Tag: Golf

Spring Semster: Masters Week

School is as busy as ever, but the end is in sight. I am preparing for a team negotiation in Copyright Licensing. My team is representing a website developer who has been contracted by a small toy company. The essence of the project is to negotiate and come to an agreement on the controlling contract.

My final Judicial Opinion Drafting order is due one week from yesterday. I am writing as the Supreme Court of New Hampshire deciding whether the Superior Court erred in affirming a Department of Labor decision to award wages and liquidated damages to a peeved former employee who was denied her previous-year’s bonus when she left her job as an insurance agent with a small family insurance company for a larger insurance company. I’ll spend the weekend doing this, but at least I’ll be mostly done with one of my five classes.

Nothing much else notable regarding school work. Four of five of my classes have take-home finals. Most of my exam weeks will be spent writing documents from home, which should be less stressful than the typical “cram-dump” exam routine.

Barrister’s Ball is this weekend. I didn’t get tickets, and the only ones available are going for 100 to 200% above face value. It would be fun to go, but partaking in law-prom ranks quite low for me.

Putting all of the work in perspective is my anticipation of The Masters broadcast this weekend. This is by far my favorite golf tournament of the year to watch on TV. I’m hoping Tiger Woods makes a run for the green jacket, but that the contest is close. Who do you think will win?

Catching On

In looking at the PGA Tour website and familiarizing myself with the field, tee times and television broadcast times of the tournament that started yesterday it occurred to me that golf is boring to a non-golf fan because they haven’t caught on yet. They don’t have a favorite player. They don’t know whether the tournament is stroke play or match play. They may not even know if the tournament is a Major, one of the four most important tournaments to occur each year.

Almost anything can be interesting if you know the subtext and are aware of the details. You’re enthusiasm can lack, but an intriguing side-story about golfers can be as exciting as one about basketball players, space, or whatever you are interested in. Further, taking the time to become aware of such a side-story is the critical thing I’m driving at. It’s only then, when you become aware enough of the universe surrounding the thing on which you are currently focusing, that you have a chance at overcoming your bias / lack of interest.

You can write off golf as being boring or say that you can’t learn how to do math, but it’s not your interest or ability that is lacking. It’s your willingness to catch on.

High Pointe Is Closing

Geoff Shackelford alerted me to this Traverse City Record-Eagle story about one of my favorite Traverse City-area golf courses, High Pointe Golf Club, is closing due to the poor economy. I grew up on that course playing tournaments while participating in the Traverse City Junior Golf Association. I had high school tryouts and tournaments there, and I played my first round of 2008 there with my dad.

Big bummer to hear about.

Tiger Returns

Tiger Woods returns to the PGA Tour today and tees off at 2:02p. I have been looking forward to his return for months. The PGA Tour is just not the same without him – either because he draws interest or people just want to be interested in him.

From what I’ve seen and heard on the Golf Chanel and ESPN, it looks like he’s ready. The commentators are professing that they’ll be surprised if Woods doesn’t win. I feel the same way. Last time he took a break to fix the knee, he won… The 2008 U.S. Open! A couple years before that, when he took time to drain the knee, he returned and won at Torrey Pines.

The choice to return in a match play tournament was a wise one. Match play is a different beast than stroke play. Unlike stroke play, match play allows you to have a bad hole and not have to dig your way out of it stroke by stroke. If Tiger is at all inconsistent, he’ll appreciate the chance to throw away a few holes. Further, unlike stroke play, match play is more emotional. Tiger can better scrap out a win against a feisty opponent. Finally, if Woods is ousted early he’ll be disappointed, but no to the degree of a missed cut.

There’s a lot to watch for today at the WGC Accenture Match Play Championship. And when it’s done we’ll still get to look forward to Tiger’s stroke play debut. Bam. Bam. Boom!

My bracket for this tournament.

Lions and Tiger(s) and Wolverines, Oh My!

Forgive the title, I couldn’t resist.

The Lions won. The Tigers won. U of M won (finally). Tiger Woods won (easily), which meant the most exciting thing about the final tournament of the FedEx cup was finding out about the hidden arrow in the FedEx logo. Go ahead, look and see.

The Sylvania 300 was raced (Is that the lingo racing fans?) at the New Hampshire Int’l Speedway, which is fifteen minutes from where I live. The fans that didn’t (couldn’t? Do these things sell out?) get to see the race set up folding chairs on highway overpasses and watched the traffic driving south on I-93. They were watching me drive! I tried to give them a good show – a good clean lane switch. I overtook a Ford Focus in masterly fashion.

O.J. Simpson was arrested on a self-directed “sting-operation.”

The guy who bought Barry Bonds’ 756th home run baseball is asking the public what to do with it at vote756.com. There are three options: (1) send the ball to the hall of fame, (2) iron an asterisk onto the ball and send it to the hall of fame, or (3) banish the ball to outer space.

I don’t care about anything else that happened.

The U.S. Open

Tiger Woods decided, with one short stroke of his putter on the 72nd hole, that today’s round was not the final round of the 2008 U.S. Open.

Today was evidence of why I love watching Tiger Woods play golf. If he doesn’t dominate the field, which he hasn’t lately, and certainly didn’t do over the past few days, he puts on the greatest show on earth. Thirty on his back nine on Friday. Two eagles and a birdie yesterday. The putt to tie Rocco Mediate and force a playoff today.

What will we see tomorrow? I can’t wait.

Round 1 of 2008: High Pointe Golf Club

I played my first round of the year at High Pointe Golf Club in Williamsburg, Michigan last Thursday. If you’re not familiar with High Pointe, it is one of Northern Lower Michigan’s best courses. As its homepage reads, “Two unique nines, one great course.” The greens are spectacular, too. Huge undulations and contours that reward precise approach shots and penalize poor ones.

Having not hit a golf ball on real grass since last October, I had no idea what to expect of my game. The relaxed expectations resulted in a decent score of 78, which could have been lower. The fairways on the front nine were forgiving enough to allow me to spray a few drives and still have an approach shot. We played through a slow group and as a result I rushed my tee shot on the par four twelfth hole and ended up with a triple bogey. In an otherwise error-free round, that was my lone mistake.

What needs work?

  • Short game — misjudged pitches and chips cost me a few strokes.
  • Irons — distance control with mid and short irons.