Midwest Tour Blog part 1

Posted by scratch on 13-1-2010 8:44 pm - 0 comments

Hello Scratch golfers. Welcome to part 1 of the Midwest edition of the Tour Blog. Its an exciting time of year on the Nationwide Tour. The heat is ratcheting up, the ball is flying a long way, zoisia fairways provide perfect lies, the greens are bent and smooth, and scores are coming down!

After taking a little bit of time off to play a couple tournaments of my own, I headed just down the road a couple of hours from home to Columbus, Ohio. The Nationwide Children’s Hospital Invitational is in it’s third season, played over the very challenging Scarlet Course at Ohio State. Scarlet used to be one of my favorite courses in Ohio. We played there all the time when I was at Kent State, and the Allister MacKenzie course was, and I repeat was, a real joy to play. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m all for keeping up with the times and lengthening older courses, just as long as the original character of the course is kept in tact. Jack Nicklaus came in and just wrecked, smashed, demolished and trashed the Scarlet course. I’m sorry, folks, it’s a supreme disappointment. And, I have not heard any really positive comments about it, especially not from former OSU players. I don’t get it. I just don’t get it. What were they thinking?

Okay, so rant over, there seemed to be little action going on in the world of wedges the week of Columbus. There was some action on the course, though, with the annual Rep Tournament being contested on the much shorter (and unaltered) Gray Course. A fine time was had by all (I think) and some good scores were posted. My team came out on top, thanks to a very timely drawing of True Temper/Grafalloy rep Craig Nichols out of a hat in the blind draw! Our matching 65s put us on top by a mere seven shots. As you can imagine, the whining since has been endless. Just this week a protest was posted on the Tour Trailer when my scores from the Ohio Open were discovered. I was a pro last year folks, what do you expect? While it isn’t exactly like riding a bike, if you continue to work at it, some of the ability stays with you! I didn’t even shoot the lowest round! I just happened to pull a great great team out of a hat!

One thing that is starting to happen this time of year, though, is the need for players to replace the wedges they started out the year with. Pros will typically go through two or three sets of scoring clubs each season. So I’m getting requests for new sets of wedges with fresh grooves. Along with those requests are coming the inevitable questions about the 2010 grooves and when those will be available. We’re currently offering the V Groove as a Custom Studio option, so players will be able to get some to tinker around with pretty soon. It is going to be a whole new ball game, with so many of these players being just to young to have ever had to hit a club without box grooves! One word…flyers. Well, maybe one other word, too…FORE!

After Columbus, where the weather was actually quite comfortable (it has been a very mild summer in Central and Northern Ohio), it was off to Wichita, where there would be no such luck with the temperatures.

Arriving at the range in Wichita on Monday, the temperature was already into the mid-70s by 8:00 a.m. The humidity was up and the temperature was on the rise, getting ready to peak at 99 degrees. The range was pretty blank. The range would stay pretty blank the whole week. Tuesday the temperature topped out at 101. Wednesday it was back to just double digits at 99 again. Ultimately, in cases like this, players will spend the majority of their time on the golf course, rather than sweating it out on the range. It takes almost no time at all to get warmed up. Just a few swings in temperatures like that will give you what hitting balls for 15 minutes would do on a cooler fall or spring morning. The only guys who were hitting balls were those who had things to work on. The putting green was a more popular spot, with less physical action required to practice the short game. We did pick up a couple of players for the week, which always makes it worthwhile to be putting in the time.

After a rather brief trip home, it was back to the road to head to Springfield, MO. Springfield is normally a real cooker of a week, as well, though this week it has been just really warm rather than sweltering. I arrived early Sunday morning (1:30 Sunday morning) in time to play in one of the myriad of pro-ams that are associated with the Price Cutter Charity Championship. There are 10 pro-ams this week, and Scratch has been exceptionally cool about me playing in a handful of them. I’ve done so many pro-ams through the years, it just feels right to keep doing them. I always make sure to provide a great day for the players and I keep getting invited back. If I’m invited, I’m playing!

The first pro-am was at Branson Creek on Sunday afternoon. Branson Creek is my favorite of the courses down here. Its a great track with some beautiful views and great holes. Monday was supposed to be the second one, however the weather washed out ALL activities for the day. No pro-ams were held and the Monday qualifier had to be pushed back to Tuesday. That little blip in the schedule caused me to be recruited to play as a fill-in on Tuesday, as some of the players who had committed to the Tuesday pro-am were still having to finish up qualifying. I was happy to help out and got another round at Branson Creek for my efforts. Then I played on Wednesday morning as well. So, it was a busy playing week AND a good week for wedges, too, with the new 8620s making their tour debut! I got 18 of the new (and gorgeous) 8620s in to the Tour Trailer this week and already 5 of them have gone out. The shape is simply beautiful and with just a slight bit of rounding on the leading edge, they seem to appeal to a wider audience, especially those who have been playing Vokey wedges. They are going to do very, very well!

Wednesday night led to a rough patch in the week. A dinner out with Justin Honea from Adams (the winner of the individual portion of the Rep Tournament with a fine round of 64!) at a Mexican restaurant led to a mild case of food poisoning. Thursday and Friday would be about getting caught up on paperwork and blogging! I just couldn’t stray too far from home base. It wasn’t the worst food poisoning I’ve had, but no food poisoning is good food poisoning. My first real venture away from the “nest” was to take Scratch player Steven Taylor (hot off a 4^th place finish in Wichita) and occasional Scratch player Joey Lamielle out to dinner at Lambert’s Cafe, “Home of the Throwed Roll” on Friday night. Lambert’s is good country cooking, which I don’t eat often, but it certainly is a treat that I indulge in whenever I come down here. The fried pork chops (so good!) were enjoyed by all. As, of course, were the rolls tossed to (at) us from across the dining room. It’s Lambert’s “thing.” They’ve been tossing rolls for a long time!

Monday will see the Tour move a couple of hours north to Overland Park, KS for the next-to-last event of the Midwest swing. I don’t know what to expect at this venue as this is the first year for the tournament, but I’m imagining good things. The Tour has a reputation for getting better courses when they add new events, and I bet this one will be a good one. I’ll let you know when I get back and file my report.

Until then, best wishes and happy scoring!