Teed off over missed tee
Go to Yahoo maps or any other distance-locating site and it will
tell you that Stanford is 88 miles from the Pebble Beach Golf
Links
– the annual site of the AT
&
amp;T Tournament.
In the Bay Area’s unique microclimates 88 miles is a long, long
way. In fact, 88 miles in this little part of the world can mean
30-plus degree variations in temperature. Just ask someone who
lives in San Francisco and someone else who is in Gilroy.
So why is it that every year the media day event for the AT
&
amp;T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am is held at Stanford Golf
Course? Media day is the day when golf writers covering the
tournament supposedly get to play the course that will host the
tournament
– so that they can note course conditions, etc, etc…
Teed off over missed tee
Go to Yahoo maps or any other distance-locating site and it will tell you that Stanford is 88 miles from the Pebble Beach Golf Links – the annual site of the AT&T Tournament.
In the Bay Area’s unique microclimates 88 miles is a long, long way. In fact, 88 miles in this little part of the world can mean 30-plus degree variations in temperature. Just ask someone who lives in San Francisco and someone else who is in Gilroy.
So why is it that every year the media day event for the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am is held at Stanford Golf Course? Media day is the day when golf writers covering the tournament supposedly get to play the course that will host the tournament – so that they can note course conditions, etc, etc…
Don’t get me wrong. Stanford is an awesome course but it’s no where near the tournament site.
The argument could be made that Pebble Beach gets so much tourist play that it would be next to impossible to slip in some 50 local writers on the historic course for a FREE shotgun start. But isn’t the AT&T also played at Poppy Hills and Spyglass Hill as well?
Heck, they could put the writers out on the Pacific Grove Muni for the afternoon or at Old Del Monte or at Spanish Bay. At least the weather conditions would be the same.
I remember attending media day for the U.S. Open in 1992. The tournament was at Pebble Beach and so was the Open – a far bigger event than the AT&T in terms of golf prestige, yet the media got to play the course in Open conditions for the betterment of coverage.
I remember years ago the media day event for the Bing Crosby National Pro-Am did take place on the Monterey Peninsula. I guess the official word is that tournament officials decided to make Stanford the venue after the torrential rain-ravaged years of the early 1990s left the Monterey Peninsula area courses too wet to accommodate a bunch of note-taking hackers.
With that said, I headed up to Standford Golf Course on Monday morning with the intention of attending a press conference and enjoying a nice buffet lunch before heading out for a round of golf on the challenging private course. It wasn’t Pebble but I was pumped up. After all, when you’re the sports editor of a small newspaper and have a 7 month old and an 11 year-old at home, these opportunities to tee it up rapidly become few and far between.
The night before, I pulled my bag out of the garage and cleaned up my MacGregor JNPs – or Jack Nicklaus Personals for those of you that don’t know. The same set of irons that my childhood idol won the 1986 Masters with. I got my $40 big-headed titanium driver that I bought a few years back at K-Mart all ready to go. I even bought a dozen balls for the occasion as Stanford is home to a number of canyons and wooded areas. I tossed my clubs and golf shoes in the trunk and grabbed a windbreaker and headed out.
So how did it go? What did I shoot?
Here’s where the dream Monday quickly transformed into blue Monday. As I was passing Foothill College on Highway 280, I felt like I had an eyelash in my eye that wouldn’t let up. I pulled over and removed my contact lens to see what was in there and I found nothing. As I attempted to clean the lens to put it back in – it ripped in half!
Oh no, I couldn’t see clearly without it and had no spare. If I forged on, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to enjoy the course and the option of seeing any of my shots had gone completely out the window. Also, if I attempted to go for the shotgun start, which usually gets under way at around 12:30 p.m., I wouldn’t finish up until almost dark. In the day time without a contact lens in my dominant eye, it’s stupid enough to attempt to drive home. At night, I’d crash.
So no I never did get to play the Stanford on Monday. And I never got to hear the conference call with Phil Mickelson. I’ll also need to fork out a few hundred at the eye doctor in the near future – but at least my clubs are clean…
