I just got back from spending my late morning and early afternoon marshaling a junior golf tournament. Initial impressions: 1. These guys are good. There was a junior golfer aged 12 that shot a 68 today. The low round was a 67 shot by a 17 year old who plays high school golf for Clovis West High School in the Fresno area. 2. These kids need to bone up on the rules. I spent most of my day at the par three 12th hole and had about 15 rules decisions. The water hazard is a yellow lateral hazard and the kids were completely confused on where and when to drop. I had one kid that had a ball that came to rest on the grass above the water but within the hazard line. He almost picked the ball up to play a drop, but one of his competitors said, "Ask the marshal." I said, what do you need? He said, "I don't know what to do." I said, "What are you asking me?" He said, "Oh yeah... for a ruling." I told him he could play the ball where it laid, but he couldn't ground his club. He yelled, "Oh, yeah, I remember!" Wow. I also had many of the kids that landed in the water and just teed up again from the tee box. It is an option, but they could have come up to where the ball last crossed the hazard and dropped within two club lengths of the hazard no closer to the hole. One girl did a "Tin Cup" and put three balls in the water before finally dropping one in the greenside bunker. She took a 7 on the hole. It's hard to Marshal because your tendency is to help them even if they don't ask for help, which isn't what we do. The younger kids have scorekeepers, nice folks who just want to help, but they give the kids all sorts of bogus advice. I watched one help a kid mark his ball and then take a club length relief from his opponents line and when she put it back used just a clubhead length. I stopped the kid from putting and asked him if he remembered how to remark his ball and he did. The scorer was ticked, but you don't want to help the kids by having them cheat. If he had putted it and moved to the next hole, it would have been a two stroke penalty. I had a good time today, but I'm exhausted.
Yesterday we spent the day at the US Open at Pebble Beach. One of my agents called me on Friday afternoon and asked if I'd be interested in tickets to the US Open's final round on Sunday. I was. He has a 7 year old son and his wife didn't think the son would enjoy spending the day at Pebble with his Dad. Apparently, she was under the impression that Sunday was Kid's Day. Hey, more of the good stuff for us. Darla was a trooper and agreed to join me for Saturday night in Salinas and Sunday at the golf course in Pebble Beach. My agent was getting the tickets from one of his companies (a quasi competitor of mine) and he set up for me to meet the marketing rep in Roseville and pick up the $150 tickets from him on the ruse that the agent and I were going to the event together. He called me at work this morning and asked if he enjoyed himself, where we setup, which groups we watched, etc. I think he was anticipating a call from the marketing rep and wanted his cover story. Darla and I stayed at the Salinas Valley Inn, a Best Western property and enjoyed our time away together. We ate breakfast at the Black Bear Inn, a favorite restaurant in the Carmel area and the first restaurant that Samantha ever went to as a baby, when we visited Vegas after she was born. The transportation was well thought out with buses leaving the Fort Ord military camp where we parked and making the fifteen minute run to the course. The transportation was shorter than at Torrey Pines when the parking venue was the San Diego sports complex, a thirty minute drive away.
Darla and I wandered the resort a bit and checked out the 18th and 17th, sitting in the stands at 17 and watching the golfers try to hit the toughest hole on the course, a 220 yard par three to a ridiculously small green. We then watched at number four, the short par four and number 6, the short par five where a 2 was recorded Sunday. We walked over to number 14 and watched the groups try to navigate the small undulating green on that par five and finally settled in the sun on the stands at number 15, a downhill par four where we watched about twenty groups move through. At one point a small plane flew over carrying a banner that read: "Tiger: Are you my Daddy?" Funny stuff. We finally gave up about five thirty with Tiger and Phil's groups still two groups behind and the crush of humanity weighing on us. We walked to the merchandise shops and bought some souvenirs ( a shirt, balls, hat and towel) and listened to the final four holes on ESPN radio. It was a great event and I'm glad we went. We got home about ten last night exhausted and somehow better for the experience.
Darla managed to somehow blow a circuit in our room on Saturday morning by plugging in a blow dryer. All of the lights went out when I was "deep in thought" in the bathroom. We had to call the front desk and have them trip the breaker for us. Nice.
Jennifer is coming to visit this weekend and bringing young Samantha along. We look forward to seeing them, but don't know when they will arrive. She is still working out the logistics with John. We hope to have the jet ski up and running and take it out over the weekend. I charged the battery over the weekend and want the boys to see if they can get it going or if we have to take it into the Yamaha dealer.
The boys went over and saw their nephew, Lucas, last week and I added some pictures for the blog. He seems to be doing well. Both Alicia and Don are home right now, Alicia on maternity leave and Don between work gigs.
I did make it out to the golf course on Saturday before we left for Salinas and put a pretty good round together. I shot 42+39=81 and would have been happier if I hadn't double bogeyed the last hole. I stood on the tee and announced to my playing partners that I needed just a bogey to hit 80 and a par to shoot 79. Well, all great plans come asunder. I was hitting the ball really well and hitting my new driver long and straight. I will play with a couple of agents on Friday and I hope to be swimming in our pool with young Miss Samantha on the weekend.
David and Daniel are home and currently jobless, which is sort of a microcosm of the economy. They are both looking for jobs and if anyone has one, call either of them. We could use the income. They were able to get our backyard gazebo assembled and the tables and chairs moved out into the back yard for pool season. It was 94 degrees today and I think they made good use of the pool as well.
I have hired for one of the open positions in my office and hope to have an offer soon for the other opening. We will have Pete's new assistant start next Monday and she will have two weeks to train with Toni-Anne before she leaves for Switzerland.
Well, short and sweet, but I didn't get home until 8:00 PM after helping with the scoring at the tournament and then doing cleanup. Darla and Daniel took a walk and are exchanging "the Book of Eli" for another Blu Ray disc. By the way, have I mentioned how great it is to have a whole house fan? The temperatures drop rapidly in the Sacramento area after the sun goes down. We open the windows and turn on the whole house fan and drop the inside temperatures fifteen degrees in fifteen minutes. Awesome. I'll write more next week. Ciao!
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