After slogging through the madness that is a U.S. Open to bring you the behind-the-scenes scoop on golf course maintenance activities at Pebble Beach in June, I think I'm going to like the more relaxed setting I appear to have found at Sahalee Country Club for this week's U.S. Senior Open.
If you haven't already heard, one of GCSAA's own is teeing it up this week. Tommy Robinson, the superintendent at Ravinia Green CC in Deerfield, Ill., and a 34-year GCSAA member, is taking his second shot at this event (he qualified to play two years ago at The Broadmoor Resort in Colorado Springs), and since a working superintendent competing in a major professional golf event is such a rarity, as I detailed in a post earlier this week, we decided we should be here to follow all the action.
This isn't the first time I've attended a Senior Open — last year, I spent a few days at Crooked Stick, but that was more as a guest of the fine folks from SePro (headquartered nearby) than as a member of the working media — so I had an idea of what I would find once I made my way to the course. And it doesn't take a brain scientist (or a rocket surgeon) to figure out that the pace of activities at a Senior Open would be quite a bit different than the fervor that surrounds one of the biggest golf tournaments in the world.
At Pebble Beach, you stay in an officially designated media hotel. Here, I'm fending for myself, settling down at a Hilton Garden Inn about 25 minutes from Sahalee. At Pebble, a full-fledged touring bus takes the media to and from the course. Here, I drove my rental car directly onto a parking area situated on Sahalee's East Course, a mere 75 yards from the media center. At an Open, there are literally thousands of credentialed media. From the size of the media center at Sahalee, I'm guessing there might be 100 here this week, most of them from the Seattle/Tacoma area.
Frankly, it's kind of refreshing. But I'm pretty sure you couldn't care less whether I'm relaxed and refreshed. If you've read this far, you obviously want to know about Robinson and his experiences as a competitor in a major golf event. Well, that experience began a few minutes ago when he teed off the first tee in a practice round. He landed in a pretty impressive group, too, with two major championship winners — Scott Simpson (the 1987 U.S. Open) and Larry Mize (who famously holed out in a playoff to win the 1987 Masters). The foursome is rounded out by Tom Norton, like Robinson an amateur competitor, from Muscatine, Iowa. I'll have a report with photos up on the blog later today.
There are other items on my agenda while I'm here. I'll hit the maintenance facility here at Sahalee to check in with Rich Taylor, CGCS on his team's work this week. On Friday, I'll meet with members of the Western Washington GCSA, who are assisting with a presentation on the First Green of Washington program that will be part of a larger display organized by the Pacific Northwest Golf Association. And Friday morning, I'm hoping to make a trip to visit David Wienecke, CPAg, and the much-heralded Chambers Bay, which will host the U.S. Amateur in a few weeks and the U.S. Open in 2015.
I had also hoped to chat with Nick Price, who this week was announced as the winner of GCSAA's 2011 Old Tom Morris Award, but that plan hit the skids when Price was forced to withdraw from the tournament because of a toe injury.
Comments