Gretzky Blog

Posted by scratch on 13-1-2010 8:43 pm - 0 comments

Hello again, Scratch golfers.

Welcome to the Gretzky edition of the Tour Blog. This week’s journey begins in Ohio, goes across the border and north of Toronto and then returns across the border and heads back up to Northern Michigan. Not exactly tropical locations for this edition of the blog! Who would have thought that I’d have to go to the furthest point north to get the warmest weather?

For anyone who doesn’t know my story, I played professionally for fourteen years. Ten of those years were on the mini-tours and then I had status on the Nationwide Tour from 2005 through 2008. There’s an expression that says “You can take the boy out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the boy.” That sort of applies to golfers, too, I think. While I have no interest in playing tournament golf on a weekly basis anymore, I’m still a competitive kind of guy and really want to keep some of those juices flowing. I’m going to play a very small selection of events this year, mostly in Ohio. I started preparation two weeks ago for the events I have coming up. Of course in Ohio you never quite know what you are going to get, weather-wise. I managed to get three rounds in during the week prior to heading up to Canada. Two of the three days I played I could see my breath. There is something markedly not right about being able to see your breath, during the day, in late June and early July. We’ll just say that the game is developing again…slowly.

I left for Canada on Sunday. I had the great opportunity to stop and join some good friends, Aaron Alpern, who caddied for me much of 2007, Aaron’s father and Kyle Watson, another of the really good tour caddies, for a round of golf at Cherry Hill C.C. in Ridgeway, Ontario on the way up. Cherry Hill is a Walter J. Travis golf course and is an absolute beauty. The bunkering on Travis golf courses is simply amazing. The holes frame-up so wonderfully and it really puts a premium on shot-making. I shot a couple over, having been three under through #12. Like I said…developing.

Getting across the border was a real non-issue. A passport and a couple of quick questions was all it took. I only brought a few clubs in with me due to Canadian regulations. Apparently there were some heavy taxes levied on the companies that brought a bunch of stuff in in past years. Thankfully, I had paid attention to talk on the range in the weeks leading up to Canada and we had no such issues!

I spent two days on the range, freezing in the cold and wind. I got to Georgian Bay at 8:30 Monday morning to 51 degrees and wind. I got to the course at 8:30 Tuesday morning to 53* and rain. Nice. The range was a vast wasteland. I normally talk to a lot of players during my time at the events. The range is usually the hub of activity. This week I saw maybe a total of 25 players on the range. The guys had carts since they were dealing with two golf courses and they were zipping back and forth, completely ignoring the range. Who in their right mind would want to stand out there on the range in those conditions, anyway! But I did manage to get two more clubs in play last week, so while I originally thought that I might be wasting my time up there, it really turned out to be a success. Two clubs go out, two clubs go into play. That’s a good week, folks!

So I have to wonder what is up with the speed limits in Canada. Most of the way back to the States the speed limit was 80. That’s 80 kmh. That translates to about 47 mph. And I had no idea what kind of speeding leeway the Canadian police would allow. So I drove less than 50 mph pretty much the entire way back to the U.S. At least the drive was nice, if not a quick one.

From the border it was up to Harbor Springs, Michigan. We had a little East-Coast Scratch team retreat. Three days of golf, golf, golf and golf. Throw in a little food, very little sleep and a team meeting and you’ve got our three days!

We started the proceedings on Wednesday night at the Boyne Highlands Heather course. I had already put in about 10 hours in the car. Paul, Patrick, Mike, Jeremy, and “Irish” (the other Patrick, the one with the accent) had spent about 14 hours in the car. Ari and Jeff, well, they were already in Michigan at the start of the day, so they had it pretty easy by comparison. We pretty much went from the car straight to the course. I’m a bit older than the rest of the Scratch guys, and I seem to take a little longer to “unfold” after such a long trip. I did hit it right down the middle on the 10th, hit my approach to 5 feet and missed it. That was the good part of the round. We all were just ready to get on the course and get some holes in.

After a quick nine holes and a short time getting situated in our spaces at the resort, we headed out for Mexican food. When you put eight guys around a table, all with big senses of humor, you are bound to get some good stuff. We laughed all the way through dinner, but the biggest roar goes to Irish, who very innocently referred to Sergio Garcia using a term that in the U.S. would be deemed less-than-acceptable. He felt bad about it, but explained that in Ireland, that particular term just doesn’t carry the connotation it does here. It is interesting how certain terms don’t mean the same thing no matter where you might be. I see this a lot, both on and off the course, hanging around with players from all over. The funny bit wasn’t the use of the word. The funny thing was him using it so matter-of-factly in the middle of a Mexican restaurant.

Paul booked our tee times for the week, with a round in the morning and a round in the afternoon scheduled each day. The morning rounds were early. This is a subject that has now been discussed, and as it is mainly aimed at being a vacation, the next time we do this, the morning times will be pushed back to accomodate more sleep!

That being said, we were up and at ‘em every morning, ready or not. All the courses were enjoyable to play (we played 5 different tracks), each offering their own unique challenges and I think we all enjoyed being there. There was a lot of disgruntled golf being played. And it wasn’t just me…

None of us have really played that much golf this year. The business has been our focus, as it should be. Paul is in the middle of making a grip and swing change. I’m trying to re-create some measure of past form. The rest of the crew haven’t played much. Though Ari does seem to actually be playing pretty well. The weekend was good for us all, I think. We all got to be in one spot, something that hasn’t happened much since the move from Oregon. With the shop “being built”, everyone has been operating out of their own spaces pretty much, so it was good for us all to be together. Everyone played with everyone else over the course of the weekend. There weren’t a whole lot of games being played, though. Unfortunately, my reputation preceeds me and I still find it hard to get a game! Ah well, some things just don’t seem to change.

The last day we played 54 holes. You’d think we’d have been done after the first 36 and everyone agreeing that we were NOT going to play on Sunday morning before heading out. But we hadn’t yet played the whole Moor course, and I, for one, really wanted to see the back 9. I’m glad we did it, because we really had a laugh-fest of a round out there. We were all a little slap-happy by that point. It all came to a head on the back nine. With about four holes left, I was finally hitting a stride as those around me were kind of falling apart. Paul hits it just over the edge of a hazard on the 15th and his ball is sitting WAY up in the tall grass. He goes to flop it out and advances it maybe 3 feet. I didn’t bring the camera that round, and I wish I had. The look of disbelief/frustration/rage was priceless. We’ve all been there! Then, 15 seconds later, Jeremy hits his shot from the far right side of the right hand bunker. You could hear the crack as the very center of the ball is squarely impacted by the leading edge his sand wedge. The ball skips once in the bunker, slams into the front lip, shoots about 40 feet in the air, hangs there for what seemed like forever, then lands on the green, rolling out to about 20 feet. Even at Scratch Golf, with all we do and all we offer, we can’t keep a player from completely boning a shot if he makes that bad a swing at it! We all had a mighty fine laugh at Jeremy’s expense.

Ari, Irish and Jeff took off on Saturday evening, getting a jump on the trip back down so they could get in early. Paul, Patrick, Mike, Jeremy and I stayed Saturday night and took off on Sunday morning. I can’t recommend Boyne Highlands enough. It is a great place to be, with an exceptional group of diverse, interesting and challenging golf courses. Many thanks goes out to Paul for making the trip a reality for us!

So that was our week. From Cleveland to Canada to Michigan and from Chattanooga all the way up. We came from far and wide to get together to play some golf. I have to say, and I think I can speak for just about all of us, the real winner on the week was Boyne Highlands. It was decidedly NOT conquered by the guys from Scratch. At least not this week. We gave it what we had and it took it, without the slightest bit of a flinch. But we’ll be back!

The Tour Blog will return in a couple of weeks. The Nationwide Tour is off this week and I’m taking a few days to play in the Ohio Open next week, so I’ll be resuming the blog the week of the Nationwide Children’s Hospital Invitational.

Cheers, everyone!