At Aronimink Golf Club's AT&T National tournament, distractions are par for the course

The world's best got an early start Friday, so Aaron Ngewn and Lee Von Seldeneck had to hustle to get to Aronimink Golf Club in time to score front-row seats.

When they succeeded, they clutched ice-cold Michelob Ultras and watched the number-one outfit - in soccer - from a plush brown couch as Tiger What's-his-name clubbed around the course's back nine.

"Golf?" Von Seldeneck said as he settled in to watch top-ranked Brazil battle the Netherlands in a World Cup quarterfinal. "We just got here!"

Sure, they had bought tickets to watch the AT&T National golf tournament, but they also had their priorities. And, as with a sizable percentage of the thousands of fans who showed up at Aronimink, actually watching golf while at a golf tournament wasn't always at the top of the list.

"I'm a big soccer fan," said Ngewn, 38, who was born in Kenya and now lives in Norristown.

He and coworker Von Seldeneck, 41, of Conshohocken, were among many exercising options at Aronimink besides standing behind a green rope and watching golf. They found their soccer perch in an AT&T-sponsored hospitality tent, which also drew long lines for a computer-simulated golf competition. Other spectators checked out World Cup matches from flat screens in at least three other tents, as well as a giant multipanel monitor over the course's main entrance.

"In Ireland, in Europe, it's like this everywhere," said Eimar Barr of Pound Ridge, N.Y., a former Ghanian resident rooting for that country's Black Stars against Uruguay alongside his father-in-law, an Aronimink member.

On the grounds of Aronimink, the soccer TVs - and other sidelights not strictly tied to the PGA tour event that sold thousands of tickets, including highfalutin' food-and-drink concessions and air-conditioned tents - were intended to give spectators some options for respite, a tournament spokeswoman said.

"Some days it gets pretty hot to be out there on the course all day," said Rachel Rees, the tournament's public-relations manager.

One creative homeowner didn't have that problem. With a backyard that ended just yards from the course's 13th hole, the resident - who declined to give his name - turned the front-row vantage into a not-strictly-golf yard party for his friends and work associates, their voices dropping to whispers whenever competitors played past.