…always can work at his game. I’d like to say that I can too. I want to be a better father, husband, musician, communicator, minister, friend, christian, human, etc. What does it take? Lots of work; lost of prayer; lots of study; lost of discipline. Is it worth it? I think so. Because unlike golf, that’s just a game/sport and only has competetive rewards, I believe that my faith is seen in who I am and how I live. So…if I can grow and become better at all the things I listed above, I believe the world will be a better place because of it and Christ will be made known.

Trying not to settle for what I did today, but striving for what I can do (through Christ) tomorrow.

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Ya I know, I’m ranting about Woods again. I gotta say that it was great to see him come back with this Major Win at the British Open last weekend. There were the emotions, the great play of course, the eagle ‘2′ with a 4 iron and simply getting the job done. But…the coolest thing I noticed during the open were tiger’s comments on his play. He always (more often than not) uses the word ‘we’ to describe his play. ‘We’ played well, ‘we’ managed the course, ‘we’ pulled it of. He is referring to his Caddie, Steve Williams as well as his coaches. It’s pretty cool to see the greatest player ever acknowledge the importance of team and community, especially in an individual sport such as golf.

I think we can learn a whole lot from this in relation to most area’s of life, especially church work. I’m so glad to be part of a great team at CLC (Christian Life Centre). My lead pastor, Mark, is so great to work with. He acknowledges my gifts and the gifts of our team/staff and allows each of us to do our part for the purpose of serving our church and community with excellence. Unlike golf, there are no Million Dollar paychecks coming our way if we win or do well, but there are a whole bunch of people in our city that can experience the life changing message of Christ if our team works together like a well oiled machine (or healthy body - to borrow from the apostle Paul - 1 Corinthians).

Even Tiger Woods knows that their is no “I” in team. I want to do what it takes to always be part of or lead healthy teams for the sake of God’s Kingdom moving forward on Earth.

Here are a few people I’ve had the priveledge of teaming up with in small or large ways over the years:

Joseph Manafo Sr. (Dad, Leader, Pastor, Mentor)
David Manafo (Twin brother, Musician, Friend)
Domenic Ruso (Drummer, Theologian, Friend)
Aaron Holbrough (Creative Genius, Teacher, Friend)
Domenic Femia (Theologian, Pastor, Friend)
Mark Macknight (Pastor, Friend)
Luc Lombardi (Theologian, Friend)
Phil Aud (Musician, Friend)
Rick Manafo (Brother, Musician, Golf Partner)
David Bonfa (Guitarist, Comedian, Friend)
Janet Manafo (partner in crime, wife, love of my life, awesome mom, creative genius, best friend)

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What and ending to the 2006 World Cup. Italy and France battled pretty good. I think Italy played better the first half and France the Second as well as the Extra time. In the end the final was decided on penalty kicks. I’m very happy the team I was routing for won, but felt for France, especially because of the way Zidane (their best player) exited the game. You can read the sports pages for yourself to see what happend. I can breifly say that he lost his temper for one reason or another and was given a red card (which gets you ejected from the match). All in all, Italy played much better defence and was able to pull it off.

The other great part of the day was Tiger Wood’s come back from a bad first round to finish second in this week’s PGA event. It’s a great way to prepare for the British Open (3rd major of the year) which is coming up in 2 weeks. I wanted to let you in on a great comment he made on Wednesday in his pre-tournament press conference. After being asked about Phil Mickleson’s failure to finish off the US Open a few weeks ago and lose on the final hole, Tiger had this to say,

(quoted from www.tigerwoods.com)

Q. Will Phil be able to brush off what happened to him at Winged Foot?

TIGER WOODS: I don’t know. More than likely to stay competitive you have to, especially in our sport. In our sport we fail more times than we succeed. Failure is a part of our sport; that’s just the way it is. You pick yourself up off the ground and you have the next week to play. If we had a percentage very similar to baseball, if you put a .300 in your winning percentage, you’d have one hell of a career. But that’s normally not the case. Your winning percentage is a lot lower than that, and you have to deal with losses quite a bit. It’s nothing new to him, nothing new to any of us. You pick yourself up, dust yourself off, come back out the next week and play.

This a great lesson for anyone who strives to succeed. I think in most things we do, if we can deal with failure, we will succedd more. Those who dwell on the past and the flunks without learning from them and moving will never progress in life.

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Italy is one game away from reaching the World Cup finals. So far so good…I hope they can beat Germany. It’ll be their hardest test yet. This has proved to be quite the tournament. Most of the ’round of 16′ matches were great and so have the ‘quarters’. England (my second favourite pick) is out. It was an unfortunate end, but they really squeeked by any way. Brazil is out…which sounds good for now, but France is picking up some major steam. I am concerned, however, by some of their comments after the game. It’s almost like they (France) really had no asperations to get this far, but now they’re getting into it because they beat Brazil.

One more week. Let’s see what happens.

FORZA ITALIA!

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