1. Once today's fourth round of the men's U. S. Open golf championship concluded, after feeling pleasant tension for much of the afternoon, I exhaled and said to myself, "I just witnessed what makes major golf tournaments so enjoyable."
It's tricky. I want to see a golf course set up to challenge the players by requiring that they keep their drives on the fairway, have to play many of the clubs in their bag, and must think their way around the course. I don't particularly enjoy seeing players, as the saying goes, brought to their knees by the course's difficulty. I enjoy knowing that pars are not easy, but achievable; birdies are uncommon, but not impossible; eagles are a rarity and astonish us viewers.
So, today, the course did not own the players and the players did not dominate the course. The Country Club at Brookline played a bit softer today thanks to overnight rain, so scores were lower, but every player faced difficulty if their drives veered off course and the variety of lengths of the holes required players to execute a variety of shots, whether trying to blast the ball far down the fairway into a favorable position on the over 600 yard 14th or drop a delicate gap wedge from an elevated tee onto the 11th green just over 100 yards away.
The final round today was especially fun because the three leaders, Matt Fitzpatrick, Will Zalatoris, and Scottie Scheffler didn't flinch, didn't wilt, didn't succumb to the pressure of the long afternoon. Yes, they all had imperfect holes, all registered bogeys, but, on the whole, they played sharp, precise, cerebral, courageous, scintillating, and entertaining golf, never backing down, pushing each other to excel, and rising to the occasion and its demands.
In the end, Matt Fitzpatrick won this tournament by a stroke. He teed off the 18th hole with a one stroke lead and made a terrible mistake when he hooked his drive into a fairway bunker, leaving himself about 150 yards, out of the sand, to the green. Zalatoris, on the other hand, hit a laser that stayed on the fairway, leaving himself a superb opportunity to reach the green and putt for birdie.
It was out of this bunker that Matt Fitzpatrick demonstrated his self-control and courage. Using a nine iron, he lofted a perfect parabola out of the sand and stuck the shot just over 20 feet from the pin.
Zalatoris then answered with a beautiful second shot that landed and spun toward the hole, inside Fitzpatrick's ball and about 18 feet from the hole.
Fitzpatrick cozied his putt close enough to tap in for his par.
Zalatoris studied his putt, needing it to tie Fitzpatrick for the lead, struck it firmly and right on the line he'd read.
It cruelly slid by the hole.
Zalatoris now has three second place finishes in recent major golf tournaments. He strikes me as a tough-minded, resilient, mature athlete. I think it's highly likely that his time will come, not to be a groomsman but to be the groom and loft the cup of one of these majors or slip into the Masters' green jacket.
2. When each episode of Midnight Diner opens, we see a pot with pieces of bacon sizzling in oil combined with chopped pieces of onion, celery, carrot, and mushrooms. We watch Master pour broth over all these ingredients and then he lowers a ladle with Miso paste into the pot and, using a wooden spoon, dissolves the paste into the broth.
I've thought for many many months that I could do something like that and tonight I cut up some bacon, fried it in hot olive oil and dropped chunks of onion and celery along with baby carrots on top of it. I cooked this until the onions softened and then added chopped potato and sliced mushroom and cooked it up some more.
In a separate bowl, I dissolved four tablespoons of Miso paste into a quart of chicken stock and poured this mixture over the other ingredients and brought it to a slow boil. Once it was boiling, I let it simmer for a while.
Oh my!
What a delicious soup!
I doubt it would rival Master's, but for me here in the Little Cameron Diner, it was awesome.
3. While I watched the U. S. Open, I drank two more of the beers I bought for myself at Fred Meyer last week.
The first was Georegetown's superb pale ale, Johnny Utah.
The second was GoodLife's Pacific ale, Sweet As!
When I first started drinking craft beers back in about 1996, when I drank a pale ale, the hops made the strongest impression on me. Today, however, after having enjoyed many intensely hopped IPAs over the years, I appreciated more than I ever have the great balance between hops and malt in these two ales. Today I tasted sweetness in both beers I had sort of missed in the past. In fact, the Sweet As! tasted as if it had honey added to it. Wait! I'll look it up. Nope. No mention of honey. No problem -- my main takeaway is that I thoroughly enjoyed the hop/malt balance in these beers.
I know what will happen after today. Next time I drink a hop bomb, I'll appreciate the hop blast even more in relation to the balance I enjoyed so much today.
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