1. Father's Day weekend is also always the weekend of the men's US Open golf tournament (unless there's a pandemic). This year's host for the open is the most venerable course called simply The Country Club in Brookline, MA. Much of the pre-tournament chatter about this year's Open has had to do with how well an aged course like this one would hold up with today's players and given the way contemporary golf favors players who rocket the golf ball once unimaginable distances off the tee.
Today, the course won.
The course had help from the weather.
It was blustery and the wind robbed these top flight players of what (I think) they value most as they play: control of the ball. When the telecast of these tournaments lets us listen in on players talking to their caddies, we learn than these players are so skilled they want to know how far to hit shots to the yard -- is it 121 yards or 122 to the landing spot?
Winds make that kind of control difficult. In addition, in preparing this course, those in charge of the course's conditions let the rough grow tall and thick and they surrounded the greens with heavy grass.
Every player suffered one way or another under these trying conditions. I saw shanks and chunks. After holing an eagle from the fairway on the 8th, this course humbled Scottie Scheffler. He flew the green on the par 3 11th and his ball landed in a jungle of thick grass and other vegetation and by the time he chunked his ball out of there into the tall apron of rough surrounding the green, he made a double bogey, lost his cool, and bogeyed the next three holes. In similar fashion, Jon Rahm teed of the 18th atop the leaderboard by a stroke. His wayward drive came down to earth in a fairway bunker. On his first swipe at the ball, Rahm didn't lift his ball, it struck the bunker's lip, and rolled back into the sand. He lofted his next shot out of the hazard, but his shot fell far short of the green and looked like a fried egg in bottom of sand trap in front of the 18th. Rahm popped his sunny side up shot out of this trap, but couldn't get it close to the pin, two putted, double bogeyed, and lost his lead.
With these trying condition, things can go downhill fast.
The greens are fast and heavily sloped; the rough is tall and thick; fairway lies are tight and require precise ball striking; the pressure is suffocating.
I look forward to spending much of Father's Day watching this tournament and finding out what player will prevail.
2. Since I was watching golf on a venerable course, I thought I'd enjoy what I now consider an old school, venerable, classic craft beer: the indefatigable Mirror Pond Pale Ale from Deschutes Brewery. I might be mistaken, but I think Deschutes has been brewing Mirror Pond from the beginning. I loved this can of beer this afternoon. It adroitly balances citrus-y hops with the caramel sweetness of malt and has a pleasingly subtle touch of bitterness. I have two more pale ales in the fridge for Father's Day and I already know I love them both: Georgetown's Johnny Utah and GoodLife's Sweet As! (which the brewery actually calls a Pacific Ale -- okay -- but I think it worships in the church of the pale ale!).
I can hardly wait until it's beer o'clock on Father's Day so I can cannon ball into these tasty ales!
3. Watching the US Open today took me back to, I think, 1977. It was Father's Day. The Esmeralda Golf Course in Spokane set up a father/son scramble tournament in which father and son hit alternating shots over eighteen holes. I remember that my golf game was pretty shaky and, stupidly, I was trying to work out some adjustments to my golf swing on the course. It meant rather than just freely swinging and striking the ball, my head was filled with stuff I'd read recently in a Ben Hogan instructional book.
Dad and I had a terrible first hole, as I remember, and we trudged to the second tee. Dad must have made the last stroke on the first hole because I teed off on the par 3 second. It's about a 145 yard hole and I probably had a six iron in my hand when I yipped. I pulled back on my downswing, my fear of failure overwhelming me, pulled back so far that just the tip of my iron's blade nudged the ball and it traveled about eight yards, mainly because the tee box was slightly elevated and it rolled a short distance downhill.
I don't know if Dad was humiliated, having to hit a second shot on a par 3 hole from about the same distance away as the tee box itself.
I know I was both humiliated and ashamed.
I couldn't begin to tell you what else happened over the course of the next 16 holes we played that day.
But I'll never forget yipping and, essentially, whiffing on hole #2.
We returned to Grandma Woolum's house after our father/son round and watched the last holes of the US Open. Dad and I always enjoyed when we could do that together and it helped ease me of some of my profound embarrassment.
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