You can see from the bottom pictures that our Brand Ambassador, Jimmy Walker, won the PGA Championship today. He lead wire to wire in this event and basically, turned a mundane year into a career year in one weekend. We sponsored Jimmy this year for the first time and it is a funny story (or sad) how our sponsorship of a 37 year old journeyman golf pro came to be. Our Vice President in Dallas has a son who went to high school with a young man who went on to the PGA tour. We had an opportunity to sponsor him, but our CEO wasn't ready to dip his toe into the PGA sponsorship pool. The young man was not well known and we could have got him on the cheap. That player is Jordan Spieth. Our CEO was kicking himself and had an opportunity to pick up brand sponsorship of Jimmy Walker, who had won his first three tournaments in 2015. It cost us about double what it would have cost to sponsor Jordan, but it all paid off today. Jimmy had a poor year going with too many missed cuts and a washout in the majors this year going into this week. It all came together on one magical weekend and he is now a major tournament winner and played really well down the stretch with Jason Day breathing down his neck. It was great to see him doing interviews with his Burns and Wilcox brand marker on his right chest. THAT is really exciting for us. I sent a note to our marketing director and asked him if he could check with Google to see how many inquiries with the phrase "Burns and Wilcox" were googled today.
I am knee deep in the junior tournament and spent both days this weekend working at Del Paso CC. Del Paso was the site of the 2015 USGA Senior Open. The kids all flew in from states from Hawaii to Rhode Island and everywhere in between starting on Friday. We have 53 kids in host housing. I have 82 volunteers working my shifts over the next four days in scoring and fore caddying. We had a training today at 2 PM on the scoring system and I had twenty volunteers show up on a Sunday afternoon to take that training, including Shawna and Gail from work and Neil and John from the golf club.
The weather was ridiculously hot last week, topping out at 108 degrees on Thursday. That coincided with my twilight league and it was smoking hot. I played and shot 42 to Ron's 39 and we won our match. I got home and fell into the pool and just floated for about twenty minutes as my body temperature cooled. I came in and was laying on the couch when Darla got home. She said, "Ken, why don't you have the air on, it's boiling in the house?!" I told her it was on I could hear the fan running. She checked the thermostat and it was 86 degrees. I went out and checked the air conditioner and it wasn't running. In fact, it was buzzing. I shut it off and we opened up the windows and turned on the whole house fan. It was difficult sleeping Thursday night as the house stayed at about 82 degrees. Friday I called a buddy of mine from the golf club, Aaron, who owns his own ac service and he came out on Saturday before I left for the tournament. I told him what the problem was and he said it sounded like a starter. The part was $110 and his service was $120 (time and a half on the weekend). He didn't have the part, but had a larger capacity starter that cost $200 and came with a 7 year warranty. He told me he'd put that in and come back with the right part when it arrived. I asked him if the part would work and he said absolutely, but it was the Cadillac part. I told him to put it in and leave it, we'd take the warranty and be happy. It took him about 20 minutes and we had blessed air conditioning. He also ran a pressure test and cooling test and the 12 year old system is working fine. Nice to have friends in the business as someone else might have tried to sell me a new system. Aaron installs new systems, but said that his joy is in diagnosing and fixing problems.
I will be at the Tournament for the rest of the week. We are sponsors of the tournament and have a big ad in the program featuring Jimmy Walker. Nothing like good timing. Darla and I went to the Welcome Dinner tonight at the Double Tree Hotel and Kevin Sutherland spoke. He was a tremendous speaker and told the story of growing up as a junior golfer and idolizing Jack Nicklaus. He played in Jack's tournament (The Memorial) as a rookie and was mad after the second round to finish with a double bogey on the closing hole. He was steaming and fretting over it, right up to the point that he got a call from his agent telling him that he was paired on Saturday with Jack Nicklaus in a twosome. He called it the best double bogey of his career. He also told the story of his flirtation with shooting a 58 in a tournament in Endicott, NY. He was 9 under after 8 holes and 14 under after 17. He told the kids about being in a "bubble" when he played and shutting everything else out. He told the kids that when you are in the "zone" you have to work hard to stay focused and shut out everything but the next shot. He teed off on number 18 needing a par to shoot the first 58 in a PGA event. As he approached the green, the gallery gave him a standing ovation and he got emotional as their praise flowed over him. It was then that he hit a 30 foot putt 45 feet and missed the comeback putt for par and shooting 59. The kids were enthralled with his stories and watched clips of his 23 year career including several hole outs and hole in ones. We left and they were lined up to get pictures with him. His son is 15 and playing in the tournament as an incoming sophomore.
They had the qualifying for the long drive event today and the fifth place girl's drive was 261 yards. The winner was 277 yards. The fifth place boy hit the ball 312 yards and the winner was 323 yards. These are 17 year olds!! The finals will be on Wednesday with all ten of the qualifiers each hitting three drives and taking their best of the three. The national director was announcing the qualifiers and said that the number one boy told him that he had "thinned" his 323 yard drive and hit a second shot that went 335, but landed in the bunker (it had to be in the fairway). The finals are Wednesday afternoon and we look forward to that.
Well, it is late in that we were at the dinner until 9:00 PM and then talked to Jennifer and McKinney. Darryl starts his new job in Dallas tomorrow. He took a job with the Southland Corporation which is the parent company of 7-11. They went through bankruptcy a few years ago and the controlling family was bought out by a group in Japan. It is solid financially and I'm sure he's thrilled to be closer to his family and grandkids. Hopefully, you all have a good week. My next update will be from our vacation in Lake Tahoe next weekend. Ciao.
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