by Tom Hoffarth
David Carter and George Ross angled into a couple of corner bar stools at HT Grill in Redondo Beach on a recent Saturday morning. They were about to head out and volunteer with a group from the Hollywood Riviera Sportsman’s Club, pulling tap pours in the beer garden at the Riviera Village Summer Festival.
But before that, they had to work through some more serious matters.
“Are we supposed to wear white?” Ross asked.
“No, that’s just the players, and even that doesn’t matter as much anymore,” answered Carter. “Besides, I’m not telling you what I’m wearing. It doesn’t matter. I’m more focused on how we get from Heathrow to our Airbnb.”
The wardrobe had nothing to do with the fair, and everything to do with Wimbledon.
They were plotting out their latest adventure in what they’ve called “25 by 75” – seek out the most 25 iconic sports events they could attend in person by the time they reached the age of 75.
The July 16 Gentlemen’s Championship at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club was the topic of discussion. It would check off No. 10 on their list.
By the time Carter and Ross returned home from London on Monday, they were still trying to get their heads around what they just witnessed.
At Centre Court, where Carter and Ross were amongst the 15,000 spectators with the Prince and Princess of Wales, King Felipe of Spain and Hollywood royalty such as Brad Pitt, Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig, they all endured a nearly five-hour victory by 20-year-old Carlos Alcaraz over defending champion Novak Djokovic, 1-6, 7-6, 6-1, 3-6, 6-4.
It put a cherry on top of their strawberries and cream. It checked off another box.
And whet their appetite for more.
“Wimbledon has an extraordinarily high-end party feel to it and is set against meticulously maintained grounds – something that even the best TV shots fail to fully capture,” Carter said upon his arrival home. “Being there for what will likely go down in history as one of the most incredible finals ever is precisely the type of experience we contemplated when we began our list.”
Bucket beginnings
One day in 2016, Carter and Ross found themselves at Sophie’s Place in Riviera Village for happy hour. Each of them was in their early 50s. They were trying to figure out what they wanted to do with the rest of their lives.
Both had a love of sports since their days growing up in Palos Verdes, meeting at Ridgecrest Intermediate. They graduated a year apart at Rolling Hills High. They went to USC together, and laid the groundwork for this idea with frequent flights to Trojans’ road college football games. Carter had also just taken a trip to every Major League Baseball stadium with his daughter, wrapping it up in 2015.
Ross said he was at a point where he couldn’t sit still. As someone who had done skydiving and bungee jumping, he was ready to cannonball with Carter into their own buddy adventure with his childhood pal.
They knew they could work it around their professional schedules – Carter as a USC sports business professor and consultant, and Ross as a commercial real estate executive in Las Vegas, where he currently resides.
“We both enjoy traveling and each of us was beyond curious about sporting events we had heard about over the years,” said Ross, who just turned 58, and is nearly five months younger than Carter.
“We’re at the bar talking – what do we want to do with our lives? Bucket lists usually start when people retire. We needed to do something now.”
They scratched out a list of 50 of what they considered to be the preeminent event for every major sport. They cut it in half and gave themselves some wiggle room.
They then raised the ante. What if they didn’t just visit, but get as close to the action as possible?
“We realized experiential is important in all this,” said Carter. “We have to be as immersed as possible in the events. That’s super important. Wherever we go, we’re part of the fabric – even if the fabric is torn.”
George Ross learns firsthand what the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, Spain is all about. “You hear the ground shake, the people shrieking, and it becomes a what-the-hell-are- we-doing-here moment,” Ross said. All photos courtesy George Ross and David Carter
The jumping off point was tying a red bandana around their necks and immersing themselves in the Running of the Bulls road rage in Pamplona, Spain just months after hatching the plan. Carter and Ross talk about it as a life-changing moment, an intoxicating blend of panic with perspiration.
“You hear the ground shake, the people shrieking, and it becomes a what-the-hell-are- we-doing-here moment,” said Carter.
“Nothing was more terrifying than that,” added Ross. “We wanted to be inside the bull ring, so it meant we would run just about 150 yards. But it felt like a marathon, the adrenaline was pumping so fast.”
Nine months later, it was off to Anchorage, Alaska, helping with sled dog training as they found themselves at the Iditarod in sub-zero temperatures.
By the time the global pandemic shutdown happened in the spring of 2020, they had six trips accomplished — they tackled a “Monday Night Football” NFL game at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin; saw some real football at the FIFA World Cup final in Moscow, trusted a charter boat captain to take them 70 miles off the coast of Panama to go deep sea fishing for prized marlin, and volunteered along the race course at the Ironman World Championship in Hawaii.
Carter’s intermittent battle with a rare sarcoma cancer in his left leg had also become another reality, requiring chemotherapy, surgery, radiation and physical therapy. It made the trip to Lambeau Field a bit treacherous as he still went despite his doctor’s concerns.
Carter has considered it a mere inconvenience as he and Ross ramped the list back up starting on the first Saturday in May 2021 — off to the Kentucky Derby. Last year was highlighted by the final round of the Masters (where no cell phones are allowed on the course) and immersion in the Iron Bowl college football rivalry between Auburn and Alabama with 100,000 spectators on Thanksgiving weekend.
Trips abroad can run between $7,000 and $9,000 a person, and domestic pilgrimages can be less than half that. They recently secured a partnership arrangement with Austin, Tex.-based Bucket List Events. At the company’s website, Carter and Ross post photos and stories about their latest expeditions at MyBucketListEvents.com under the Global Ambassador Program link, which has drawn plenty of vicarious followers by this stage.
Buckets ahead
So what’s next?
Future excursions will likely take them to Paris for the 2024 Summer Olympics, to Italy for the 2026 Winter Olympics, to somewhere in the Alps for a state of the Tour de France. There’s also the F1 Grand Prix premiere event in Monaco, sumo wrestling in Japan, polo in Argentina. Don’t rule out the Isle of Man TT motorcycle race outside of Scotland.
It all depends on being flexible amidst geopolitical events – imagine going to Moscow today for a World Cup. It is also being able to react to something that comes up.
Such as: They are ready, willing and able to jump on a Game 7 of the World Series or Stanley Cup Final if it happens to land at an iconic venue. In 2018, they had Dodgers-Red Sox Game 7 tickets for Fenway Park, ready to sit in the right-field stands, but the game didn’t happen.
The outcome of the event doesn’t necessarily determine how it is also logged and remembered. It would have been somewhat predictable to think Djokovic was en route to defeating Alcaraz after the first set. But even that result wouldn’t have tarnished what Carter and Ross had already done during their week in Wimbledon Village for pub crawls of historic sites and participating in viewing parties.
“Think of it this way: One moment, you’re walking the course on Sunday for the final round of the Masters,” said Carter. “It’s exquisite. Amazing. Then you’re in a motorhome driving to Tuscaloosa on the Alabama campus. Now it’s Wimbledon.
“Maybe it’s a little bit of whiplash for the sports culture. But we are all in.”
THE LIST TO DATE
No. 1: July 2016: The Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, Spain
No. 2: March 2017: Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, Anchorage, Alaska
No. 3: November 2017: Green Bay Packers-Detroit Lions NFL Monday Night Football game at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin
No. 4: July 2018: FIFA World Cup final in Moscow, Russia
No. 5: February 2019: Sport fishing for marlin off the coast of Panama
No. 6: October 2019: The Ironman World Championship in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii
No. 7: May 2021: The Kentucky Derby in Louisville, Ky.
No. 8: April 2022: The Masters final round in Augusta, Ga.
No. 9: November 2022: The Iron Bowl: Auburn vs. Alabama, over Thanksgiving weekend in Tuscaloosa, Ala.
No. 10: July 2023: The Gentlemen’s Final at Wimbledon, England ER
