In-Kyung Kim is now a contributor to the ESPNW Blog! Check out her 1st post from this Wednesday introducing her interests and those of some of her peers from South Korea.
It's pretty cute that she referred to BoA as a "magician," when she's actually a major international pop star and multilingual musician in Korean, Japanese, and English.
Here's a live version of the 1st BoA song I ever heard (thanks to the Full Metal Archivist):
I guess she is a bit of a magician, after all!
Anime fans may recognize this one as one of the ending songs from Inuyasha!
This one's for the FMA (BoA with SMAP):
Showing posts with label take your blog to the course. Show all posts
Showing posts with label take your blog to the course. Show all posts
Friday, May 10, 2013
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
If You're Looking for Tony Jesselli's Founders Cup Preview....
...you can find it over at his new blog, Tony's LPGA Report, at http://www.tonyslpgareport.com/2013/03/rr-donnelly-founders-cup-preview.html. You can always find the link to his most recent post in the "Mostly Harmless Golfarama" section over on the left sidebar.
I want to thank Tony for everything he did here at Mostly Harmless, but particularly for keeping MH alive while I took a long sabbatical from golf blogging for most of the last five months. For awhile there when he and I were both contributing regularly to MH--and for some time after I took off--it was the #1 golf blog according to Technorati (and was consistently in their top 5 for virtually his entire tenure). Tony's relentless search for new readers and eagerness to reach out to new audiences on discussion forums and fan sites around the world no doubt played a huge role in MH's rise in Technorati's rankings. But I'm sure I'm not alone when I say that it's Tony's ability to capture the big picture concisely and zoom in to focus on significant details and emerging trends that's the true source of his appeal as a golf writer. He always calls it like he sees it, even when it means pointing out that a golfer he likes a lot isn't playing very good golf. These qualities served him well at MH and will serve him well at Tony's LPGA Report.
Tony, I can't wait to see what you do in and with your new digs! Here's hoping that every single Mostly Harmless regular becomes a regular at your place and that you continue to bring new fans and better coverage to women's golf! Best of luck, and don't be a stranger--feel free to cross-post here any time!
I want to thank Tony for everything he did here at Mostly Harmless, but particularly for keeping MH alive while I took a long sabbatical from golf blogging for most of the last five months. For awhile there when he and I were both contributing regularly to MH--and for some time after I took off--it was the #1 golf blog according to Technorati (and was consistently in their top 5 for virtually his entire tenure). Tony's relentless search for new readers and eagerness to reach out to new audiences on discussion forums and fan sites around the world no doubt played a huge role in MH's rise in Technorati's rankings. But I'm sure I'm not alone when I say that it's Tony's ability to capture the big picture concisely and zoom in to focus on significant details and emerging trends that's the true source of his appeal as a golf writer. He always calls it like he sees it, even when it means pointing out that a golfer he likes a lot isn't playing very good golf. These qualities served him well at MH and will serve him well at Tony's LPGA Report.
Tony, I can't wait to see what you do in and with your new digs! Here's hoping that every single Mostly Harmless regular becomes a regular at your place and that you continue to bring new fans and better coverage to women's golf! Best of luck, and don't be a stranger--feel free to cross-post here any time!
Sunday, July 3, 2011
The Mostly Harmless Tiffany Joh Interview
Tiffany Joh's been on a roll lately, with a silver on the Futures Tour, a top 25 at the Wegmans LPGA Championship, and now a gold in her return to the FT this week. I've already written about Amy Yang, Joh's playing partner at Locust Hill last Sunday, so it's about time I put together my observations of the same 15 holes I followed T-Joh for--along with a transcript of our post-round interview. You know, before the U.S. Women's Open starts?
OK, just as Yang's final round was filled with mightabeens, T-Joh's Sunday was sabotaged by the same club that held back her playing partner: her putter. As you can see from her scorecard, she hit the most fairways and greens in her week that day, but also took by far the most putts (31 as opposed to 26 the previous 3 rounds). Even so, she would have had a solid 72 were it not for the par-5 17th that Yang eagled--and just missed double-eagling. Joh had put her drive in the right fairway bunker, hit her layup a hair too far and ended up in the thick rough 25 yards or so short of the green, and had time to get near it while Yang waited for the green to clear so she could go for it in 2. The upshot was that Joh had a perfect angle on Yang's approach, which looked from our angle (210 yards away and unable to see the front of the green) that it was drifting dangerously right of where she had aimed, but in actuality just carried the front-right trap, took a great kick, hit the stick, and almost ended up in the hole. As Yang and her caddie were walking up the fairway, T-Joh was holding her hands up in the air a few inches apart. Although I could tell that Yang was excited (for her), T-Joh was probably the most excited person of the hundreds who witnessed the shot. And she paid for it when she got around to playing her pitch. She caught it heavy, leaving it in the trap, then caught that shot heavy, leaving it in the rough short of the green, then put her chip 2 feet away and watched helplessly as her very-slightly push-firmed tap-in did a 270 and spun out, leaving her with her 1st over-par hole since the 3rd, a 4-shot-swing-with-Yang double bogey! (T-Joh had battled her way back to tied with Yang through 16, despite not being nearly as precise with her irons or as long off the tee all day....)
Talk about deflating: after missing a number of great birdie chances from the 4th through 14th holes (if I remember correctly, on the 4th, 5th, 8th, 10th, 11th, and 12th), she had finally gotten one to drop on the par-3 15th--a big breaker from the lower tier, 25 feet short of the pin--then made a great par save on the tricky par-4 16th from left trees off the tee and right trees short of the green, thanks to a tough 8-foot downhill slider after a miracle pitch from Deadsville. Even so, she bounced back with a par on the monster 18th and finished the week T25, 4 shots out of the top 10, 3 behind Yang, tied with fellow Futures Tour sensation Pornanong Phatlum, and 2 behind 2010 FT Player of the Year and money-list leader Cindy LaCrosse, who had an even tougher Sunday in the final pairing with Ya Ni Tseng. The gap between the freewheeling, go-for-broke T-Joh I followed on a Sunday last July and the tactical T-Joh I witnessed last Sunday could not have been starker (although her final round in Rochester was more like her moving day in Syracuse). But I have to say that her 74 at Locust Hill was light-years more impressive than her 70 and 72 at Drumlins East.
So even though T-Joh hasn't been lighting the LPGA on fire in her rookie season and she probably has a better chance to keep her card via the Futures Tour top 5 than the LPGA top 80, given that she didn't qualify for the U.S. Women's Open and is running out of full-field events to play in the rest of the season (she's currently #84 on the LPGA money list and #3 on the FT money list), she has been learning how to bring her Futures Tour game to the big leagues and making good progress in the process. And like Morgan Pressel and Mika Miyazato, she was in a very good mood when I interviewed her after her round Sunday. Here's the transcript, as best as I can reproduce the rhythm of the actual interchange:
THE CONSTRUCTIVIST: Was this your first LPGA major?
TIFFANY JOH: Um, Mostly Harmless Golf, huh? [half-chuckles.] Yeah, um, this is my third major, second as a pro, so...
TC [interrupting]: U.S. Opens?
T-JOH: Yeah, I played at Oakmont last year and I played in the Kraft as an amateur when I was, like, a senior, so....
TC: All right, well, how does this course compare to Oakmont? Let's start with that.
T-JOH: Um...well [weighing her words]...Oakmont's definitely...it was a little bit firmer, it was a little bit more intimidating and daunting. This course, I've heard stories about from last year, and supposedly the rough is not nearly as penalizing as it was last year--and I thought it was kinda penalizing. [laughs] Yeah, I mean, Oakmont was definitely...very--I think I shot, like, 84 one of the days [laughs at herself], and it felt like I shot 75. I was...
TC: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
T-JOH: Um, it was, uh...I can't, you can't really compare two courses--it's like, you can't say which kid you love more, you know? [laughs]
TC [laughs geekily, then stops abruptly]: Well, then, I'm actually going to ask you to make another comparison, then, back to Drumlins...
T-JOH: Um-hmm?
TC: ...East....
T-JOH: Drum-lins East...
TC: Syracuse last year.
T-JOH: Ohhh, yeah.
TC [joking]: It's just like that week: you were chasing Cindy [LaCrosse], you were chasing Cindy today...
T-JOH: [laughs] ...Yeah! Except...
TC: ...Pornanong [Phatlum] was in the mix...
T-JOH: ...you know, except both times it was, like, a futile chase. [laughs]
TC: [laughs]
T-JOH: Really, but--um, no, I love seeing the girls from the Futures Tour out here. It's nice to see some friendly faces...
TC: Um-hmm.
T-JOH: ...especially when you can get so easily intimidated by all the big guns out here.
TC [incredulous]: Really...? You...?
T-JOH: [chuckles modestly]
TC: Really?
T-JOH: Believe me!
TC: Women's Amateur Public Links champion...
T-JOH: [laughs]
TC: ...twice...
T-JOH: Yeah! [laughs]
TC: OK.
T-JOH [drily]: I get intimidated by my shadow sometimes.
TC: [laughs] Did you become a little bit of a spectator on 17 after Amy's shot?
T-JOH: Yeah, I went crazy!
TC: [laughs]
T-JOH: [laughs] Meanwhile, I'm, like, doubling it. [laughs] Sitting there, and I saw her...because I was up on the hill, like, walking to my ball, and I saw it just ram the pin, and then just, like, sit right there--
TC: You saw it all?
T-JOH: Yeah, and I looked back there and I'm trying to tell her that it's, like, this close [holds up her hands a few inches apart]--I'm sure that looked really inappropriate! [laughs]
TC: No, it was hilarious.
T-JOH: [laughs]
TC: Her caddie had to talk her into that shot, by the way--
T-JOH: Yeah?
TC: She was trying to lay up with a 4-iron. And he was like...
T-JOH: Yeah?
TC: ..."Come on, just hit the hybrid, just hit the hybrid!"
T-JOH: Yeah? Well, I mean, good thing she did. I was looking there and I was like [in fangirl voice], "It's this close!!" and she was looking at me like, "What are you doing?" [Ed. note: From my vantage point, it seemed like Yang was thrilled by and curious at the crowd's reaction to her shot. She and her caddie gathered it was close, but since none of us could see the green from where we were, we had no idea just how close it was. So it was both exciting and informative when Joh reacted the way she did. Kind of reminded me of Fuzzy Zoeller waving the white towel--to Greg Norman, wasn't it?--an eon ago....]
TC: [laughs] Was this week like an emotional roller coaster--I mean, like, your save on 16...
T-JOH: Yeah...
TC: ...was amazing, and then you go and do what you did on 17...
T-JOH: Yeah, well...
TC: ...and to recover on 18....
T-JOH: Yeah, well, I mean, I was telling my caddie, my day yesterday was pretty much the same, like...
TC: Really?
T-JOH: Yeah, I had like ten putts through the front nine and was like three-under and then made three bogeys....
TC [commiserating]: Yeah, I saw that...
T-JOH: ...almost consecutively, they were just right there.
TC: [groans]
T-JOH: And after, like, the round yesterday, I was, like, "Man, I feel like Phil Mickelson [laughs] at the Masters."
TC: [laughs]
T-JOH: All over the place. But, honestly, with how, you know, badly I hit the ball at some points this week, I'm really happy with the finish I had.
TC: Yeah.
T-JOH: Plus, I'm going to take a lot of experience out of this, so....
TC: Definitely. You were in the mix!
T-JOH [somewhat wistfully/mostly disbelievingly]: [laughs] Yeah...
TC: For a second! [laughs] For a second!
T-JOH: [laughs]
TC: Yeah, well, what Ya Ni was doing, outdoing Rory....
T-JOH: Yeah, just running laps around the field. [laughs]
TC: I mean, it's crazy. When you see somebody doing that, I mean, I saw Cristie [Kerr] do it last year...
T-JOH: Yeah?
TC: It just seems...like they're on another planet, or something.
T-JOH: Yeah, you just kind of sit there and just...watch, take it in, try to learn a few things. [laughs]
TC: When you started the day, were you thinking of second, or were you just thinking, play your own game, do what you do best....?
T-JOH: Honestly, I was just sittin' there, thinking, "Keep it in play today."
TC: Uh-huh?
T-JOH: "Please keep it in play!" And I did sometimes; sometimes I didn't. [laughs self-deprecatingly]
TC: Well, you had it going in the middle of the round.
T-JOH: Um-hmm.
TC: It felt like you really loosened up and relaxed a little...
T-JOH: Yeah, um-hmm...
TC: ...and you started to stick some shots...
T-JOH: Yeah.
TC: I remember on the Futures Tour Sunday, you were just...going wild aiming at pins--
T-JOH: Yeah-- [laughs]
TC: --from wherever, and I was, like, "Wow, she's playing a very...tactical game today."
T-JOH: It's funny, though, because normally, like, when I don't have a caddie, and I'm just, kinda, either I have a friend on the bag that doesn't know anything about golf or I'm just looping my own bag, I mean, I just have no clue what I'm doing. I just, you know, just hit the ball and go for everything. And when you have a caddie on the bag and he's like [in soothing, calm voice], "OK, you kinda wanna, like, err on the left side here," and you're like [aghast], "What?! [laughs] What?! What are you talking about?!" [laughs]
TC: That's true! Like, I kept asking you the last two years if you'd let me caddie for you, and you were like, "No, no, no..."
T-JOH: [laughs]
TC: "...it's ok, it's ok." But do you like--
T-JOH: I mean, I see green grass and a hole!-- [laughs]
TC: --do you like carrying your own bag better? Would you do it? [laughs]
T-JOH: I think, if they let us, I might. At the same time, I think I'd shoot, like, 900...
TC: [laughs]
T-JOH: [laughs]...carrying my own bag. But, I mean, Wayne, my caddie, has been great on the bag, he's been kinda--especially this course, where you have to stay below a lot of the pins, and he's all, like--there's been a couple of times where he's made me, like, lay way back, and I just glare at him...
TC: [laughs]
T-JOH: ...and then I get up there and make an easy par and so I'm, like [grudgingly], "OK, bye. You were right."
TC: Were you hitting a lot of 3-woods on the front? Or were you hitting driver consistently?
T-JOH: Um, I--any chance that I got, I was hitting 3-wood. Because my driver is--
TC: Oh, I was like, "Why is Amy always outdriving her?"
T-JOH: Yeah, my driver is a little scary right now, so... [laughs] ...so there were a lot of holes--
TC: 10--10 was not scary. 10 was nice!
T-JOH: [laughs]
TC [not letting it go]: That was sweet!
T-JOH: But, I mean, like, this course, it's just, you know, you play safe, um, safe golf, and then, you just try to give yourself as many opportunities as you can for birdie, so...um, it worked well for 17 of the holes! [chuckles]
TC: So you were in the hunt at a Futures Tour major last week...
T-JOH: Yeah!
TC: ...and now you come here--what's next for you?
T-JOH: Um, Futures Tour tournament in Indiana. Actually, I'm actually hopping in a car with a friend and we're gonna drive to Akron, Ohio, and play in a pro-am, and then...
TC [admiringly]: Crazy!
T-JOH: ...I'm gonna catch a ride--hitchhike my way to Indiana for the Futures Tour event [laughs], so....
TC [internal censor malfunctioning]: Holy shit.
T-JOH: It'll be fun, though! [laughs]
TC: Wow. And, then, are you going to come to Syracuse again, or...?
T-JOH: Yeah, I'll be there.
TC: Excellent!
T-JOH: Actually, that lady [who had been talking with her before our interview began] was my housing for Syracuse.
TC: Whoa, seriously? She came out all this way? [Ed. note: It's not much more than an hour, if that. What was I thinking?]
T-JOH: Yeah, apparently she came out and watched. Apparently she comes out every year to this tournament.
TC: That's awesome!
T-JOH: Yeah, she followed me all day and she was like, "I'll see you in a month!" And I was like, "Yeah, I'll see ya!" [laughs]
TC: That's great. Well, I'll see you in a month, as well.
T-JOH: All right, you'll be out there?
TC: Absolutely.
T-JOH: Cool! Thanks a lot!
Yup, I still have a lot of work to do on my interviewing technique! By the way, in T-Joh's defense against any who might object to her repetition of those interjections that I tried to transcribe faithfully above, it's clear when you listen to the audio that she was often using them to keep the conversational ball in her court, so to speak. Got to remember to stop stepping all over my interviewees' answers to my questions!
Seriously, I really appreciated how open and relaxed T-Joh was during the interview, which took more than 5 and a half minutes. As you can see, she's a really fun interviewee and her personality really comes through clearly. Here's hoping she brings a big winning streak to Syracuse at the end of the month!
[Update 1 (7/15/11, 8:09 am): Check out this recent LPGA Futures Tour interview with Joh, complete with a few of her music videos!]
OK, just as Yang's final round was filled with mightabeens, T-Joh's Sunday was sabotaged by the same club that held back her playing partner: her putter. As you can see from her scorecard, she hit the most fairways and greens in her week that day, but also took by far the most putts (31 as opposed to 26 the previous 3 rounds). Even so, she would have had a solid 72 were it not for the par-5 17th that Yang eagled--and just missed double-eagling. Joh had put her drive in the right fairway bunker, hit her layup a hair too far and ended up in the thick rough 25 yards or so short of the green, and had time to get near it while Yang waited for the green to clear so she could go for it in 2. The upshot was that Joh had a perfect angle on Yang's approach, which looked from our angle (210 yards away and unable to see the front of the green) that it was drifting dangerously right of where she had aimed, but in actuality just carried the front-right trap, took a great kick, hit the stick, and almost ended up in the hole. As Yang and her caddie were walking up the fairway, T-Joh was holding her hands up in the air a few inches apart. Although I could tell that Yang was excited (for her), T-Joh was probably the most excited person of the hundreds who witnessed the shot. And she paid for it when she got around to playing her pitch. She caught it heavy, leaving it in the trap, then caught that shot heavy, leaving it in the rough short of the green, then put her chip 2 feet away and watched helplessly as her very-slightly push-firmed tap-in did a 270 and spun out, leaving her with her 1st over-par hole since the 3rd, a 4-shot-swing-with-Yang double bogey! (T-Joh had battled her way back to tied with Yang through 16, despite not being nearly as precise with her irons or as long off the tee all day....)
Talk about deflating: after missing a number of great birdie chances from the 4th through 14th holes (if I remember correctly, on the 4th, 5th, 8th, 10th, 11th, and 12th), she had finally gotten one to drop on the par-3 15th--a big breaker from the lower tier, 25 feet short of the pin--then made a great par save on the tricky par-4 16th from left trees off the tee and right trees short of the green, thanks to a tough 8-foot downhill slider after a miracle pitch from Deadsville. Even so, she bounced back with a par on the monster 18th and finished the week T25, 4 shots out of the top 10, 3 behind Yang, tied with fellow Futures Tour sensation Pornanong Phatlum, and 2 behind 2010 FT Player of the Year and money-list leader Cindy LaCrosse, who had an even tougher Sunday in the final pairing with Ya Ni Tseng. The gap between the freewheeling, go-for-broke T-Joh I followed on a Sunday last July and the tactical T-Joh I witnessed last Sunday could not have been starker (although her final round in Rochester was more like her moving day in Syracuse). But I have to say that her 74 at Locust Hill was light-years more impressive than her 70 and 72 at Drumlins East.
So even though T-Joh hasn't been lighting the LPGA on fire in her rookie season and she probably has a better chance to keep her card via the Futures Tour top 5 than the LPGA top 80, given that she didn't qualify for the U.S. Women's Open and is running out of full-field events to play in the rest of the season (she's currently #84 on the LPGA money list and #3 on the FT money list), she has been learning how to bring her Futures Tour game to the big leagues and making good progress in the process. And like Morgan Pressel and Mika Miyazato, she was in a very good mood when I interviewed her after her round Sunday. Here's the transcript, as best as I can reproduce the rhythm of the actual interchange:
THE CONSTRUCTIVIST: Was this your first LPGA major?
TIFFANY JOH: Um, Mostly Harmless Golf, huh? [half-chuckles.] Yeah, um, this is my third major, second as a pro, so...
TC [interrupting]: U.S. Opens?
T-JOH: Yeah, I played at Oakmont last year and I played in the Kraft as an amateur when I was, like, a senior, so....
TC: All right, well, how does this course compare to Oakmont? Let's start with that.
T-JOH: Um...well [weighing her words]...Oakmont's definitely...it was a little bit firmer, it was a little bit more intimidating and daunting. This course, I've heard stories about from last year, and supposedly the rough is not nearly as penalizing as it was last year--and I thought it was kinda penalizing. [laughs] Yeah, I mean, Oakmont was definitely...very--I think I shot, like, 84 one of the days [laughs at herself], and it felt like I shot 75. I was...
TC: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
T-JOH: Um, it was, uh...I can't, you can't really compare two courses--it's like, you can't say which kid you love more, you know? [laughs]
TC [laughs geekily, then stops abruptly]: Well, then, I'm actually going to ask you to make another comparison, then, back to Drumlins...
T-JOH: Um-hmm?
TC: ...East....
T-JOH: Drum-lins East...
TC: Syracuse last year.
T-JOH: Ohhh, yeah.
TC [joking]: It's just like that week: you were chasing Cindy [LaCrosse], you were chasing Cindy today...
T-JOH: [laughs] ...Yeah! Except...
TC: ...Pornanong [Phatlum] was in the mix...
T-JOH: ...you know, except both times it was, like, a futile chase. [laughs]
TC: [laughs]
T-JOH: Really, but--um, no, I love seeing the girls from the Futures Tour out here. It's nice to see some friendly faces...
TC: Um-hmm.
T-JOH: ...especially when you can get so easily intimidated by all the big guns out here.
TC [incredulous]: Really...? You...?
T-JOH: [chuckles modestly]
TC: Really?
T-JOH: Believe me!
TC: Women's Amateur Public Links champion...
T-JOH: [laughs]
TC: ...twice...
T-JOH: Yeah! [laughs]
TC: OK.
T-JOH [drily]: I get intimidated by my shadow sometimes.
TC: [laughs] Did you become a little bit of a spectator on 17 after Amy's shot?
T-JOH: Yeah, I went crazy!
TC: [laughs]
T-JOH: [laughs] Meanwhile, I'm, like, doubling it. [laughs] Sitting there, and I saw her...because I was up on the hill, like, walking to my ball, and I saw it just ram the pin, and then just, like, sit right there--
TC: You saw it all?
T-JOH: Yeah, and I looked back there and I'm trying to tell her that it's, like, this close [holds up her hands a few inches apart]--I'm sure that looked really inappropriate! [laughs]
TC: No, it was hilarious.
T-JOH: [laughs]
TC: Her caddie had to talk her into that shot, by the way--
T-JOH: Yeah?
TC: She was trying to lay up with a 4-iron. And he was like...
T-JOH: Yeah?
TC: ..."Come on, just hit the hybrid, just hit the hybrid!"
T-JOH: Yeah? Well, I mean, good thing she did. I was looking there and I was like [in fangirl voice], "It's this close!!" and she was looking at me like, "What are you doing?" [Ed. note: From my vantage point, it seemed like Yang was thrilled by and curious at the crowd's reaction to her shot. She and her caddie gathered it was close, but since none of us could see the green from where we were, we had no idea just how close it was. So it was both exciting and informative when Joh reacted the way she did. Kind of reminded me of Fuzzy Zoeller waving the white towel--to Greg Norman, wasn't it?--an eon ago....]
TC: [laughs] Was this week like an emotional roller coaster--I mean, like, your save on 16...
T-JOH: Yeah...
TC: ...was amazing, and then you go and do what you did on 17...
T-JOH: Yeah, well...
TC: ...and to recover on 18....
T-JOH: Yeah, well, I mean, I was telling my caddie, my day yesterday was pretty much the same, like...
TC: Really?
T-JOH: Yeah, I had like ten putts through the front nine and was like three-under and then made three bogeys....
TC [commiserating]: Yeah, I saw that...
T-JOH: ...almost consecutively, they were just right there.
TC: [groans]
T-JOH: And after, like, the round yesterday, I was, like, "Man, I feel like Phil Mickelson [laughs] at the Masters."
TC: [laughs]
T-JOH: All over the place. But, honestly, with how, you know, badly I hit the ball at some points this week, I'm really happy with the finish I had.
TC: Yeah.
T-JOH: Plus, I'm going to take a lot of experience out of this, so....
TC: Definitely. You were in the mix!
T-JOH [somewhat wistfully/mostly disbelievingly]: [laughs] Yeah...
TC: For a second! [laughs] For a second!
T-JOH: [laughs]
TC: Yeah, well, what Ya Ni was doing, outdoing Rory....
T-JOH: Yeah, just running laps around the field. [laughs]
TC: I mean, it's crazy. When you see somebody doing that, I mean, I saw Cristie [Kerr] do it last year...
T-JOH: Yeah?
TC: It just seems...like they're on another planet, or something.
T-JOH: Yeah, you just kind of sit there and just...watch, take it in, try to learn a few things. [laughs]
TC: When you started the day, were you thinking of second, or were you just thinking, play your own game, do what you do best....?
T-JOH: Honestly, I was just sittin' there, thinking, "Keep it in play today."
TC: Uh-huh?
T-JOH: "Please keep it in play!" And I did sometimes; sometimes I didn't. [laughs self-deprecatingly]
TC: Well, you had it going in the middle of the round.
T-JOH: Um-hmm.
TC: It felt like you really loosened up and relaxed a little...
T-JOH: Yeah, um-hmm...
TC: ...and you started to stick some shots...
T-JOH: Yeah.
TC: I remember on the Futures Tour Sunday, you were just...going wild aiming at pins--
T-JOH: Yeah-- [laughs]
TC: --from wherever, and I was, like, "Wow, she's playing a very...tactical game today."
T-JOH: It's funny, though, because normally, like, when I don't have a caddie, and I'm just, kinda, either I have a friend on the bag that doesn't know anything about golf or I'm just looping my own bag, I mean, I just have no clue what I'm doing. I just, you know, just hit the ball and go for everything. And when you have a caddie on the bag and he's like [in soothing, calm voice], "OK, you kinda wanna, like, err on the left side here," and you're like [aghast], "What?! [laughs] What?! What are you talking about?!" [laughs]
TC: That's true! Like, I kept asking you the last two years if you'd let me caddie for you, and you were like, "No, no, no..."
T-JOH: [laughs]
TC: "...it's ok, it's ok." But do you like--
T-JOH: I mean, I see green grass and a hole!-- [laughs]
TC: --do you like carrying your own bag better? Would you do it? [laughs]
T-JOH: I think, if they let us, I might. At the same time, I think I'd shoot, like, 900...
TC: [laughs]
T-JOH: [laughs]...carrying my own bag. But, I mean, Wayne, my caddie, has been great on the bag, he's been kinda--especially this course, where you have to stay below a lot of the pins, and he's all, like--there's been a couple of times where he's made me, like, lay way back, and I just glare at him...
TC: [laughs]
T-JOH: ...and then I get up there and make an easy par and so I'm, like [grudgingly], "OK, bye. You were right."
TC: Were you hitting a lot of 3-woods on the front? Or were you hitting driver consistently?
T-JOH: Um, I--any chance that I got, I was hitting 3-wood. Because my driver is--
TC: Oh, I was like, "Why is Amy always outdriving her?"
T-JOH: Yeah, my driver is a little scary right now, so... [laughs] ...so there were a lot of holes--
TC: 10--10 was not scary. 10 was nice!
T-JOH: [laughs]
TC [not letting it go]: That was sweet!
T-JOH: But, I mean, like, this course, it's just, you know, you play safe, um, safe golf, and then, you just try to give yourself as many opportunities as you can for birdie, so...um, it worked well for 17 of the holes! [chuckles]
TC: So you were in the hunt at a Futures Tour major last week...
T-JOH: Yeah!
TC: ...and now you come here--what's next for you?
T-JOH: Um, Futures Tour tournament in Indiana. Actually, I'm actually hopping in a car with a friend and we're gonna drive to Akron, Ohio, and play in a pro-am, and then...
TC [admiringly]: Crazy!
T-JOH: ...I'm gonna catch a ride--hitchhike my way to Indiana for the Futures Tour event [laughs], so....
TC [internal censor malfunctioning]: Holy shit.
T-JOH: It'll be fun, though! [laughs]
TC: Wow. And, then, are you going to come to Syracuse again, or...?
T-JOH: Yeah, I'll be there.
TC: Excellent!
T-JOH: Actually, that lady [who had been talking with her before our interview began] was my housing for Syracuse.
TC: Whoa, seriously? She came out all this way? [Ed. note: It's not much more than an hour, if that. What was I thinking?]
T-JOH: Yeah, apparently she came out and watched. Apparently she comes out every year to this tournament.
TC: That's awesome!
T-JOH: Yeah, she followed me all day and she was like, "I'll see you in a month!" And I was like, "Yeah, I'll see ya!" [laughs]
TC: That's great. Well, I'll see you in a month, as well.
T-JOH: All right, you'll be out there?
TC: Absolutely.
T-JOH: Cool! Thanks a lot!
Yup, I still have a lot of work to do on my interviewing technique! By the way, in T-Joh's defense against any who might object to her repetition of those interjections that I tried to transcribe faithfully above, it's clear when you listen to the audio that she was often using them to keep the conversational ball in her court, so to speak. Got to remember to stop stepping all over my interviewees' answers to my questions!
Seriously, I really appreciated how open and relaxed T-Joh was during the interview, which took more than 5 and a half minutes. As you can see, she's a really fun interviewee and her personality really comes through clearly. Here's hoping she brings a big winning streak to Syracuse at the end of the month!
[Update 1 (7/15/11, 8:09 am): Check out this recent LPGA Futures Tour interview with Joh, complete with a few of her music videos!]
Saturday, July 2, 2011
Time to Check Your DVRs, Mostly Harmless Fans
Just finished watching the Golf Channel's coverage of the final round of the Wegmans LPGA Championship and as it was coming to a close I was joking with the Full Metal Archivist that I might show up soon. Well, if you're interested in the man behind the moniker, check out Rich Lerner's intro to the last profile of Ya Ni Tseng. That's me, The Constructivist, in the green shirt and black hat among the Japanese media in the background (they were interviewing Mika Miyazato and around that time I was wondering how low I could hold up my arm at audiotaping level). Oh, and if you have a big enough tv, you'll also be able to find me in the right fairway on 18 in the crowd shot after Ya Ni hit her approach shot and is walking toward the green. In fact, when they zoom in on her and she looks over to her right, nods, and raises her glove, she's acknowledging my cry of "-20, Ya Ni!" If that's my 3 seconds of fame, that's not too shabby!
[Update 1 (12:11 pm): I'm on youtube, too!
Don't blink!]
[Update 1 (12:11 pm): I'm on youtube, too!
Don't blink!]
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
I'm Here!
I got to Locust Hill yesterday a little before 4 pm and after checking out the driving range and practice putting green and checking in at the media center, it wasn't until about 4:45 that I was able to catch up with Mika Miyazato's pro-am group as they closed out the front 9. As I was making my way to the 6th fairway, where I figured Mikan's fivesome woyld be, I got to see just how much more comfortable Mi Hyun Kim looked on the golf course than last year (in a word: very!), just how funny Laura Diaz is (see previous parenthetical comment), just how intimidating the new look of the 18th hole is (ditto), just how much of a star Patty Sheehan is in Rochester (ditto), just how great Natalie Gulbis looks in person (ditto), just how long Brittany Lincicome and A.J. Eathorne are off the tee as lefties (ditto), just how tough even simple little run-shots and lag putts are on the very firm and fast greens (ditto), and just how laid-back Ya Ni Tseng is during pro-ams (ditto). I'll do separate posts on what I noticed about Mikan and the 6th through 9th holes (which I had never actually walked in their entirety), what I heard from Ya Ni Tseng and Suzann Pettersen about how they're preparing for competition this week, and what I'm wondering about heading into the start of the tournament tomorrow--not to mention my usual tournament preview/predictions/pairing post--but I want to close out this one with a few observations and anecdotes.
Access, Access, Access
I know everyone who attends a professional golf tournament comes away impressed by how in the thick of things the spectators are. A brief sampling of idle thoughts as I was wandering the grounds yesterday should show I'm no different: "Oh, that was Michelle Wie." "Is that Lexi Thompson finishing up there on 18? Yep." "There's Amy Yang again." Today I hung out on the driving range until the rain drove me to the media tent and I saw Morgan Pressel, Juli Inkster, Pat Hurst, and Belen Mozo, among others. The only comparable experience to attending an LPGA event I've ever really had is attending academic conferences as a grad student and realizing the scholars whose work I'd been admiring and wrestling with for years were actual people.
Kids, Kids, Kids
The cuteness factor at LPGA events is not to be dismissed. Maybe it was because I was a little anxious about leaving onechan and imoto with my mom and dad (I know, I know, for all of 24 hours!), but I couldn't help but notice every little girl's autograph-hunting tactics and every baby or toddler I passed. I'm not saying it was a large number, as it was late in the afternoon on Tuesday, but they certainly made up a decent proportion of the spectators. It was fun trotting out my rusty Japanese for the befuddlement and amusement of a 3-year-old boy (who 1st held up 5 fingers, then 4, as he replied "san sai" to my "nan sai desuka?"--yeah, he's 3) and his older sisters (the eldest of whom must have been about 10 and at times was busting out an impressive downswing with a stick on a tree trunk to the right of the par-3 7th hole's green).
But the funniest thing I saw came after Mikan had finished her round, while she was being interviewed behind the 9th green by a contingent from the Japanese media. All of a sudden, I heard a toddler softly calling out, "Mami, mami!" and quickly saw that he was being wheeled toward us in a stroller from about 50 yards away. It was pretty clear the reporters knew whose kid he was, as they easily communicated to his caregiver that Mikan wasn't the woman he was looking for, who was likely finishing up the back pretty soon. It wasn't until about an hour later that I figured out who the toddler was when I saw him reunited with his mom: Mi Hyun Kim's son Ye Sung! When I first heard and saw him, I had in passing thought, "wouldn't it be cool if he was..." but quickly dismissed the possibility. Turns out my guess had been right! I'm hoping I get a chance this morning to follow up on last year's interview with her about returning to the tour as a new mom. But I can report her son is looking very healthy. And much bigger than the year-and-ahalf-plus he is!
Practice, Practice, Practice
I hung out at the putting green for more than an hour after Mikan had finished her round, just observing how she and the other players there approached preparing for greens that to me looked like they were significantly quicker than last year (approaching scary fast). I caught the tail end of Ya Ni Tseng and Kyeong Bae's practice sessions, witnessed how veterans like Leta Lindley and Pat Hurst shot the breeze and tuned their strokes (including a lesson for Hurst from none other than Rosie Jones!), and got a sense of how much Cristie Kerr is juggling (she left a couple bottles of wine for Ya Ni, practiced uphill 3-foot sliders and delicate downhill 10-footers, talked to a club rep, and left for a wine tasting she would be hosting, all in the space of less than a half-hour) these days. I was ready to call it quits around 7:30 pm when Mikan finally took off (after being on the course for what must have been 8 to 10 hours!), but as I was passing the driving range on the way to the media lot, I noticed the only player still there was Suzann Pettersen. She was working on 3/4 wedges with a coach and her caddie, discussing something very technical about her grip (super-strong, with her right palm practically underneath the club face, so to speak) and wrist-hinging at the top of her backswing and through her downswing that I was too far away to overhear the details of. My impression at a distance as she grinded away at these barely visible changes was that I was witnessing a true virtuoso honing her craft. The bugs were out in force by the time she had had enough and it was after 8 pm, but she was gracious enough to walk and talk with me as we took the tunnel underneath Jefferson road and headed uphill towards the player parking lot by the clubhouse. More on that conversation later, but what I took away from watching these pros work on their 80 yards and in games for hours is how much focused work it takes to shave thousandths or even hundredths of a stroke off your putts per green in regulation rate and putting average or inches or even feet off your average distance from the pin on approach shots.
Speaking of which, the rain is slowing down, so I'm going to lug the laptop around the back 9 to see how the overnight storm's downpour has been absorbed by the course. Be back soon!
[Update 1 (8:48 am): Well, that was quick. I took one look at the weather map and decided that discretion is the better form of valor, at least for the next hour.]
Access, Access, Access
I know everyone who attends a professional golf tournament comes away impressed by how in the thick of things the spectators are. A brief sampling of idle thoughts as I was wandering the grounds yesterday should show I'm no different: "Oh, that was Michelle Wie." "Is that Lexi Thompson finishing up there on 18? Yep." "There's Amy Yang again." Today I hung out on the driving range until the rain drove me to the media tent and I saw Morgan Pressel, Juli Inkster, Pat Hurst, and Belen Mozo, among others. The only comparable experience to attending an LPGA event I've ever really had is attending academic conferences as a grad student and realizing the scholars whose work I'd been admiring and wrestling with for years were actual people.
Kids, Kids, Kids
The cuteness factor at LPGA events is not to be dismissed. Maybe it was because I was a little anxious about leaving onechan and imoto with my mom and dad (I know, I know, for all of 24 hours!), but I couldn't help but notice every little girl's autograph-hunting tactics and every baby or toddler I passed. I'm not saying it was a large number, as it was late in the afternoon on Tuesday, but they certainly made up a decent proportion of the spectators. It was fun trotting out my rusty Japanese for the befuddlement and amusement of a 3-year-old boy (who 1st held up 5 fingers, then 4, as he replied "san sai" to my "nan sai desuka?"--yeah, he's 3) and his older sisters (the eldest of whom must have been about 10 and at times was busting out an impressive downswing with a stick on a tree trunk to the right of the par-3 7th hole's green).
But the funniest thing I saw came after Mikan had finished her round, while she was being interviewed behind the 9th green by a contingent from the Japanese media. All of a sudden, I heard a toddler softly calling out, "Mami, mami!" and quickly saw that he was being wheeled toward us in a stroller from about 50 yards away. It was pretty clear the reporters knew whose kid he was, as they easily communicated to his caregiver that Mikan wasn't the woman he was looking for, who was likely finishing up the back pretty soon. It wasn't until about an hour later that I figured out who the toddler was when I saw him reunited with his mom: Mi Hyun Kim's son Ye Sung! When I first heard and saw him, I had in passing thought, "wouldn't it be cool if he was..." but quickly dismissed the possibility. Turns out my guess had been right! I'm hoping I get a chance this morning to follow up on last year's interview with her about returning to the tour as a new mom. But I can report her son is looking very healthy. And much bigger than the year-and-ahalf-plus he is!
Practice, Practice, Practice
I hung out at the putting green for more than an hour after Mikan had finished her round, just observing how she and the other players there approached preparing for greens that to me looked like they were significantly quicker than last year (approaching scary fast). I caught the tail end of Ya Ni Tseng and Kyeong Bae's practice sessions, witnessed how veterans like Leta Lindley and Pat Hurst shot the breeze and tuned their strokes (including a lesson for Hurst from none other than Rosie Jones!), and got a sense of how much Cristie Kerr is juggling (she left a couple bottles of wine for Ya Ni, practiced uphill 3-foot sliders and delicate downhill 10-footers, talked to a club rep, and left for a wine tasting she would be hosting, all in the space of less than a half-hour) these days. I was ready to call it quits around 7:30 pm when Mikan finally took off (after being on the course for what must have been 8 to 10 hours!), but as I was passing the driving range on the way to the media lot, I noticed the only player still there was Suzann Pettersen. She was working on 3/4 wedges with a coach and her caddie, discussing something very technical about her grip (super-strong, with her right palm practically underneath the club face, so to speak) and wrist-hinging at the top of her backswing and through her downswing that I was too far away to overhear the details of. My impression at a distance as she grinded away at these barely visible changes was that I was witnessing a true virtuoso honing her craft. The bugs were out in force by the time she had had enough and it was after 8 pm, but she was gracious enough to walk and talk with me as we took the tunnel underneath Jefferson road and headed uphill towards the player parking lot by the clubhouse. More on that conversation later, but what I took away from watching these pros work on their 80 yards and in games for hours is how much focused work it takes to shave thousandths or even hundredths of a stroke off your putts per green in regulation rate and putting average or inches or even feet off your average distance from the pin on approach shots.
Speaking of which, the rain is slowing down, so I'm going to lug the laptop around the back 9 to see how the overnight storm's downpour has been absorbed by the course. Be back soon!
[Update 1 (8:48 am): Well, that was quick. I took one look at the weather map and decided that discretion is the better form of valor, at least for the next hour.]
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Recommended Reading: Dave Kindred on Stephanie Wei
Pretty cool that Stephanie Wei is the subject of a thoughtful essay in the National Sports Journalism Center by Dave Kindred on what "journalist" means in the age of emerging media. Reminds me I've gotta apply for media credentials at the Wegmans LPGA Championship soon! Hope they want me back....
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
We Interrupt This U.S. Women's Open Week with...
...a boring update on my own game. Skip this if you want, but maybe checking my patterns will help you notice and analyze yours.
With onechan finally old enough to start playing a few holes with me several times this summer already (and more when she gets back from Japan), I'm trying to make a comeback to competitive golf. I'm playing the Utica City Amateur next week and trying to qualify for the New York State Men's Mid-Amateur in late August, both for the 1st time since 2004. So it'll be the 1st time I'm playing Utica's Valley View and Colgate University's Seven Oaks in the last 6 years, 2 courses I like a whole lot. Plus I'll be playing a Western NY NYSGA eClub event at Cornell University's course in mid-August (like Colgate's, a great Robert Trent Jones track!), which I haven't played since my college (DIII) golfing days.
In about a week, I'll have played more rounds this year than the previous 5 combined. I haven't been playing regularly enough to develop any consistency in any part of my game--I'm making fairly solid contact on most swings, but there are still more terrible ones than there oughtta be; I'm either on or off with my pitches and chips; and my putting still isn't where I want it to be--but I have played just often enough to spot some trends and compare my stats this season to those from the last decade and over my adult career.
Before I go further, though, I should mention that I'm a pretty small guy--5'6" and getting back under 150 this summer or bust!--so I don't hit the ball very far. With a lot of roll and the wind behind me, my longest drive this season has been maybe 275 and I've more typically been in the 245-260 range off the tee. I used to go to a 6-iron when I needed to carry the ball 150 yards and a pitching wedge for a 100-yard carry, but with the temperature changes and getting used to playing regularly again, I'm not as sure of my distances as I need to be. It doesn't really matter right now, as the course I play regularly--the Easiest Course in the World (tECitW)--is so hard (the ground, that is) and the wind is usually so up that it's like Oakmont or British Open conditions, where you're usually picking a landing spot well short of the green and trying to bounce/run it ionto the right half of the green with some kind of punch shot. But maybe I hit my 6-iron 155 now and my wedge 110. I think.
Anyway, with that brief background on what kind of player I am--a wannabe precision player, in my taxonomy--let me walk you through some of my key performance stats.
Greens in Regulation (GIR)
Last decade, I averaged 7.67 greens in regulation per round, which raised my career average (since 1994, when I started keeping this stat) to 7.36. This season I'm already averaging 8.35 GIR; I've already had several rounds with my GIR in the double digits. Turn those into percentages and compare them to the LPGA stats page for GIR rate, and you'll see why they're pros and I'm a barely-mediocre amateur, but that's still a big improvement for me and one I intend to focus on this season. That's partly because I can't count on my short game to save me yet when I miss greens, but mostly because I'm putting so well this season.
Putts per Green in Regulation (PPGIR)
Last decade, I averaged 1.936 putts per green in regulation, which actually brought my career average (since 1994, when I started keeping this stat) down to 1.946 PPGIR. Translation: I've been 1-putting barely more often than I've been 3-putting when I've hit greens in regulation in my last 13 seasons. Well, I'm happy to report that my PPGIR rate has already gone down to around 1.83 already this season. That's by far the lowest rate of my career, although in my 3 rounds last season I averaged 1.86 PPGIR and in my 9.5 in 1994 I averaged around 1.89. Looking back, I'm amazed at how bad this stat is, particularly because I consider myself to be a very good putter. My goal this season is to get my PPGIR rate down where the good LPGA touring pros are--somewhere below 1.80 (the great ones are trying to stay under 1.75 over the course of a season). Heck, all I need to do is avoid 3-putts and make my share of birdies, right?
Birdies per Round (BPR)
Well, there's the rub. My birdies per round rate has been simply horrible over my career (1.31) and last decade wasn't much better (1.39). My BPR rate is up to around 1.65 so far this season, but that's still ridiculously low for how many chances I've been giving myself. The Easiest Course in the World has very small greens, so you can pretty much hit them anywhere and have a good birdie chance--plus if you miss them in the right places, chip-ins or putts from the fringe aren't that hard to sink (or rather, they shouldn't be). This is the 1st week I've been something other than a once-a-week golfer, and I've been averaging 2 birdies per round in it (along with my 1st eagle since 2004!). That's still not so hot, as tECitW now has 3 very short par 5s (reachable in 2 shots even for me most days), 3 birdieable par 4s, and 1 short par 3 (of course my only hole in 1 in my life came with a 3-wood on the long 1!). Sure, it's a par-37 from the back tees that plays around 3325 yards, the fairways have been narrowed, the rough is actually a bit of a penalty for the 1st time since I've been playing there, and there's actually a pond now to the right of the 2nd reachable par 5's green. But let's face it: it's still super-easy, except when the wind gets strong (which is about half the time; we're not quite on Lake Erie, but we're still close). Bottom line: I should be able to put up respectable LPGA #s--approaching 3.00 BPR--on a course like that. And since I can't afford to play much away from tECitW, my overall BPR should still be well above 2.50 by the end of the season.
Scoring Average
Surprisingly, even with pretty much the best performance stats of my career in all these categories, my scoring average is significantly up this season (81.06 compared to 78.59 last decade and 79.68 over my career). The culprit is the usual gremlin that dogs weekend golfers: too many big numbers! The long par-4 7th--which doglegs gently left, tilting left to right a bit after the corner, with an elevated green surrounded by trees and protected by a monster that overhangs its entire left-front quadrant--is a typical trouble spot. The long par-3 9th is also traditionally a difficult par, as I'm hitting a 3-wood virtually all the time into a relatively small green that's exposed to the wind.
But the biggest difference this season has been on the 1st hole, which went from being a tough, long par 4 to a frustratingly difficult short par 5 from the blues because it narrows so tightly in the last 100 yards, with overhanging trees on the right and a new creek extension that gets in your head on the left. In the mid-summer in most seasons, I'd usually have a mid- or short-iron in my hands, and would even birdie the hole once in a while. Now, it's just long enough to make me have to go after my 1st drive of the day to have a chance of reaching it in 2 and just tight enough to give my normally-reliable fairway woods the hiccups when I do actually hit a good drive. When I don't, I haven't yet figured out what distance I like to lay up to, because the green has been getting harder and harder as the summer gets hotter and drier, so it's hard to keep the ball anywhere near a front pin (and it's always been a front pin this season!), no matter what club you have in your hands, particularly from bad lies in burned-out fairways. What I need to do is just play the 1st safe and hit all my approach shots to the middle of the green, but that's easier said than done on your 1st full swings of the day on a course without a driving range!
Still, it's not my long game that's caused most of my big numbers this season. It's my wedges. I've either been hitting them just as I envisioned them (about a third of the time) or I've been skulling them, hitting them thin, fluffing them, chunking them, misjudging them, and so on (for what feels like much more than 2/3 of the time!). This is a common problem for me early in the season, but it's only this week that I've had time to practice them. No real progress to report on that front, but I'm bound to improve. In mid-season form, my wedges are one of the real strengths of my game.
The other area I really need to improve on is to bring my practice-green run shots to actual course conditions. The only thing that kept me from breaking 80 today was a mental block on my chipping (combined with several awful lies from hardpan and such, greens that were like rocks and so burned out in places they were more like cement, and several approach shots that left me short-sided or in some other kind of compromised position). I'm pretty disappointed with my inability to hit any kind of recovery shot with any kind of consistency. If I miss the green in regulation, I'm feeling like anything can happen, rather than confident that I'll give myself a good chance to save par most of the time.
Putts per 9 Holes (PP9H)
And yet, what gives me some hope for the rest of the season is that even with all these short game woes, my putts per round rate is the best in my career (down to around 15.59 putts per 9 holes, .03 better than my best season, 2002, when I played 82 rounds!). My overall PP9H rates aren't at all representative of how good a putter I am--15.81 for the last decade and 15.87 for my career--which leads me to believe that the other parts of my short game have never been as good as I've believed them to be. Again, the comparison to the LPGA is telling: those with average short games or who hit a heck of a lot of greens in regulation there average around 15 PP9H; the really good ones (often those who are having trouble hitting greens by tour standards, but not always) get it down close to 14 PP9H.
The long and the short of it is that my short game is letting me down, my approach shots are nowhere near as accurate as they need to be, and my driver is too inconsistent to allow me to attack the holes that need attacking on any kind of regular basis. The end result is that I can play great for a stretch--like when I went eagle-birdie-par-par-birdie midway through my first 9 yesterday--or play truly awful golf--like the +5 I was on the surrounding 4 holes that side.
So that's where my game stands in week 1 of my 6-week experiment as to how good a golfer I can make myself into while my wife and girls are in Japan. I'd love to hear if you're going through anything similar to what I'm going through--and what you're doing to address your own issues on the course!
With onechan finally old enough to start playing a few holes with me several times this summer already (and more when she gets back from Japan), I'm trying to make a comeback to competitive golf. I'm playing the Utica City Amateur next week and trying to qualify for the New York State Men's Mid-Amateur in late August, both for the 1st time since 2004. So it'll be the 1st time I'm playing Utica's Valley View and Colgate University's Seven Oaks in the last 6 years, 2 courses I like a whole lot. Plus I'll be playing a Western NY NYSGA eClub event at Cornell University's course in mid-August (like Colgate's, a great Robert Trent Jones track!), which I haven't played since my college (DIII) golfing days.
In about a week, I'll have played more rounds this year than the previous 5 combined. I haven't been playing regularly enough to develop any consistency in any part of my game--I'm making fairly solid contact on most swings, but there are still more terrible ones than there oughtta be; I'm either on or off with my pitches and chips; and my putting still isn't where I want it to be--but I have played just often enough to spot some trends and compare my stats this season to those from the last decade and over my adult career.
Before I go further, though, I should mention that I'm a pretty small guy--5'6" and getting back under 150 this summer or bust!--so I don't hit the ball very far. With a lot of roll and the wind behind me, my longest drive this season has been maybe 275 and I've more typically been in the 245-260 range off the tee. I used to go to a 6-iron when I needed to carry the ball 150 yards and a pitching wedge for a 100-yard carry, but with the temperature changes and getting used to playing regularly again, I'm not as sure of my distances as I need to be. It doesn't really matter right now, as the course I play regularly--the Easiest Course in the World (tECitW)--is so hard (the ground, that is) and the wind is usually so up that it's like Oakmont or British Open conditions, where you're usually picking a landing spot well short of the green and trying to bounce/run it ionto the right half of the green with some kind of punch shot. But maybe I hit my 6-iron 155 now and my wedge 110. I think.
Anyway, with that brief background on what kind of player I am--a wannabe precision player, in my taxonomy--let me walk you through some of my key performance stats.
Greens in Regulation (GIR)
Last decade, I averaged 7.67 greens in regulation per round, which raised my career average (since 1994, when I started keeping this stat) to 7.36. This season I'm already averaging 8.35 GIR; I've already had several rounds with my GIR in the double digits. Turn those into percentages and compare them to the LPGA stats page for GIR rate, and you'll see why they're pros and I'm a barely-mediocre amateur, but that's still a big improvement for me and one I intend to focus on this season. That's partly because I can't count on my short game to save me yet when I miss greens, but mostly because I'm putting so well this season.
Putts per Green in Regulation (PPGIR)
Last decade, I averaged 1.936 putts per green in regulation, which actually brought my career average (since 1994, when I started keeping this stat) down to 1.946 PPGIR. Translation: I've been 1-putting barely more often than I've been 3-putting when I've hit greens in regulation in my last 13 seasons. Well, I'm happy to report that my PPGIR rate has already gone down to around 1.83 already this season. That's by far the lowest rate of my career, although in my 3 rounds last season I averaged 1.86 PPGIR and in my 9.5 in 1994 I averaged around 1.89. Looking back, I'm amazed at how bad this stat is, particularly because I consider myself to be a very good putter. My goal this season is to get my PPGIR rate down where the good LPGA touring pros are--somewhere below 1.80 (the great ones are trying to stay under 1.75 over the course of a season). Heck, all I need to do is avoid 3-putts and make my share of birdies, right?
Birdies per Round (BPR)
Well, there's the rub. My birdies per round rate has been simply horrible over my career (1.31) and last decade wasn't much better (1.39). My BPR rate is up to around 1.65 so far this season, but that's still ridiculously low for how many chances I've been giving myself. The Easiest Course in the World has very small greens, so you can pretty much hit them anywhere and have a good birdie chance--plus if you miss them in the right places, chip-ins or putts from the fringe aren't that hard to sink (or rather, they shouldn't be). This is the 1st week I've been something other than a once-a-week golfer, and I've been averaging 2 birdies per round in it (along with my 1st eagle since 2004!). That's still not so hot, as tECitW now has 3 very short par 5s (reachable in 2 shots even for me most days), 3 birdieable par 4s, and 1 short par 3 (of course my only hole in 1 in my life came with a 3-wood on the long 1!). Sure, it's a par-37 from the back tees that plays around 3325 yards, the fairways have been narrowed, the rough is actually a bit of a penalty for the 1st time since I've been playing there, and there's actually a pond now to the right of the 2nd reachable par 5's green. But let's face it: it's still super-easy, except when the wind gets strong (which is about half the time; we're not quite on Lake Erie, but we're still close). Bottom line: I should be able to put up respectable LPGA #s--approaching 3.00 BPR--on a course like that. And since I can't afford to play much away from tECitW, my overall BPR should still be well above 2.50 by the end of the season.
Scoring Average
Surprisingly, even with pretty much the best performance stats of my career in all these categories, my scoring average is significantly up this season (81.06 compared to 78.59 last decade and 79.68 over my career). The culprit is the usual gremlin that dogs weekend golfers: too many big numbers! The long par-4 7th--which doglegs gently left, tilting left to right a bit after the corner, with an elevated green surrounded by trees and protected by a monster that overhangs its entire left-front quadrant--is a typical trouble spot. The long par-3 9th is also traditionally a difficult par, as I'm hitting a 3-wood virtually all the time into a relatively small green that's exposed to the wind.
But the biggest difference this season has been on the 1st hole, which went from being a tough, long par 4 to a frustratingly difficult short par 5 from the blues because it narrows so tightly in the last 100 yards, with overhanging trees on the right and a new creek extension that gets in your head on the left. In the mid-summer in most seasons, I'd usually have a mid- or short-iron in my hands, and would even birdie the hole once in a while. Now, it's just long enough to make me have to go after my 1st drive of the day to have a chance of reaching it in 2 and just tight enough to give my normally-reliable fairway woods the hiccups when I do actually hit a good drive. When I don't, I haven't yet figured out what distance I like to lay up to, because the green has been getting harder and harder as the summer gets hotter and drier, so it's hard to keep the ball anywhere near a front pin (and it's always been a front pin this season!), no matter what club you have in your hands, particularly from bad lies in burned-out fairways. What I need to do is just play the 1st safe and hit all my approach shots to the middle of the green, but that's easier said than done on your 1st full swings of the day on a course without a driving range!
Still, it's not my long game that's caused most of my big numbers this season. It's my wedges. I've either been hitting them just as I envisioned them (about a third of the time) or I've been skulling them, hitting them thin, fluffing them, chunking them, misjudging them, and so on (for what feels like much more than 2/3 of the time!). This is a common problem for me early in the season, but it's only this week that I've had time to practice them. No real progress to report on that front, but I'm bound to improve. In mid-season form, my wedges are one of the real strengths of my game.
The other area I really need to improve on is to bring my practice-green run shots to actual course conditions. The only thing that kept me from breaking 80 today was a mental block on my chipping (combined with several awful lies from hardpan and such, greens that were like rocks and so burned out in places they were more like cement, and several approach shots that left me short-sided or in some other kind of compromised position). I'm pretty disappointed with my inability to hit any kind of recovery shot with any kind of consistency. If I miss the green in regulation, I'm feeling like anything can happen, rather than confident that I'll give myself a good chance to save par most of the time.
Putts per 9 Holes (PP9H)
And yet, what gives me some hope for the rest of the season is that even with all these short game woes, my putts per round rate is the best in my career (down to around 15.59 putts per 9 holes, .03 better than my best season, 2002, when I played 82 rounds!). My overall PP9H rates aren't at all representative of how good a putter I am--15.81 for the last decade and 15.87 for my career--which leads me to believe that the other parts of my short game have never been as good as I've believed them to be. Again, the comparison to the LPGA is telling: those with average short games or who hit a heck of a lot of greens in regulation there average around 15 PP9H; the really good ones (often those who are having trouble hitting greens by tour standards, but not always) get it down close to 14 PP9H.
The long and the short of it is that my short game is letting me down, my approach shots are nowhere near as accurate as they need to be, and my driver is too inconsistent to allow me to attack the holes that need attacking on any kind of regular basis. The end result is that I can play great for a stretch--like when I went eagle-birdie-par-par-birdie midway through my first 9 yesterday--or play truly awful golf--like the +5 I was on the surrounding 4 holes that side.
So that's where my game stands in week 1 of my 6-week experiment as to how good a golfer I can make myself into while my wife and girls are in Japan. I'd love to hear if you're going through anything similar to what I'm going through--and what you're doing to address your own issues on the course!
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
On Following Mi Hyun Kim, Mina Harigae, and Ai Miyazato
Last Sunday morning at the LPGA Championship, I followed, in turn, Mi Hyun Kim (and Juli Inkster), Mina Harigae (and Stacy Prammanasudh), and Ai Miyazato (and Brittany Lang), for the 1st 4 or 5 holes of their final rounds before I had to leave Locust Hill to pick up the Full Metal Archivist, onechan, and imoto from the hotel to eat lunch (at a great Korean place) and return to the course Sports Zone/Wegmans tent area. I'm happy to report that onechan learned both the dog paddle and a rudimentary backstroke that weekend at the hotel pool, but that's not the subject of this post. No, what I want to get at is how small the differences are between a bad (Harigae), good (Kim), and great (Miyazato) round and to share some insight I gained into Ai-sama's mental approach to the game from what I observed and what I asked her (embarrassingly incoherently) at the media center after her round.
Let me make clear from the start that I didn't see anything all that amazing from anyone in those early holes. I saw a lot of routine pars, some great par saves, several bogeys, and a few good birdie putts. Inkster was the only player under par in the holes I watched; Harigae was the only one over par. Of course, as soon as I left, Ai-sama rattled off birdies on 4 of her remaining 5 holes on the front and Kim birdied 4 of her last 11 holes. But it's not so much the results I want to focus on here as it is on how they came about. There were definitely similarities in the ways the players attacked each of the 1st 4 holes, along with some subtle differences.
I got to the course early enough to watch Mi Hyun Kim, Shanshan Feng, and Chella Choi on the driving range until Kim left for the putting green. Choi was hitting hybrids like a hybrid-hitting machine, but having a little difficulty losing drives to the right every so often. Kim was working up from hybrids to fairway woods to driver. I noticed that her left wrist was lightly wrapped, that she wasn't using a golf glove, and that every so often she's be looking at and touching the tip of her left thumb, like it was bothering her or something. But she was still hitting the ball consistently well. Feng was working on irons. I wasn't as impressed with her swing as I was with Choi's; it seemed to be too compact in a way, as if she wasn't extending her left arm in her initial takeaway as much as I would have expected.
The scene at the 1st tee was pretty cool, although it would have been cooler if the starter hadn't butchered Kim's name ("My Hoon") and had remembered to mention she's an 8-time winner on the LPGA! Miyazato actually took the time in the minute before she was due to hit her drive to hug a male fan she recognized and get introduced to his wife--she was the only player I saw that day who interacted with individual fans right before starting her round. As you may have read in my scouting report of Locust Hill, I expected most players to be able to fly their tee shots on the downhill 1st hole past the corner of the dogleg and give themselves a good look at the green and pin, despite the hole having been lengthened by about 30 yards. But to my surprise, Kim couldn't reach the corner, Harigae and Miyazato were only right at it, and even Inkster and Lang didn't go far past it. So the shorter hitters I was focusing on, who all ended up on the left side of the fairway (or in Harigae's case, the 1st cut of the left rough), faced fairly intimidating 2nd shots with fairway woods from downhill lies, with the left pond definitely in play and perhaps even some overhanging branches from the trees to their left interfering with their lines to the green. It looked to me that each of them attempted the same shot--start the ball at the right bunker and draw it back toward the back-left pin--although in retrospect, it's entirely possible that Kim and Harigae were intentionally laying up short of the right bunker to give themselves a neat little angle on their chips. In any case, that's where they ended up, whereas Miyazato's ball failed to draw and she ended up in the back of the right trap, almost pin high. Kim chipped to about 6 feet and surprisingly missed her par save. Harigae fluffed her pitch a little, ending up about 11 feet short right of the cup and forcing herself to make a tough little comebacker for bogey. Miyazato seemed to leave her shot from the sand behind and to the right of the hole on purpose (unless it just slipped away from her a little), perhaps because it gave her a straighter and flatter par putt. In any case, she sunk the 9-footer. Of everyone, the only player to really attack the 1st was Inkster. She overcooked a hybrid from the right rough and ended up on the back left fringe, a little past pin high, from where she just missed chipping in for birdie. Prammanasudh and Miyazato were the only players to save par. The 1st was definitely playing tough for this group of 6 players.
Although the 2nd was theoretically a birdie hole, the front left pin position, right behind the deep trap guarding that side of the green, was not only tough to get to, but presented the players with tricky birdie attempts from just about every angle. The only ones not to give themselves a good look for birdie were Prammanasudh, who flared her tee shot into the right rough and did well to hit the green from there, and Kim, who fluffed her approach shot a bit and ended up on the false front to the right of the trap, from where she easily got up and down. But everyone else was within 20 feet, Harigae about 11 feet above the hole after nearly holing her approach and Miyazato about 12 feet to the right of the cup. And everyone except Inkster found a way to miss her birdie attempt. It looked to me like Ai-sama pulled hers from the start, although she might have been fooled by the way the ball refused to break right from the mound behind the trap. In any case, whereas the sixsome was +3 on the 1st hole, they were -1 on the 2nd, but it felt like being over par to me.
To my surprise, the 3rd hole gave up the most birdies of any that I saw. Except for Inkster, who ticked some leaves on the trees overhanging the right side of the tee boxes and ended up short right in the fairway, and Lang, who pulled her drive into the left rough, everyone was in prime position to attack the back-left pin. The only one of them not to hit a good approach shot, sadly, was Miyazato, who had needed a ruling because she and her caddie were uncertain what to do when her ball had plugged in the fairway. (Since everyone was playing lift, clean, and place, they wanted to clarify whether they could do that as usual or whether they had to first take relief from the plugged lie and then do LCP.) Coincidentally, while waiting for the rules official to arrive, Ai-sama was able to watch Sakura Yokomine's tee shot on #2. After that delay, which gave Lang a chance to walk to the green and survey her putt from the back fringe, Miyazato left her approach shot in the front right corner of the green, about 35 feet from the pin. Whereas Kim sank a 20-footer from almost pin high to the right of the cup and Harigae and Prammanasudh each made great 15-footers from the center of the green, Miyazato knocked her birdie attempt almost off the green, maybe 7 feet past the cup. But she calmly sank the uphiller as if there were no doubt in the world that she was destined to save par. The group ended up -3 on the 3rd. Not bad! At that point, only Lang was over par and Inkster was under par.
On the 3-shot par-5 4th, a pond to the left of the fairway about 220 yards out that I hadn't noticed in my scouting report added an extra wrinkle to the drive. I had been focused on the big trees overhanging the right side of the fairway about 225-265 yards out from the tee, thinking that you could play a small draw to take them out of play. But instead Kim couldn't even reach them with a drive that Inkster outhit with a hybrid, Harigae blocked her drive into the deep right rough underneath them (after being left her 1st 3 drives, although no worse than 1st cut on her 1st 2 holes), and Miyazato played what appeared to be a fade to end up on the right side of the fairway. From there, everyone's strategy diverged. Inkster, Miyazato, and Lang attacked with their 2nd shots, trying to get up the fairway as far as they could and as close to the left rough as they could to get the best angle into the front right pin. Kim and Prammanasudh laid back a bit, just trying stay in the fairway. Harigae looked like she was trying to play a low draw under the trees with a hybrid, but instead hit a grounder and had to punch out to about 190 out. Everyone from farther out kept their approach shots below the pin (and sometimes short of the green, where Inkster's shot from the left rough ended up, as well). Maybe the fact that it started drizzling while Kim and Inkster were teeing off and actually got raining pretty hard for most of the hole had something to do with their inability to hit the green. In any case, the only really good approach shots I saw were from the twosome who started latest. Lang stuck her approach about 8 feet below and to the left of the pin, while Miyazato put hers inside Lang's, about 3 feet to the left of the hole. But whereas Lang's putt was more uphill, Miyazato's was on a sidehill, and after Lang made hers, Ai-sama couldn't follow up on it, missing on the short side. Kim and Inkster just missed chipping in for birdie, Prammanasudh made a routine par, and Harigae saved her bogey, so the group was again a rather disappointing E on the hole.
I was able to stick around for all of Harigae's 5th hole, where she stuck her approach on the uphill par 3 7 feet right of the pin, after just barely carrying the front right bunker, and missed the birdie putt, forcing herself into a little tester to save par (Prammanasudh failed to get up and down from that trap)--and see her drive on the downhill 6th, which again found the left side of the fairway--before heading back toward the 1st tee to catch Ai-sama's pairing. About an hour later, I saw Miyazato hit a great approach shot to #5, but couldn't stick around to watch her putt, as it was time to make my way to the other side of Jefferson Road where my car was parked near the driving range to check out of the hotel (the fact that the walk from tee to green was probably the sharpest grade on the front had absolutely nothing to do with that decision!). But I came away feeling that Miyazato was in total command of her swing, had amazing distance control, and was so due to start making birdies, while it felt like Kim's round could go either way and Harigae was having small problems with both her driver and her putter.
After lunch and some time at the Sports Zone (onechan chose the golf simulator over the bounce house, maze, and climbing tower while I was there [yay!] and was almost impressed when I put my wedge on Pebble's tiny downhill par 3 5 feet from the pin), I made my way back to the 18th just in time to miss Michelle Wie and Haeji Kang finish out their rounds, and was pleasantly surprised to see on the hand-lettered scoreboard that Kim had shot a 69, but disappointed by Inkster's 74, Harigae's 75, and Prammanasudh's 77. I was shocked to see that Miyazato had turned in a 31 on the front, and even happier when I made my way to the 9th-green scoreboard to see that she had gotten to -5 on her day through 14, then -6 through 15. I didn't get to see that she had gotten to -7 through 16 until I had made my way back to the Sports Zone to let the ladies know what Ai-sama was up to and see if they wanted to watch her play 17 and 18. But they were having fun and I didn't want to jinx her, so after the Full Metal Archivist got the girls to the Wegmans tent, I headed to the 18th green, where I was too late to see her finish. Still, I was in time to watch her get interviewed by Rich Lerner live on Golf Channel, to eventually decide to cross the ropes and join the Japanese media interviewing her afterwards (in the sense that I tried to tape the conversation and stay out of the way of the photographers), to find out from Heather Daly-Donofrio that she would be interviewed at the media tent in English, to stupidly leave for it too soon and lose everyone, to wander back to the putting green trying to find them, to find out from a Japanese reporter in line for an autograph from Paula Creamer that she had only shot a 66, to chat with her caddie for a bit, and after all that to return late to the media tent, where her interview was already in process.
And that's when I got to ask Ai-sama my Embarrassing Question that Inadvertently Revealed Something Important about Her Mindset. What was going through my head was something a lot less coherent than this: if I had started my reign as #1 in the world with a 5-bogey 76, fought my way back to +3 to make the cut (but still offset my 5 birdies with 4 bogeys that day), hit the 45-hole mark at +3, and after making 2 birdies in a row to start my Saturday back 9, followed them up with 11 straight pars to remain at +1, I would have been, well, the slightest bit impatient--ok, frustrated and worried--wondering when I would see results from my improved play. So I wanted to know what she was thinking and how she was feeling before she began her birdie barrage. What came out of my mouth was something even less coherent, although somewhat more so than LPGA.com's transcript (my corrections/additions are in [square brackets]):
She was genuinely confused enough by my question that some people in the room laughed nervously after that long pause, during which she had been looking at me in a sympathetic but taken aback kind of way. She literally could not remember anything except her par saves from early in her round!
Come to think of it, that's probably one of the keys to her success. Although she missed a birdie chance at 17 and bogeyed 18 for the 4th-straight day, she played her last 27 holes in 8 under par and her last 14 holes in 6 under par. I suppose she's realized that your chances of going on birdie barrages like that are reduced if you remember the putts that got away or worry about when they'll start dropping. She simply knew she was hitting on all cylinders and that the birdies would come. In her interview with the Japanese media, she emphasized how important her par saves on 10 and 11 were, in terms of keeping her momentum going. I guess that's the way she was thinking about those saves on 1 and on 3--they allowed her to extend what would end up being a 26-hole bogey-free run.
When I contrast Miyazato's finish with Harigae's (+2 over her last 13), Inkster's (+3 over her last 14), Prammanasudh's (+5 over her last 13), and Lang's (birdieless 42 on the back after a bogey-free 33 on the front), I'm so impressed by the results of that calmness and that confidence. But when I consider that fellow Okinawan Mika Miyazato was 3 shots behind Cristie Kerr after 47 holes but ended up losing to her by 18, I'm blown away by Ai-sama's resilience, persistence, and patience. (And I'm even more impressed with Kerr's week: she put together bogey-free streaks of 8, 28, and 22 holes on a tough Locust Hill layout when she wasn't even hitting that many fairways--12 fewer than Miyazato in all!)
Another key factor in Miyazato's performance was how committed she was to her pre-shot routine. Here the contrast to Harigae is telling. I've already noted how great Harigae's routine is for her full swings. But what became clear during the 5-and-a-half holes I watched of her in actual competition is that she doesn't have as effective or repeatable a pre-shot routine for her putts. In contrast to Kim and Miyazato, whose minds were clearly made up before even approaching the ball to begin taking their stances, Harigae seemed to be still deciding on her ultimate strategy even as she was taking her stance. There was a lot more twitching, setting and resetting of her feet and hands, even stepping saway from a putt from the rookie. Whereas Kim's and Miyazato's routines and rhythms never varied, Harigae's did. Plus, she never seemed as locked in on the speed of the greens as the more experienced professionals. Even when Miyazato rocketed her birdie attempt on 3 down the slope past the hole and almost ended up attempting her par save from the fringe, I got the impression that she had taken a calculated risk in an attempt to jump-start her round.
Finally, I'll reiterate the importance of pacing and rhythm that I noted the 1st time I followed Miyazato a couple of years ago at the Wegmans:
Harigae was paired with a very fast-walking player in Prammanasudh, and she may just have picked up her pace a little, perhaps even unconsciously, in an effort to avoid slowing down the long-legged Okie in Tulsa orange (take that, Rickie Fowler!). It may just be a coincidence, but Harigae's timing on her tee shots was off that Sunday compared to the Monday pro-am when I had followed her. 4 of her 5 drives went left, and the one that went right was clearly an overcompensation, where she was protecting against going left and flirting with the pond. I wonder what the result would be if Harigae were to find her own pace and stick with it all round, every round, like Miyazato clearly does.
What I took away from the little time that I spent Sunday morning with Mi Hyun Kim, Mina Harigae, and Ai Miyazato was how big a difference all these little differences can make. While I was watching her, Kim was unfazed by her opening bogey, getting up-and-down easily when she missed the green and making her only birdie attempt. Even though she wasn't hitting the ball all that great by her standards, she was hanging in there and giving herself chances for good things to happen. Harigae was leaking oil on her tee shots, letting birdie opportunities slip away, and forcing herself to work harder than she needed to when it came to saving pars and bogeys. And despite my worries for her, Miyazato was actually this far away from getting into the zone. I think to a casual observer the differences between their starts wouldn't have been that noticeable. They were generally hitting the ball about as far and to about the same areas, after all. But the cumulative effects of those tiny differences--and what they did with their starts--make a huge difference in terms of strokes taken per round and dollars won per tournament.
[Update 1 (7:56 am): Check out Ruthless Golf for some interesting thoughts on getting out of your own way, something both Kerr and Miyazato did very well last week!]
[Update 2 (6/30/10, 4:46 am): Very kind words from Mike Southern, but one word of warning about trying to implement any of his advice or my speculations. Don't try for the first time on a cool day in a 2-club wind! I couldn't even break 85 on the Easiest Course in the World yesterday, and I never gave up on a single shot. Seems like I was remembering all my good putts on the Locust Hill putting green, which meant that I left a lot of birdie and par putts really short at tECitW. But the greens there were harder and faster than I remembered when it came to accepting approach shots, pitches, and chips, so I was going long all day on those. The wind didn't help with that, either, in my defense. So memories are all well and good, but actually adjusting to the reality of the conditions on the ground is highly recommended, as well!]
Let me make clear from the start that I didn't see anything all that amazing from anyone in those early holes. I saw a lot of routine pars, some great par saves, several bogeys, and a few good birdie putts. Inkster was the only player under par in the holes I watched; Harigae was the only one over par. Of course, as soon as I left, Ai-sama rattled off birdies on 4 of her remaining 5 holes on the front and Kim birdied 4 of her last 11 holes. But it's not so much the results I want to focus on here as it is on how they came about. There were definitely similarities in the ways the players attacked each of the 1st 4 holes, along with some subtle differences.
I got to the course early enough to watch Mi Hyun Kim, Shanshan Feng, and Chella Choi on the driving range until Kim left for the putting green. Choi was hitting hybrids like a hybrid-hitting machine, but having a little difficulty losing drives to the right every so often. Kim was working up from hybrids to fairway woods to driver. I noticed that her left wrist was lightly wrapped, that she wasn't using a golf glove, and that every so often she's be looking at and touching the tip of her left thumb, like it was bothering her or something. But she was still hitting the ball consistently well. Feng was working on irons. I wasn't as impressed with her swing as I was with Choi's; it seemed to be too compact in a way, as if she wasn't extending her left arm in her initial takeaway as much as I would have expected.
The scene at the 1st tee was pretty cool, although it would have been cooler if the starter hadn't butchered Kim's name ("My Hoon") and had remembered to mention she's an 8-time winner on the LPGA! Miyazato actually took the time in the minute before she was due to hit her drive to hug a male fan she recognized and get introduced to his wife--she was the only player I saw that day who interacted with individual fans right before starting her round. As you may have read in my scouting report of Locust Hill, I expected most players to be able to fly their tee shots on the downhill 1st hole past the corner of the dogleg and give themselves a good look at the green and pin, despite the hole having been lengthened by about 30 yards. But to my surprise, Kim couldn't reach the corner, Harigae and Miyazato were only right at it, and even Inkster and Lang didn't go far past it. So the shorter hitters I was focusing on, who all ended up on the left side of the fairway (or in Harigae's case, the 1st cut of the left rough), faced fairly intimidating 2nd shots with fairway woods from downhill lies, with the left pond definitely in play and perhaps even some overhanging branches from the trees to their left interfering with their lines to the green. It looked to me that each of them attempted the same shot--start the ball at the right bunker and draw it back toward the back-left pin--although in retrospect, it's entirely possible that Kim and Harigae were intentionally laying up short of the right bunker to give themselves a neat little angle on their chips. In any case, that's where they ended up, whereas Miyazato's ball failed to draw and she ended up in the back of the right trap, almost pin high. Kim chipped to about 6 feet and surprisingly missed her par save. Harigae fluffed her pitch a little, ending up about 11 feet short right of the cup and forcing herself to make a tough little comebacker for bogey. Miyazato seemed to leave her shot from the sand behind and to the right of the hole on purpose (unless it just slipped away from her a little), perhaps because it gave her a straighter and flatter par putt. In any case, she sunk the 9-footer. Of everyone, the only player to really attack the 1st was Inkster. She overcooked a hybrid from the right rough and ended up on the back left fringe, a little past pin high, from where she just missed chipping in for birdie. Prammanasudh and Miyazato were the only players to save par. The 1st was definitely playing tough for this group of 6 players.
Although the 2nd was theoretically a birdie hole, the front left pin position, right behind the deep trap guarding that side of the green, was not only tough to get to, but presented the players with tricky birdie attempts from just about every angle. The only ones not to give themselves a good look for birdie were Prammanasudh, who flared her tee shot into the right rough and did well to hit the green from there, and Kim, who fluffed her approach shot a bit and ended up on the false front to the right of the trap, from where she easily got up and down. But everyone else was within 20 feet, Harigae about 11 feet above the hole after nearly holing her approach and Miyazato about 12 feet to the right of the cup. And everyone except Inkster found a way to miss her birdie attempt. It looked to me like Ai-sama pulled hers from the start, although she might have been fooled by the way the ball refused to break right from the mound behind the trap. In any case, whereas the sixsome was +3 on the 1st hole, they were -1 on the 2nd, but it felt like being over par to me.
To my surprise, the 3rd hole gave up the most birdies of any that I saw. Except for Inkster, who ticked some leaves on the trees overhanging the right side of the tee boxes and ended up short right in the fairway, and Lang, who pulled her drive into the left rough, everyone was in prime position to attack the back-left pin. The only one of them not to hit a good approach shot, sadly, was Miyazato, who had needed a ruling because she and her caddie were uncertain what to do when her ball had plugged in the fairway. (Since everyone was playing lift, clean, and place, they wanted to clarify whether they could do that as usual or whether they had to first take relief from the plugged lie and then do LCP.) Coincidentally, while waiting for the rules official to arrive, Ai-sama was able to watch Sakura Yokomine's tee shot on #2. After that delay, which gave Lang a chance to walk to the green and survey her putt from the back fringe, Miyazato left her approach shot in the front right corner of the green, about 35 feet from the pin. Whereas Kim sank a 20-footer from almost pin high to the right of the cup and Harigae and Prammanasudh each made great 15-footers from the center of the green, Miyazato knocked her birdie attempt almost off the green, maybe 7 feet past the cup. But she calmly sank the uphiller as if there were no doubt in the world that she was destined to save par. The group ended up -3 on the 3rd. Not bad! At that point, only Lang was over par and Inkster was under par.
On the 3-shot par-5 4th, a pond to the left of the fairway about 220 yards out that I hadn't noticed in my scouting report added an extra wrinkle to the drive. I had been focused on the big trees overhanging the right side of the fairway about 225-265 yards out from the tee, thinking that you could play a small draw to take them out of play. But instead Kim couldn't even reach them with a drive that Inkster outhit with a hybrid, Harigae blocked her drive into the deep right rough underneath them (after being left her 1st 3 drives, although no worse than 1st cut on her 1st 2 holes), and Miyazato played what appeared to be a fade to end up on the right side of the fairway. From there, everyone's strategy diverged. Inkster, Miyazato, and Lang attacked with their 2nd shots, trying to get up the fairway as far as they could and as close to the left rough as they could to get the best angle into the front right pin. Kim and Prammanasudh laid back a bit, just trying stay in the fairway. Harigae looked like she was trying to play a low draw under the trees with a hybrid, but instead hit a grounder and had to punch out to about 190 out. Everyone from farther out kept their approach shots below the pin (and sometimes short of the green, where Inkster's shot from the left rough ended up, as well). Maybe the fact that it started drizzling while Kim and Inkster were teeing off and actually got raining pretty hard for most of the hole had something to do with their inability to hit the green. In any case, the only really good approach shots I saw were from the twosome who started latest. Lang stuck her approach about 8 feet below and to the left of the pin, while Miyazato put hers inside Lang's, about 3 feet to the left of the hole. But whereas Lang's putt was more uphill, Miyazato's was on a sidehill, and after Lang made hers, Ai-sama couldn't follow up on it, missing on the short side. Kim and Inkster just missed chipping in for birdie, Prammanasudh made a routine par, and Harigae saved her bogey, so the group was again a rather disappointing E on the hole.
I was able to stick around for all of Harigae's 5th hole, where she stuck her approach on the uphill par 3 7 feet right of the pin, after just barely carrying the front right bunker, and missed the birdie putt, forcing herself into a little tester to save par (Prammanasudh failed to get up and down from that trap)--and see her drive on the downhill 6th, which again found the left side of the fairway--before heading back toward the 1st tee to catch Ai-sama's pairing. About an hour later, I saw Miyazato hit a great approach shot to #5, but couldn't stick around to watch her putt, as it was time to make my way to the other side of Jefferson Road where my car was parked near the driving range to check out of the hotel (the fact that the walk from tee to green was probably the sharpest grade on the front had absolutely nothing to do with that decision!). But I came away feeling that Miyazato was in total command of her swing, had amazing distance control, and was so due to start making birdies, while it felt like Kim's round could go either way and Harigae was having small problems with both her driver and her putter.
After lunch and some time at the Sports Zone (onechan chose the golf simulator over the bounce house, maze, and climbing tower while I was there [yay!] and was almost impressed when I put my wedge on Pebble's tiny downhill par 3 5 feet from the pin), I made my way back to the 18th just in time to miss Michelle Wie and Haeji Kang finish out their rounds, and was pleasantly surprised to see on the hand-lettered scoreboard that Kim had shot a 69, but disappointed by Inkster's 74, Harigae's 75, and Prammanasudh's 77. I was shocked to see that Miyazato had turned in a 31 on the front, and even happier when I made my way to the 9th-green scoreboard to see that she had gotten to -5 on her day through 14, then -6 through 15. I didn't get to see that she had gotten to -7 through 16 until I had made my way back to the Sports Zone to let the ladies know what Ai-sama was up to and see if they wanted to watch her play 17 and 18. But they were having fun and I didn't want to jinx her, so after the Full Metal Archivist got the girls to the Wegmans tent, I headed to the 18th green, where I was too late to see her finish. Still, I was in time to watch her get interviewed by Rich Lerner live on Golf Channel, to eventually decide to cross the ropes and join the Japanese media interviewing her afterwards (in the sense that I tried to tape the conversation and stay out of the way of the photographers), to find out from Heather Daly-Donofrio that she would be interviewed at the media tent in English, to stupidly leave for it too soon and lose everyone, to wander back to the putting green trying to find them, to find out from a Japanese reporter in line for an autograph from Paula Creamer that she had only shot a 66, to chat with her caddie for a bit, and after all that to return late to the media tent, where her interview was already in process.
And that's when I got to ask Ai-sama my Embarrassing Question that Inadvertently Revealed Something Important about Her Mindset. What was going through my head was something a lot less coherent than this: if I had started my reign as #1 in the world with a 5-bogey 76, fought my way back to +3 to make the cut (but still offset my 5 birdies with 4 bogeys that day), hit the 45-hole mark at +3, and after making 2 birdies in a row to start my Saturday back 9, followed them up with 11 straight pars to remain at +1, I would have been, well, the slightest bit impatient--ok, frustrated and worried--wondering when I would see results from my improved play. So I wanted to know what she was thinking and how she was feeling before she began her birdie barrage. What came out of my mouth was something even less coherent, although somewhat more so than LPGA.com's transcript (my corrections/additions are in [square brackets]):
Q: Ai, when those birdie putts were[n't] dropping earlier in your round what were you thinking?
AI MIYAZATO (via INTERPRETER): Earlier in the round today?
Q: Yes, the second and fourth holes.
AI MIYAZATO: [Um...] [long pause] Did I have birdie putts on the first few holes? Maybe the fourth, [no,] 3. [No,] I think I made a good [par] putt[s, actually,] the first few holes. I had a good opportunity on No. 5, I guess, on the par-5. After that, but I made birdie, and...
(via INTERPRETER) Up until that hole it didn't feel like I had that many chances.
She was genuinely confused enough by my question that some people in the room laughed nervously after that long pause, during which she had been looking at me in a sympathetic but taken aback kind of way. She literally could not remember anything except her par saves from early in her round!
Come to think of it, that's probably one of the keys to her success. Although she missed a birdie chance at 17 and bogeyed 18 for the 4th-straight day, she played her last 27 holes in 8 under par and her last 14 holes in 6 under par. I suppose she's realized that your chances of going on birdie barrages like that are reduced if you remember the putts that got away or worry about when they'll start dropping. She simply knew she was hitting on all cylinders and that the birdies would come. In her interview with the Japanese media, she emphasized how important her par saves on 10 and 11 were, in terms of keeping her momentum going. I guess that's the way she was thinking about those saves on 1 and on 3--they allowed her to extend what would end up being a 26-hole bogey-free run.
When I contrast Miyazato's finish with Harigae's (+2 over her last 13), Inkster's (+3 over her last 14), Prammanasudh's (+5 over her last 13), and Lang's (birdieless 42 on the back after a bogey-free 33 on the front), I'm so impressed by the results of that calmness and that confidence. But when I consider that fellow Okinawan Mika Miyazato was 3 shots behind Cristie Kerr after 47 holes but ended up losing to her by 18, I'm blown away by Ai-sama's resilience, persistence, and patience. (And I'm even more impressed with Kerr's week: she put together bogey-free streaks of 8, 28, and 22 holes on a tough Locust Hill layout when she wasn't even hitting that many fairways--12 fewer than Miyazato in all!)
Another key factor in Miyazato's performance was how committed she was to her pre-shot routine. Here the contrast to Harigae is telling. I've already noted how great Harigae's routine is for her full swings. But what became clear during the 5-and-a-half holes I watched of her in actual competition is that she doesn't have as effective or repeatable a pre-shot routine for her putts. In contrast to Kim and Miyazato, whose minds were clearly made up before even approaching the ball to begin taking their stances, Harigae seemed to be still deciding on her ultimate strategy even as she was taking her stance. There was a lot more twitching, setting and resetting of her feet and hands, even stepping saway from a putt from the rookie. Whereas Kim's and Miyazato's routines and rhythms never varied, Harigae's did. Plus, she never seemed as locked in on the speed of the greens as the more experienced professionals. Even when Miyazato rocketed her birdie attempt on 3 down the slope past the hole and almost ended up attempting her par save from the fringe, I got the impression that she had taken a calculated risk in an attempt to jump-start her round.
Finally, I'll reiterate the importance of pacing and rhythm that I noted the 1st time I followed Miyazato a couple of years ago at the Wegmans:
When I asked the FMA later what stood out to her about Ai-chan, what she focused on after her leanness and fitness was her rhythm. She was surprised to hear that Ai-chan had been talking about just that in her interviews the 1st 2 rounds. What I realized was that her emphasis even extended to the way she walked on the course, not just her rhythm on her full swings, pitches, and putts. She has a very long stride for such a short person, sets a brisk but effortless-looking pace, and kept to it on every hole. Even though she was struggling a bit while we watched her, she projects a lot of confidence and determination on the course.
Harigae was paired with a very fast-walking player in Prammanasudh, and she may just have picked up her pace a little, perhaps even unconsciously, in an effort to avoid slowing down the long-legged Okie in Tulsa orange (take that, Rickie Fowler!). It may just be a coincidence, but Harigae's timing on her tee shots was off that Sunday compared to the Monday pro-am when I had followed her. 4 of her 5 drives went left, and the one that went right was clearly an overcompensation, where she was protecting against going left and flirting with the pond. I wonder what the result would be if Harigae were to find her own pace and stick with it all round, every round, like Miyazato clearly does.
What I took away from the little time that I spent Sunday morning with Mi Hyun Kim, Mina Harigae, and Ai Miyazato was how big a difference all these little differences can make. While I was watching her, Kim was unfazed by her opening bogey, getting up-and-down easily when she missed the green and making her only birdie attempt. Even though she wasn't hitting the ball all that great by her standards, she was hanging in there and giving herself chances for good things to happen. Harigae was leaking oil on her tee shots, letting birdie opportunities slip away, and forcing herself to work harder than she needed to when it came to saving pars and bogeys. And despite my worries for her, Miyazato was actually this far away from getting into the zone. I think to a casual observer the differences between their starts wouldn't have been that noticeable. They were generally hitting the ball about as far and to about the same areas, after all. But the cumulative effects of those tiny differences--and what they did with their starts--make a huge difference in terms of strokes taken per round and dollars won per tournament.
[Update 1 (7:56 am): Check out Ruthless Golf for some interesting thoughts on getting out of your own way, something both Kerr and Miyazato did very well last week!]
[Update 2 (6/30/10, 4:46 am): Very kind words from Mike Southern, but one word of warning about trying to implement any of his advice or my speculations. Don't try for the first time on a cool day in a 2-club wind! I couldn't even break 85 on the Easiest Course in the World yesterday, and I never gave up on a single shot. Seems like I was remembering all my good putts on the Locust Hill putting green, which meant that I left a lot of birdie and par putts really short at tECitW. But the greens there were harder and faster than I remembered when it came to accepting approach shots, pitches, and chips, so I was going long all day on those. The wind didn't help with that, either, in my defense. So memories are all well and good, but actually adjusting to the reality of the conditions on the ground is highly recommended, as well!]
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Say It Ain't So, Hound Dog!
One of the founding fathers of the LPGA blogosphere is stepping away from golf blogging. Head on over to Hound Dog LPGA and thank Ken for his great efforts and accomplishments over the years. And see what you think of my proposal in comments to keep HDLPGA going until the time when Ken, perhaps like Annika Sorenstam, some day decides to step back into the arena!
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Futures Tour Saturday: Onechan & Imoto @ Drumlins
Yesterday, onechan, imoto, Grandpa Bob, Grandma Joy, and I drove from Clinton to Syracuse to meet my uncle at Drumlins, the site of this week's Futures Tour event. I was hoping that imoto's 2nd tournament and onechan's 3rd would be the one where we could meet a lot of up-and-coming golfers and find other players for onechan to be crazy about than Paula Creamer, Natalie Gulbis, and Karrie Webb. Instead, I finally learned the lesson that when you take 2 girls under 6 to a golf tournament, the actual golf itself is about at the bottom of the list of priorities. Fortunately, I'll be able to return this afternoon, if the weather holds up, and experience a tournament by myself for the 1st time since the PGA at Oak Hill. But even though the golf took a back seat yesterday, the trip as a whole was most excellent.
Well, except for the part where the tired girls (they had stayed up past 11 the night before b/c they were so excited to be at Grandma and Grandpa's house again and refused to sleep in that morning--something about the surprises they knew were waiting for them yesterday morning pulled them out of bed) got cranky on the car ride up to Drumlins. I don't know if they had used up all their good behavior on the ride from Dunkirk (imoto sleeping, onechan keeping me company), if my being in the back seat with them encouraged more emotional drama than usual, or what, but onechan would say nothing but, "I'm tired" for the last half-hour and imoto kept trying to slip out of her seatbelt and sit on my lap. At least we timed the trip well; we got there as the morning groups were teeing off (thanks to a rain delay, they had had to finish Friday's rounds earlier that morning). With the 1st and 10 tees right by the putting green, chipping area, pro shop, and clubhouse, there was certainly a lot for the girls to see. But we had to beat a hasty retreat into the air conditioning and order an early lunch to head off mutually reinforcing meltdowns. At least I got to see Tiffany Joh tee off while the girls were hanging with grandma, waiting for the lunch orders to arrive, which gave me a chance to bust out my typical sparkling pre-round banter with her ("Good luck today, Tiffany"), with only my dad as witness. I don't know, I hate bothering players right before they start a round. My mom's more outgoing than me, so when she took onechan to the bathroom, they ended up getting into a short conversation with Caroline Larsson outside it.
When lunch was done, and little golf caps had been purchased for the girls from the bargain bin, we headed over to the 9th/18th greens to watch the earliest groups come in and wait for Hannah Yun's pairing to make the turn onto the less hilly front side. Onechan drew a picture of Mallory Hetzel (I had to ask someone who she was) that I hope to post here tomorrow--right before she sank a nice downhill birdie putt on the 9th. In fact, we got to see a lot of birdies on the 9th while we were waiting. Or rather, between reminding onechan not to kick the aluminum bleachers, keeping imoto from running inside the ropes, catching wind-blown paper that imoto forgot about as soon as she had finished drawing on it, and helping imoto collect clover flowers for onechan to make into a necklace, I got to see a couple of putts actually drop. But overall the girls were pretty good, although onechan wasn't quite as quiet as she had been at the Wegmans this year. It helped a lot to have Grandma Joy watching onechan while I took imoto back to the clubhouse for various bathroom breaks (no accidents until just before bed time, fortunately)!
I learned the hard way that you can't count on Grandpa Bob to keep an eye on imoto, though. Onechan was looking for 4-leaf clovers and flowers by a shack to the left of the 18th green, so imoto had wandered over to help her but got distracted by the yellow rope blocking spectators from both the green and the pond side of the fairway. Grandpa Bob was watching the group before Yun's size up their chips and birdie putt so intently that he didn't notice imoto crash face-first into the metal pole holding up the rope that she had been following like a cable car. She hadn't been going very fast, so it wasn't that scary, but she fell backwards literally 5 feet behind a golfer deciding what club to use on her chip. As I rushed over from the 9th green, less than 25 feet away, I was proud to see how tough the 3-year-old was being. She just held her mouth until I picked her up and moved her away from the player, then buried her face in my shoulder and didn't make a sound until the chip was completed. She was up and about collecting flowers for onechan within the minute. Way to go, imoto!
So when Yun's group came through (Hannah made a nice up-and-down from the fringe to save par after her approach had landed softly on a ridge that was supposed to kick it toward the cup; her partners both had great birdie chances but couldn't convert them), I was optimistic enough to try to get the girls to follow her for 4 holes (or 7 if I was lucky). Onechan and I had done 4 with grandpa and grandma and 3 and a half on our own at Locust Hills, but even with Grandma Joy's help this time, we didn't make it halfway down the 2nd fairway at Drumlins. Even though the front is flatter than the back, it was still pretty hilly by onechan and imoto's standards. With so many parallel fairways and adjacent green/tee complexes, there was no place to run or hide if the girls decided to go vocal with their discontents, so Grandma Joy and I were doing a lot of juggling. Sometimes I'd walk with 1 sister, sometimes the other; sometimes I'd carry one girl; sometimes the other. Yun had hit a great drive and had what looked like a hybrid into the short par-5 in 2, but even though it looked like a great shot, tracking toward the pin, it kicked off the left side of the green and she couldn't get up and down for her birdie from well below the hole. That was about the extent of the golf I saw there, as the girls had discovered the snack shack near the 7th green and 2nd and 11th tees. A quick bathroom break for imoto, a quick drink at the water fountain, and we were half a hole behind Yun's group. When we realized we weren't catching them, we decided to hang out in a little tree tunnel behind the 4th green while one group was finishing up there, then backtrack down the 7th fairway (where a local tv crew was waiting for one pairing) and make our way back to the practice area to hook up with Grandpa Bob and watch Libby Smith tee off.
Well, it took us so long to get back even to the snack shack that I got to see Joh's group on the 1st green (including a bad bogey from Christine Song, who it turns out had been playing well up to that point) and even talk to the famous Mamma Joh for a little while (turns out it's Tiffany's inconsistent driving that's been her Achilles heel lately). That was about the time imoto discovered the joy of filling her water bottle at the fountain, then pouring it out on the grass near the green, and running back to the snack shack to rinse and repeat. And that was right after onechan, seeking a shortcut and making a wrong turn around a tree, almost ran out into the 2nd fairway while a group was hitting off the tee before Grandma Joy could pull her back. And that was before imoto remembered that she liked onechan's golf cap better than her own and started letting us know about it again. So everyone's nerves and tempers were a little frayed by the time we finally made it back to the practice area.
Solution? Ice cream, of course! Drumlins has a pool area right behind the 9th green, which is where a clubhouse waitress directed us to find that magical substance. And boy did it work its magic on the girls. They played with the flags surrounding the practice green, trying to grab them during lulls in the wind. They climbed over golf carts (I had to be quick in turning them off before imoto accidentally hit the gas!). Then I pretended to throw them onto the clubhouse roof to distract them while my dad looked for Smith and her dad. They had just succeeded in tackling me and wrestling me to the ground when he came over to tell me he had found her. So reluctantly I took the girls over to the 1st tee, worried that their sugar highs were going to lead to a noise incident. But my worries were unfounded and we got to see Esther Choe and eventual co-leader Jenny Suh tee off with Smith, who has a very powerful, athletic swing (she played college basketball and was a standout on the men's golf team at the University of Vermont, my dad told me [again]), but who pulled her drive badly. And that was pretty much that. We retreated to my aunt and uncle's house, let the girls play/fight for a couple of hours, watched Tiger on tv, and checked real-time scoring. Even with play suspended, Yun and Smith will definitely miss the cut, which will fall at +4 when the last threesome finishes their last hole and a half (last week's winner Misun Cho will have to stay there to keep playing). But T-Joh made it with 2 shots to spare!
So now I have a dilemma. If I'm playing well after 9 holes this morning with my dad, do I keep going? If Ai Miyazato is in contention at the Women's British Open, do I take advantage of the rare concurrent not-quite-live-blogging/tv-watching experience? Or do I go follow the players I'm interested in on my own at Drumlins?
Well, except for the part where the tired girls (they had stayed up past 11 the night before b/c they were so excited to be at Grandma and Grandpa's house again and refused to sleep in that morning--something about the surprises they knew were waiting for them yesterday morning pulled them out of bed) got cranky on the car ride up to Drumlins. I don't know if they had used up all their good behavior on the ride from Dunkirk (imoto sleeping, onechan keeping me company), if my being in the back seat with them encouraged more emotional drama than usual, or what, but onechan would say nothing but, "I'm tired" for the last half-hour and imoto kept trying to slip out of her seatbelt and sit on my lap. At least we timed the trip well; we got there as the morning groups were teeing off (thanks to a rain delay, they had had to finish Friday's rounds earlier that morning). With the 1st and 10 tees right by the putting green, chipping area, pro shop, and clubhouse, there was certainly a lot for the girls to see. But we had to beat a hasty retreat into the air conditioning and order an early lunch to head off mutually reinforcing meltdowns. At least I got to see Tiffany Joh tee off while the girls were hanging with grandma, waiting for the lunch orders to arrive, which gave me a chance to bust out my typical sparkling pre-round banter with her ("Good luck today, Tiffany"), with only my dad as witness. I don't know, I hate bothering players right before they start a round. My mom's more outgoing than me, so when she took onechan to the bathroom, they ended up getting into a short conversation with Caroline Larsson outside it.
When lunch was done, and little golf caps had been purchased for the girls from the bargain bin, we headed over to the 9th/18th greens to watch the earliest groups come in and wait for Hannah Yun's pairing to make the turn onto the less hilly front side. Onechan drew a picture of Mallory Hetzel (I had to ask someone who she was) that I hope to post here tomorrow--right before she sank a nice downhill birdie putt on the 9th. In fact, we got to see a lot of birdies on the 9th while we were waiting. Or rather, between reminding onechan not to kick the aluminum bleachers, keeping imoto from running inside the ropes, catching wind-blown paper that imoto forgot about as soon as she had finished drawing on it, and helping imoto collect clover flowers for onechan to make into a necklace, I got to see a couple of putts actually drop. But overall the girls were pretty good, although onechan wasn't quite as quiet as she had been at the Wegmans this year. It helped a lot to have Grandma Joy watching onechan while I took imoto back to the clubhouse for various bathroom breaks (no accidents until just before bed time, fortunately)!
I learned the hard way that you can't count on Grandpa Bob to keep an eye on imoto, though. Onechan was looking for 4-leaf clovers and flowers by a shack to the left of the 18th green, so imoto had wandered over to help her but got distracted by the yellow rope blocking spectators from both the green and the pond side of the fairway. Grandpa Bob was watching the group before Yun's size up their chips and birdie putt so intently that he didn't notice imoto crash face-first into the metal pole holding up the rope that she had been following like a cable car. She hadn't been going very fast, so it wasn't that scary, but she fell backwards literally 5 feet behind a golfer deciding what club to use on her chip. As I rushed over from the 9th green, less than 25 feet away, I was proud to see how tough the 3-year-old was being. She just held her mouth until I picked her up and moved her away from the player, then buried her face in my shoulder and didn't make a sound until the chip was completed. She was up and about collecting flowers for onechan within the minute. Way to go, imoto!
So when Yun's group came through (Hannah made a nice up-and-down from the fringe to save par after her approach had landed softly on a ridge that was supposed to kick it toward the cup; her partners both had great birdie chances but couldn't convert them), I was optimistic enough to try to get the girls to follow her for 4 holes (or 7 if I was lucky). Onechan and I had done 4 with grandpa and grandma and 3 and a half on our own at Locust Hills, but even with Grandma Joy's help this time, we didn't make it halfway down the 2nd fairway at Drumlins. Even though the front is flatter than the back, it was still pretty hilly by onechan and imoto's standards. With so many parallel fairways and adjacent green/tee complexes, there was no place to run or hide if the girls decided to go vocal with their discontents, so Grandma Joy and I were doing a lot of juggling. Sometimes I'd walk with 1 sister, sometimes the other; sometimes I'd carry one girl; sometimes the other. Yun had hit a great drive and had what looked like a hybrid into the short par-5 in 2, but even though it looked like a great shot, tracking toward the pin, it kicked off the left side of the green and she couldn't get up and down for her birdie from well below the hole. That was about the extent of the golf I saw there, as the girls had discovered the snack shack near the 7th green and 2nd and 11th tees. A quick bathroom break for imoto, a quick drink at the water fountain, and we were half a hole behind Yun's group. When we realized we weren't catching them, we decided to hang out in a little tree tunnel behind the 4th green while one group was finishing up there, then backtrack down the 7th fairway (where a local tv crew was waiting for one pairing) and make our way back to the practice area to hook up with Grandpa Bob and watch Libby Smith tee off.
Well, it took us so long to get back even to the snack shack that I got to see Joh's group on the 1st green (including a bad bogey from Christine Song, who it turns out had been playing well up to that point) and even talk to the famous Mamma Joh for a little while (turns out it's Tiffany's inconsistent driving that's been her Achilles heel lately). That was about the time imoto discovered the joy of filling her water bottle at the fountain, then pouring it out on the grass near the green, and running back to the snack shack to rinse and repeat. And that was right after onechan, seeking a shortcut and making a wrong turn around a tree, almost ran out into the 2nd fairway while a group was hitting off the tee before Grandma Joy could pull her back. And that was before imoto remembered that she liked onechan's golf cap better than her own and started letting us know about it again. So everyone's nerves and tempers were a little frayed by the time we finally made it back to the practice area.
Solution? Ice cream, of course! Drumlins has a pool area right behind the 9th green, which is where a clubhouse waitress directed us to find that magical substance. And boy did it work its magic on the girls. They played with the flags surrounding the practice green, trying to grab them during lulls in the wind. They climbed over golf carts (I had to be quick in turning them off before imoto accidentally hit the gas!). Then I pretended to throw them onto the clubhouse roof to distract them while my dad looked for Smith and her dad. They had just succeeded in tackling me and wrestling me to the ground when he came over to tell me he had found her. So reluctantly I took the girls over to the 1st tee, worried that their sugar highs were going to lead to a noise incident. But my worries were unfounded and we got to see Esther Choe and eventual co-leader Jenny Suh tee off with Smith, who has a very powerful, athletic swing (she played college basketball and was a standout on the men's golf team at the University of Vermont, my dad told me [again]), but who pulled her drive badly. And that was pretty much that. We retreated to my aunt and uncle's house, let the girls play/fight for a couple of hours, watched Tiger on tv, and checked real-time scoring. Even with play suspended, Yun and Smith will definitely miss the cut, which will fall at +4 when the last threesome finishes their last hole and a half (last week's winner Misun Cho will have to stay there to keep playing). But T-Joh made it with 2 shots to spare!
So now I have a dilemma. If I'm playing well after 9 holes this morning with my dad, do I keep going? If Ai Miyazato is in contention at the Women's British Open, do I take advantage of the rare concurrent not-quite-live-blogging/tv-watching experience? Or do I go follow the players I'm interested in on my own at Drumlins?
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Walking the Wegmans with Onechan
No, this is not a post about taking my 5-and-a-half-year-old daughter to the grocery store. Sorry to disappoint you.
What this is about is the road trip a jet-lagged onechan and I took to the Rochester area to spend Saturday and Sunday at the Wegmans LPGA tournament at Locust Hills Golf Club. We got to hook up with my mom and dad for a little while, follow Mika Miyazato and then Ai Miyazato, play in the Sports Zone, meet Meredith Duncan, face off in Wii golf, and avoid every single drop of rain that fell on Pittsford that weekend. What I didn't get to do was try out the LPGA's new blogger media-credentialing process (I missed the deadline the 1st half of our visit to the Full Metal Archivist's family in Japan), follow the range of players I wanted to, or hang with Momoko Ueda on the driving range (yes, she missed the cut but worked hard on her game all weekend).
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's start from the beginning, which is my crazy decision to take a pre-school girl who fell asleep from noon to 8 pm Friday and stayed up till 5:30 am on Saturday on a 2-hour drive to walk as many holes as we possibly could on a rain-delayed moving day. At least I had the sense not to try to take her 3-year-old sister, imoto, along with us. She had been enough of a handful when she was 2 that I couldn't envision taking a more mobile, articulate, independent (to put it nicely), louder, faster, and sleepier (last night was the 1st dinner she had since returning to the States late last Thursday) girl to an LPGA event. Now, the Futures Tour event in Syracuse at the end of the month, that's another story. But I'll save her 2nd LPGA experience for next year. Assuming there is a next year. (Check Dave Hackenberg's excellent piece on this week's event for context on the LPGA's shrinking schedule.) Anyway, my worries about onechan proved to be unfounded. She entertained me on the drive up telling stories about Foxy, a character she just made up. Apparently he gets into a lot of trouble and is often sad or lonely, but onechan told the stories in a gleeful voice and loved to come up with abrupt endings that she found hilarious. Uncle Bill Benzon and Grandpa Bob should be proud!
Speaking of Grandpa Bob, I had to question his judgment for suggesting that we meet at the pro shop rather than at the 17th green, right near where the shuttle buses let you off, not to mention the Sports Zone and the food dome. Sure, thanks to our oversleeping we missed all the early morning groups finishing their 2nd rounds, but onechan had to handle a long walk across the street and up the 10th fairway to see him and Grandma Joy for the 1st time since well before we had left for Japan in late May. As it turned out, though, both the walk itself and the search for my folks (we circled the pro shop twice before we found them) were totally awesome. Onechan was carrying a fairly large plastic baby doll, which she had dolled up for the event by drawing in blue ink flowers in the little hair she had, earrings, nail polish, and lipstick, and as she was getting a lot of "Aww, cute" looks from fans, players, and caddies, I decided to make a bet with her that she would be the only kid with a doll or toy we'd see all day. Trying to find evidence to win our bet turned out to be a fun game for her. As for me, I was struck by how intimate a setting a golf course is for a sporting event. I was walking by pros whose faces looked familiar but whom I couldn't quite place ("Is that Mika Miyazato? Or maybe Ji Young Oh?"). Some players I definitely knew: Vicky Hurst, Jane Park--and of course Ai Miyazato, who just happened to be at the putting green when onechan and I made it to the pro shop area. As Ai-chan was leaving, I was able to say, "Kyoo gambare!" (Go for it today!) to her. I don't know if she remembered onechan or me from last year, but she looked down at the short American wearing a hat bought in Okinawa that said "Island Boy" in kanji and kneeling down by a young girl wearing a flower print dress we'd bought in Hawaii in the middle of my Fulbright year, smiled, and said "Thank you," very sweetly.
Not long after that, we ran into my mom and dad and they had plenty of stories for us. My mom, who is a champion talker, told me how they had run into Karrie Webb while the 3rd-round pairings were being organized, so of course she told her about how big a fan onechan is of her and how I had invented Carrie Mi, Karrie Yoo, and Keri Hu (still useful devices for teasing onechan and imoto out of a desire to be carried!). My dad was psyched that a lesson on the driving range had shortened my mom's Mi Hyun Kim/Sakura Yokomine-like backswing and flattened its plane so well that she was carrying her driver around 150 yards (sadly, the lesson didn't carry over to the course when they got back to Clinton). And we played the game of "Who is that...?" as we got our food, walked over to tables by the 10th tees, and perused the pairings sheet I had gotten from a volunteer as we had been looking for my folks. (He got me on Katherine Hull, and I mistook Na Yeon Choi for Eun-Hee Ji.) He told me how impressed he was by Vicky Hurst ("She could be a center for a women's basketball team") and how Cheyenne Woods's game was much better than he had expected. (Guess who they had followed on Friday!)
So, yeah, with players going off the 10th tee while we were eating--I got a good look at Aree Song's swing (not a lot of shoulder turn there), for instance--and the 1st tee right around the corner, my dad's idea of meeting at the pro shop to follow some early groups was a good one. And when I saw that Mika Miyazato was going off 2 groups ahead of Ai-chan--and that Na Yeon Choi was in the former group while Se Ri Pak was in the latter, not to mention that Amanda Blumenherst was in the threesome between them--I immediately pitched my idea that we follow Mika as long as onechan could handle it, then rest to wait for Ai-chan and follow her as long as possible before resting and watching the leading pairings play through. Best laid plans, of course: my parents were too tired from their Friday outing to make it past the 4th tee before they headed out for home, while the second onechan realized that the front 9 circled back to the clubhouse, she was more interested in getting to the Sports Zone across the street than making it to the 8th green to hang out for 45 minutes. And of course I kept us as far away from the greens as possible, not trusting onechan not to blurt out whatever thought happened to come into her mind at any moment. So I didn't get to see Mika actually make a downhill curling 15-footer for birdie on the uphill par-4 2nd, or, for that matter, Ai-chan's short birdie putt on the short par-4 4th hole fail to drop.
But I did get to see her call her caddie over to swat a black fly that had been pestering her as she was setting up for her putt. And I did get to see every shot that Mika and Na Yeon played between the 1st and 4th tees, and every shot Ai-chan and Se Ri played from their approaches to the 3rd green to their tee shots on the par-3 7th. I can't go into the amount of detail that I did last year, but I do have some general impressions. Mika has a very powerful swing, particularly through the ball. Her tempo's a little quicker and less rhythmic than Ai-chan's, but overall she's a little more aggressive and athletic. I had heard from Q-School interviews that she's a short hitter, but I'd say her length is average, plus she has the capacity to hit it longer than usual when she wants to. I expected her to be well behind Choi and Reilley Rankin, but she was even with them more often than not (although probably b/c they were dialing it down to avoid the rough). As for Choi, she parred every hole we saw, but never gave herself great birdie chances. I came away confirmed in my thinking that both are going to be major talents on tour. But of course most of my attention was on Ai-chan, and I noticed that she had a little tendency to break her wrists early on her backswing, which may have contributed to her pull on the downhill 6th. Other than that, her game was as strong as I expected it to be. Even while struggling--she had to make 2 6-to-9-footers to save par and missed 2 birdie putts of about that length--and dealing with jet lag (I don't care how accustomed to international travel you are, you still feel it for 10-15 days after you settle into a new time zone), she was completely calm, self-contained, and focused. She didn't chat a lot with her caddie or other players, just followed her ball and hit her next shot without making a big fuss about it. Very similar demeanor to Se Ri Pak, now that I think of it, although Pak was definitely longer, of course.
But that's about all I have for observations on the players, as most of my attention was actually focused on keeping onechan happy and quiet. Whether it was playing rock-paper-scissors (in Japanese, of course) or having little races with her between shots and holes when other groups weren't nearby (I let her win all of the latter, but she beat me 7 games in a row in the former, and I was really trying!), assuring her we'd make it to the Sports Zone (eventually), carrying her on my back a few times (including all the way up the par-5 8th's fairway), or getting pro shop staff to open up an "out of order" real bathroom for her b/c once again she was afraid of the port-a-potties, this was a full-time job. It was a lot easier when my folks were still hanging with us. My mom took her to look for frogs by the creek and pond on #2 and gave her a pad of paper and markers (which she used to good effect, although, unfortunately, not to the intended purpose--to get autographs), while my dad asked her questions and told her about the players. I can't say that onechan was particularly into my explanation of what to do off the tee on a dogleg or why you're not allowed to put your club on the ground when it's not in a water hazard but is behind the red line surrounding it, or particularly happy not to be following Karrie Webb and Natalie Gulbis on the other side, but she never whined, she never talked loudly, she never moved (much) while a player was hitting, she loved it that Carri Wood was playing with Ai-chan and Pak, and she won our bet when she found a young Japanese family near the 7th green with twin 2-year-old boys who had a kuma (bear) stuffed animal with them on their stroller.
And the Sports Zone! When I asked her this morning what she remembered about the tournament, that's the first thing she mentioned. She went through the inflated maze/obstacle course that was too wet for her last year, climbed to the top of the 15-foot climbing wall that was too scary for her last year, and, on Sunday, actually practiced chipping outside and putting inside (including a lesson with Meredith Duncan, who's a real sweetheart). I won't get into how onechan chipped in for a birdie on the 2nd hole of the Wii golf they had set up inside or how I hit 3 sand shots into the water hazard and took a mercy 9 on that par-3, or all the fruit juices and ice cream flavors we tried out in the food dome, but I will brag a little about how many times onechan hit the target when practicing those pitch shots.
So even though I didn't get to follow Seon Hwa Lee or In-Kyung Kim on Saturday, hang at the putting green as players finished their rounds, take onechan to the driving range on Sunday, where Momoko Ueda was working hard with caddie, or follow Ai-chan for awhile in the final round (we went straight to the Sports Zone this time and the weather looked threatening by the time onechan was all exercised out), we had an absolutely fantastic time at the Wegmans. I got a great reminder that a classic course like Locust Hills, with its tight, tree-lined fairways, small, tiered greens, and elevation changes, could be a great challenge with just the light breezes that were turning approach shots into exercises in judgment, precision, and finesse. Sadly, these are qualities that seem to be lacking in LPGA HQ these days. With the Corning gone and the Wegmans seemingly in trouble, I'm wondering if there's a Route 390 curse or if Carolyn Bivens is taking the LPGA seriously off course. It's all well and good to move into bigger domestic and international markets, but why not hold 40+ tournaments a year and keep the mid-market, community-based events by offering a reduced fee structure for them?
What this is about is the road trip a jet-lagged onechan and I took to the Rochester area to spend Saturday and Sunday at the Wegmans LPGA tournament at Locust Hills Golf Club. We got to hook up with my mom and dad for a little while, follow Mika Miyazato and then Ai Miyazato, play in the Sports Zone, meet Meredith Duncan, face off in Wii golf, and avoid every single drop of rain that fell on Pittsford that weekend. What I didn't get to do was try out the LPGA's new blogger media-credentialing process (I missed the deadline the 1st half of our visit to the Full Metal Archivist's family in Japan), follow the range of players I wanted to, or hang with Momoko Ueda on the driving range (yes, she missed the cut but worked hard on her game all weekend).
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's start from the beginning, which is my crazy decision to take a pre-school girl who fell asleep from noon to 8 pm Friday and stayed up till 5:30 am on Saturday on a 2-hour drive to walk as many holes as we possibly could on a rain-delayed moving day. At least I had the sense not to try to take her 3-year-old sister, imoto, along with us. She had been enough of a handful when she was 2 that I couldn't envision taking a more mobile, articulate, independent (to put it nicely), louder, faster, and sleepier (last night was the 1st dinner she had since returning to the States late last Thursday) girl to an LPGA event. Now, the Futures Tour event in Syracuse at the end of the month, that's another story. But I'll save her 2nd LPGA experience for next year. Assuming there is a next year. (Check Dave Hackenberg's excellent piece on this week's event for context on the LPGA's shrinking schedule.) Anyway, my worries about onechan proved to be unfounded. She entertained me on the drive up telling stories about Foxy, a character she just made up. Apparently he gets into a lot of trouble and is often sad or lonely, but onechan told the stories in a gleeful voice and loved to come up with abrupt endings that she found hilarious. Uncle Bill Benzon and Grandpa Bob should be proud!
Speaking of Grandpa Bob, I had to question his judgment for suggesting that we meet at the pro shop rather than at the 17th green, right near where the shuttle buses let you off, not to mention the Sports Zone and the food dome. Sure, thanks to our oversleeping we missed all the early morning groups finishing their 2nd rounds, but onechan had to handle a long walk across the street and up the 10th fairway to see him and Grandma Joy for the 1st time since well before we had left for Japan in late May. As it turned out, though, both the walk itself and the search for my folks (we circled the pro shop twice before we found them) were totally awesome. Onechan was carrying a fairly large plastic baby doll, which she had dolled up for the event by drawing in blue ink flowers in the little hair she had, earrings, nail polish, and lipstick, and as she was getting a lot of "Aww, cute" looks from fans, players, and caddies, I decided to make a bet with her that she would be the only kid with a doll or toy we'd see all day. Trying to find evidence to win our bet turned out to be a fun game for her. As for me, I was struck by how intimate a setting a golf course is for a sporting event. I was walking by pros whose faces looked familiar but whom I couldn't quite place ("Is that Mika Miyazato? Or maybe Ji Young Oh?"). Some players I definitely knew: Vicky Hurst, Jane Park--and of course Ai Miyazato, who just happened to be at the putting green when onechan and I made it to the pro shop area. As Ai-chan was leaving, I was able to say, "Kyoo gambare!" (Go for it today!) to her. I don't know if she remembered onechan or me from last year, but she looked down at the short American wearing a hat bought in Okinawa that said "Island Boy" in kanji and kneeling down by a young girl wearing a flower print dress we'd bought in Hawaii in the middle of my Fulbright year, smiled, and said "Thank you," very sweetly.
Not long after that, we ran into my mom and dad and they had plenty of stories for us. My mom, who is a champion talker, told me how they had run into Karrie Webb while the 3rd-round pairings were being organized, so of course she told her about how big a fan onechan is of her and how I had invented Carrie Mi, Karrie Yoo, and Keri Hu (still useful devices for teasing onechan and imoto out of a desire to be carried!). My dad was psyched that a lesson on the driving range had shortened my mom's Mi Hyun Kim/Sakura Yokomine-like backswing and flattened its plane so well that she was carrying her driver around 150 yards (sadly, the lesson didn't carry over to the course when they got back to Clinton). And we played the game of "Who is that...?" as we got our food, walked over to tables by the 10th tees, and perused the pairings sheet I had gotten from a volunteer as we had been looking for my folks. (He got me on Katherine Hull, and I mistook Na Yeon Choi for Eun-Hee Ji.) He told me how impressed he was by Vicky Hurst ("She could be a center for a women's basketball team") and how Cheyenne Woods's game was much better than he had expected. (Guess who they had followed on Friday!)
So, yeah, with players going off the 10th tee while we were eating--I got a good look at Aree Song's swing (not a lot of shoulder turn there), for instance--and the 1st tee right around the corner, my dad's idea of meeting at the pro shop to follow some early groups was a good one. And when I saw that Mika Miyazato was going off 2 groups ahead of Ai-chan--and that Na Yeon Choi was in the former group while Se Ri Pak was in the latter, not to mention that Amanda Blumenherst was in the threesome between them--I immediately pitched my idea that we follow Mika as long as onechan could handle it, then rest to wait for Ai-chan and follow her as long as possible before resting and watching the leading pairings play through. Best laid plans, of course: my parents were too tired from their Friday outing to make it past the 4th tee before they headed out for home, while the second onechan realized that the front 9 circled back to the clubhouse, she was more interested in getting to the Sports Zone across the street than making it to the 8th green to hang out for 45 minutes. And of course I kept us as far away from the greens as possible, not trusting onechan not to blurt out whatever thought happened to come into her mind at any moment. So I didn't get to see Mika actually make a downhill curling 15-footer for birdie on the uphill par-4 2nd, or, for that matter, Ai-chan's short birdie putt on the short par-4 4th hole fail to drop.
But I did get to see her call her caddie over to swat a black fly that had been pestering her as she was setting up for her putt. And I did get to see every shot that Mika and Na Yeon played between the 1st and 4th tees, and every shot Ai-chan and Se Ri played from their approaches to the 3rd green to their tee shots on the par-3 7th. I can't go into the amount of detail that I did last year, but I do have some general impressions. Mika has a very powerful swing, particularly through the ball. Her tempo's a little quicker and less rhythmic than Ai-chan's, but overall she's a little more aggressive and athletic. I had heard from Q-School interviews that she's a short hitter, but I'd say her length is average, plus she has the capacity to hit it longer than usual when she wants to. I expected her to be well behind Choi and Reilley Rankin, but she was even with them more often than not (although probably b/c they were dialing it down to avoid the rough). As for Choi, she parred every hole we saw, but never gave herself great birdie chances. I came away confirmed in my thinking that both are going to be major talents on tour. But of course most of my attention was on Ai-chan, and I noticed that she had a little tendency to break her wrists early on her backswing, which may have contributed to her pull on the downhill 6th. Other than that, her game was as strong as I expected it to be. Even while struggling--she had to make 2 6-to-9-footers to save par and missed 2 birdie putts of about that length--and dealing with jet lag (I don't care how accustomed to international travel you are, you still feel it for 10-15 days after you settle into a new time zone), she was completely calm, self-contained, and focused. She didn't chat a lot with her caddie or other players, just followed her ball and hit her next shot without making a big fuss about it. Very similar demeanor to Se Ri Pak, now that I think of it, although Pak was definitely longer, of course.
But that's about all I have for observations on the players, as most of my attention was actually focused on keeping onechan happy and quiet. Whether it was playing rock-paper-scissors (in Japanese, of course) or having little races with her between shots and holes when other groups weren't nearby (I let her win all of the latter, but she beat me 7 games in a row in the former, and I was really trying!), assuring her we'd make it to the Sports Zone (eventually), carrying her on my back a few times (including all the way up the par-5 8th's fairway), or getting pro shop staff to open up an "out of order" real bathroom for her b/c once again she was afraid of the port-a-potties, this was a full-time job. It was a lot easier when my folks were still hanging with us. My mom took her to look for frogs by the creek and pond on #2 and gave her a pad of paper and markers (which she used to good effect, although, unfortunately, not to the intended purpose--to get autographs), while my dad asked her questions and told her about the players. I can't say that onechan was particularly into my explanation of what to do off the tee on a dogleg or why you're not allowed to put your club on the ground when it's not in a water hazard but is behind the red line surrounding it, or particularly happy not to be following Karrie Webb and Natalie Gulbis on the other side, but she never whined, she never talked loudly, she never moved (much) while a player was hitting, she loved it that Carri Wood was playing with Ai-chan and Pak, and she won our bet when she found a young Japanese family near the 7th green with twin 2-year-old boys who had a kuma (bear) stuffed animal with them on their stroller.
And the Sports Zone! When I asked her this morning what she remembered about the tournament, that's the first thing she mentioned. She went through the inflated maze/obstacle course that was too wet for her last year, climbed to the top of the 15-foot climbing wall that was too scary for her last year, and, on Sunday, actually practiced chipping outside and putting inside (including a lesson with Meredith Duncan, who's a real sweetheart). I won't get into how onechan chipped in for a birdie on the 2nd hole of the Wii golf they had set up inside or how I hit 3 sand shots into the water hazard and took a mercy 9 on that par-3, or all the fruit juices and ice cream flavors we tried out in the food dome, but I will brag a little about how many times onechan hit the target when practicing those pitch shots.
So even though I didn't get to follow Seon Hwa Lee or In-Kyung Kim on Saturday, hang at the putting green as players finished their rounds, take onechan to the driving range on Sunday, where Momoko Ueda was working hard with caddie, or follow Ai-chan for awhile in the final round (we went straight to the Sports Zone this time and the weather looked threatening by the time onechan was all exercised out), we had an absolutely fantastic time at the Wegmans. I got a great reminder that a classic course like Locust Hills, with its tight, tree-lined fairways, small, tiered greens, and elevation changes, could be a great challenge with just the light breezes that were turning approach shots into exercises in judgment, precision, and finesse. Sadly, these are qualities that seem to be lacking in LPGA HQ these days. With the Corning gone and the Wegmans seemingly in trouble, I'm wondering if there's a Route 390 curse or if Carolyn Bivens is taking the LPGA seriously off course. It's all well and good to move into bigger domestic and international markets, but why not hold 40+ tournaments a year and keep the mid-market, community-based events by offering a reduced fee structure for them?
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Best Blogs on Women's Golf: Hound Dog LPGA
On Monday I surveyed my goals in my golf writing at Mostly Harmless and promised I'd address "what I value from the best golf bloggers I've come across." The obvious place to begin fulfilling that promise is Hound Dog LPGA, Ken Hartis's golf blog.
Ken may be nothin' but a Hound Dog, but I'll take his incessant barking over anything the AP dishes out. Not only does he manage to survey who played well on any given Thursday, Friday, or Saturday every week the LPGA is playing in an elegant, inclusive, and unbiased fashion, his Sunday recaps, with their focus on what the players in contention actually did, are works of art. For someone like me, who's only paying for a high-speed internet connection and not for cable, his Sunday stories are just what I need to flesh out the drama I'm often tracking on LPGA.com's live leaderboard or catch me up if I've been doing family stuff rather than not-quite-live-blogging the LPGA. I really like the balance he has struck between identifying who's played the best in a given week, in a given stretch, over the course of a season, and over several seasons. Unlike too many golf writers who are paid to cover the LPGA, he doesn't focus exclusively on how the most dominant players in the field did (Sorenstam, Ochoa) or go on and on about media favorites who haven't been playing well (Wie for most of the past 2 seasons, but also Lincicome [who wilted in the spotlight soon after getting her 2nd career win], Gulbis, Rawson, and, to a lesser extent, Pressel and Castrale [who haven't actually played all that badly, just not as well as, say, Angela Stanford, Katherine Hull, Brittany Lang, or Jee Young Lee, to pick some names from the end of the '08 season]) or ignore anyone with an Asian-sounding last name (as Golf Channel highlights are wont to do). What he does focus on, as his end-of-season profiles each year make clear, is the players who have performed the best over the course of a season. But he also pays attention to those struggling with their games and trying to kick-start (or restart) their careers. He started looking at the race to keep your card back in September and October 2006 and has done it every season since.
Still, Hound Dog's game stories, player profiles, and features are only a small part of why his blog is the 1st--and best--source for all things LPGA. As I said before, he's the top dog when it comes to golf stats. It's not just that he has a nose for combining the most relevant existing stats to develop a better ranking system than Rolex or Sagarin, testing it out on the KLPGA, JLPGA (twice), Futures Tour, pushing it back over time to help him develop a list of the top 50 LPGA greats ever, and using it to help him make his preseason top 30 picks the last 2 seasons. And it's not just his deftness at explaining his statistical reasoning in standalone posts and responses to commenters. It's the fact that he has developed great new stats, like total driving, total putting, and strength of field, that allow him and us to put the accomplishments of the LPGA's best in context and to better appreciate them. Plus, he throws a statistical curveball here or there, such as in his round of the day, most average player, fluke victory lists.
Is it any surprise, then, that he was the 1st in the world of golf writing to project how soon Lorena Ochoa would qualify for the LPGA Hall of Fame?
I've learned a lot from Hound Dog's non-statistical research, as well. His focus on the fluctuations of the LPGA schedule from season to season is the most informative and balanced treatment I've seen on the web--and that's including pros like Jon Show who actually do a great job. His analysis of the LPGA's new eligibility and priority standards and the controversies they have generated at Q-School can't be beat. Speaking of controversies, he's one of the most level-headed and fair-minded bloggers in the middle of one that you're likely to come across.
It's no surprise, then, that in 2008 Hound Dog moved from blogger to join Rayn Ballengee of Waggle Room at SBNation, which has features that allow his readers to add supplemental posts and links to his main page, or that he's started co-hosting Inside the LPGA, one of the podcasts at Prime Sports Network. It's no wonder that other golf bloggers like Bill Jempty at The Florida Masochist and Jamie R. Saengsawang at Crosscourt Birdies are regulars at Hound Dog LPGA or that he has the best-informed commentariat of all the LPGA bloggers. One thing you can count on is that Ken's blog will remain LPGA Central in 2009.
[Update 1 (11:40 am): Looks like it's Hound Dog Day on teh internets.]
[Update 2 (1/16/09, 2:12 am): The good Dr. Frankenstat has struck again.]
Ken may be nothin' but a Hound Dog, but I'll take his incessant barking over anything the AP dishes out. Not only does he manage to survey who played well on any given Thursday, Friday, or Saturday every week the LPGA is playing in an elegant, inclusive, and unbiased fashion, his Sunday recaps, with their focus on what the players in contention actually did, are works of art. For someone like me, who's only paying for a high-speed internet connection and not for cable, his Sunday stories are just what I need to flesh out the drama I'm often tracking on LPGA.com's live leaderboard or catch me up if I've been doing family stuff rather than not-quite-live-blogging the LPGA. I really like the balance he has struck between identifying who's played the best in a given week, in a given stretch, over the course of a season, and over several seasons. Unlike too many golf writers who are paid to cover the LPGA, he doesn't focus exclusively on how the most dominant players in the field did (Sorenstam, Ochoa) or go on and on about media favorites who haven't been playing well (Wie for most of the past 2 seasons, but also Lincicome [who wilted in the spotlight soon after getting her 2nd career win], Gulbis, Rawson, and, to a lesser extent, Pressel and Castrale [who haven't actually played all that badly, just not as well as, say, Angela Stanford, Katherine Hull, Brittany Lang, or Jee Young Lee, to pick some names from the end of the '08 season]) or ignore anyone with an Asian-sounding last name (as Golf Channel highlights are wont to do). What he does focus on, as his end-of-season profiles each year make clear, is the players who have performed the best over the course of a season. But he also pays attention to those struggling with their games and trying to kick-start (or restart) their careers. He started looking at the race to keep your card back in September and October 2006 and has done it every season since.
Still, Hound Dog's game stories, player profiles, and features are only a small part of why his blog is the 1st--and best--source for all things LPGA. As I said before, he's the top dog when it comes to golf stats. It's not just that he has a nose for combining the most relevant existing stats to develop a better ranking system than Rolex or Sagarin, testing it out on the KLPGA, JLPGA (twice), Futures Tour, pushing it back over time to help him develop a list of the top 50 LPGA greats ever, and using it to help him make his preseason top 30 picks the last 2 seasons. And it's not just his deftness at explaining his statistical reasoning in standalone posts and responses to commenters. It's the fact that he has developed great new stats, like total driving, total putting, and strength of field, that allow him and us to put the accomplishments of the LPGA's best in context and to better appreciate them. Plus, he throws a statistical curveball here or there, such as in his round of the day, most average player, fluke victory lists.
Is it any surprise, then, that he was the 1st in the world of golf writing to project how soon Lorena Ochoa would qualify for the LPGA Hall of Fame?
I've learned a lot from Hound Dog's non-statistical research, as well. His focus on the fluctuations of the LPGA schedule from season to season is the most informative and balanced treatment I've seen on the web--and that's including pros like Jon Show who actually do a great job. His analysis of the LPGA's new eligibility and priority standards and the controversies they have generated at Q-School can't be beat. Speaking of controversies, he's one of the most level-headed and fair-minded bloggers in the middle of one that you're likely to come across.
It's no surprise, then, that in 2008 Hound Dog moved from blogger to join Rayn Ballengee of Waggle Room at SBNation, which has features that allow his readers to add supplemental posts and links to his main page, or that he's started co-hosting Inside the LPGA, one of the podcasts at Prime Sports Network. It's no wonder that other golf bloggers like Bill Jempty at The Florida Masochist and Jamie R. Saengsawang at Crosscourt Birdies are regulars at Hound Dog LPGA or that he has the best-informed commentariat of all the LPGA bloggers. One thing you can count on is that Ken's blog will remain LPGA Central in 2009.
[Update 1 (11:40 am): Looks like it's Hound Dog Day on teh internets.]
[Update 2 (1/16/09, 2:12 am): The good Dr. Frankenstat has struck again.]
Monday, September 8, 2008
Who Let the Dog Out?
Check out Hound Dog's new digs when you get a chance. Congrats to Hound Dog LPGA for breaking a gender barrier over at SBNation!
[Update 1 (7:50 pm): Wow, today is certainly a different kind of moving day than I'm used to covering! Now Ryan Ballengee is announcing that he'll do all his blogging at Waggle Room and close up shop at the GNN Blog.]
[Update 1 (7:50 pm): Wow, today is certainly a different kind of moving day than I'm used to covering! Now Ryan Ballengee is announcing that he'll do all his blogging at Waggle Room and close up shop at the GNN Blog.]
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Wegmans LPGA Saturday: The Constructivist Family Goes to Pittsford
Nice to see Seon Hwa Lee making an early move in the third round of the Wegmans LPGA. In a little over an hour, the Full Metal Archivist, onechan, imoto, and I will be leaving UB for Monroe Community College and the shuttle bus to Locust Hill (after a brief stop at Wegmans for lunch and tickets). If I had planned ahead with my uncle sooner, we could have used the 2 free tickets he gave away, but at least he and his daughter will be there, too. We'll probably get to the course too late to see Lee finish, but you never know.... The key thing is, we'll be there in time to catch the end of Ai-chan's round.
[Update 1 (11:21 am): Well, Maria Hjorth finally figured out how to finish a round at Locust Hill--her 66 shows that there are low scores to be had today. And how about that Hee-Won Han finally going low?
[Update 2 (11:38 am): Look who's making a move now--none other than 8A herself! And Mighty Mouse is off to an even hotter start, thanks to an eagle on #1! BTW, nice multimedia course guide from the Democrat and Chronicle. More after we get back from Pittsford!]
[Update 3 (6/22/08, 9:32 am): First, congratulations to Tiffany Joh for winning the Women's Amateur Public Links for the 2nd time in 3 years! Next, the golf at the Wegmans, which of course you mostly miss when you're at the course unless you're parked in front of a scoreboard. But first, shopping! We didn't have the opportunity to do more than buy tickets, diapers, and wipes at the Wegmans in north Buffalo before we had to hit the road, so the cupboards are rather bare this morning!]
[Update 4 (6/23/08, 1:54 am): OK, shopping done, friends entertained, and girls to bed. Back to golf. Still catching up on the webcasts and stories I missed since we left for Locust Hill yesterday afternoon. Hound Dog's highlights and recap are, as always, the place to start. Ben Dobbins does a better job with his moving day AP story, but he's no Sal Maiorana. Also making excellent contributions from the Democrat and Chronicle are Kevin Oklobzija on Eun-Hee Ji, Jim Mandelaro on Hee-Won Han, Jeff Diveronica on Ai Miyazato (although the pronunciation guide he offers to her name is f-ed up--it's mee-yah-zah-toe!), and Scott Pitoniak on Locust Hill's difficulty level.]
[Update 5 (2:14 am): OK, on to the course report. The day was perfect when we left Dunkirk for Buffalo at 8 am and was still fine when we left Buffalo for Pittsford at 1 pm. Although we caught up to a few drizzles as we approached exit 46, there was no rain when we boarded the shuttle bus, so it was a huge surprise to us as we arrived in the entry area/sponsors' tent to see spectators pouring back into it. It didn't take us long to realize, though, that there was a weather delay--the thunder we heard when we made our way outside the tent against the crowd current was another subtle hint. We hung out in the tunnel that connects the 17th green area with the 18th tee area for awhile, and then bounced back and forth between the sponsors' tent (which was shut down during the rain delay--we didn't get to eat that Turkey Hill ice cream until our 3rd try!) and the sports area (tried to give onechan a putting lesson but they were enforcing the 4-putt limit rather rigidly). We got teased by the weather at what turned out to be the halfway point of the delay and were waiting by the 17th green walk-off area (which gave a great view of the pin and fairway) for Shi Hyun Ahn to chip from the greenside rough when the players were called off the course again. But even that experience was enlightening--we realized that imoto couldn't be counted on to remain quiet and that even 40 yards from the green was far too close, so our original plan of camping out there was out. We decided we'd wait for the Natalie Gulbis-Ya Ni Tseng pairing to come through 17 and then follow Ai-chan and Inbee up to the 18th tee, where we'd wait for my uncle and niece, who were following Morgan Pressel in the final group.
As it turned out, they had left the course just as we arrived, so that aspect of the plan went out the window, but we were able--barely--to stick to the rest of it. The thing was, onechan was having a ball at the sports area and didn't want to leave when play resumed. We had to hold her back from doing the maze-obstacle-course inflatable thingie while it was still a drowning hazard, so we actually were bouncing around in the only roofed inflatable structure when the players and caddies were being carted out to the course on the path running parallel to us about 30 yards away. The Full Metal Archivist called out "Ai-chan!" to Ya Ni Tseng before I could stop her, which was not only embarrassing but also made us gun-shy when Ai-chan really went by--but onechan's echo of her mom's call was piercing enough that Ai-chan looked back and waved from 100 yards away! And then, after deciding to avoid the main porta-potties (kusai, kusai!), we were off to the 17th walk-off area, with imoto still refusing to go down for her usual afternoon nap....]
[Update 6 (2:51 am): Got to 17 in time to watch Tseng's explosion from the right-side bunker and both her and Gulbis's putts. Best innocent question of the day came from the FMA after watching Gulbis strut her stuff on the green: "Does she have a back problem?" Later, she did admit that Gulbis was very sexy--and, yes, she is much hotter in person. I'm still appalled that she's one of onechan's 2 favorite players--she may be #1 now after we missed meeting Paula Creamer--after all the pro-Asian indoctrination I've been attempting over the past year. But I did my part by giving Tseng a quick, "Let's go, Ya Ni!" as she walked by us. I was surprised that she looked surprised that someone recognized her, but then I was the only person who said anything to the LPGA Championship winner....
After forcing onechan to go with us around the back of the 17th green rather than head toward the tunnel to follow Gulbis, we made a beeline for the 14th tee, but shifted course when we realized Ai-chan's group had already finished the hole. We got to the 15th green literally just in time to see Ai-chan's approach shot on the par 3 land and back up a foot to come to rest about 15 feet below the pin. By the time she and Inbee got to the green, I was entertaining imoto by lotioning (thanks for those free samples, Aveeno!) and sunblocking her up, but my heart was in my throat as Ai-chan was lining up her putt, b/c imoto could have said or done anything in that stretch. But she stayed quiet and Ai-chan canned it to (as I found out later) make up for her bogey on the previous hole and get back to -10 for the tournament and -2 on the day. I hid imoto behind the grandstand while Park was lining up her tricky downhill par save--and breathed a sigh of relief when she made it.
Then the FMA loaded onechan back on her back and we got as far up the 16th fairway as we could to get as far away from the tee as we could while the players were hitting their drives. We were actually in perfect position to see Ai-chan's drive leak right and get into some tree trouble on the very short par 4 and Inbee's get past the crest of the hill in perfect position to go at the front right pin from the middle of the fairway. Ai-chan had a swing and an angle, but it looked to me like she took a really tentative pass at a punch-fade attempt to thread the needle, avoid the bunkers, and find the front of the green and instead ended up in the rough, short-sided but not having to carry the bunker on the right. She made a fantastic pitch and solid pressure putt to remain at -10 after Inbee nailed her short birdie putt to get to -11.
By that point, we were racing to the top of the hill on the 17th fairway and actually outdistancing those among Ai-chan's Japanese media contingent who had made the same choice as we did, so got to see Park's drive go into jail in the left rough/trees and Miyazato's stay on the left side of the fairway about 10 yards behind Park's. Then it was off to the races again to get as close to the green as we could before the players hit their second shots on the short par 5. If this sounds a little challenging, it was: the players were walking very fast and taking very little time over their shots. They had to wait less than a minute several times for the Christina Kim-Cristie Kerr pairing ahead of them, but overall the pace of play was much faster than I expected. Our sweating paid off, though, as we made it to a rules official's cart about 75 yards short of the green and she entertained onechan and imoto by taking them for a spin while the players were sizing up their shots: Inbee had punched out from the trees to about 100 yards away but was on the right side of the fairway, trying to figure out how to get close to a back right pin on a very banked area of the green and near a greenside bunker; Ai-chan had layed up to about 50 yards shy of the green in the right-center of the fairway, in a kind of low-lying area amid some undulations--she didn't have the perfect angle in, but the bunker affected her approach a little less than Park's. Inbee made a smart play and tried to spin a wedge back off the backboard up in the middle back of the green and let the slope take it back down toward the pin, but it landed soft and stuck instead. It looked to me like Ai-chan chunked her pitch a little--it may have been a little soggier there than she expected, or she may have decelerated just the slightest bit--but in any case she gave herself what looked to be a mid-length uphill-sidehill birdie chance, while Inbee had a tricky downhill-sidehiller from a little further away. Unfortunately, tearing imoto away from the golf cart had the expected effects, so I had to race to the golf cart servicing area far to the right of the green with imoto telling me "no, daddy!" louder and louder with each step, so I didn't see the players 2-putt and had to catch up to the FMA and onechan, who waited for me near the walk-off area.
Didn't see much of the 18th, either, as I had to keep imoto far away from the tee (she was fascinated by the tv camera post near the 10th green) and stay near the pond-side generators powering the 18th-fairway Champions Pavillion area to mask any sounds imoto might make and let onechan burn off some steam from having to stay quiet for so long, but I could tell from the crowd reactions that someone made a bogey. The FMA came back down the hill (she had followed Ai-chan up it to the green) to report that it was Ai-chan.
So all in all a disappointing finish for Ai-chan, as she struggled to par 2 birdie holes after making her birdie on the 15th and then failed to save par on the uphill 18th (much less make her 3rd straight birdie on that tough hole). But a very solid bogey-free 69 for Inbee. And neither imoto nor onechan had turned my worst fears into realities.]
[Update 7 (3:08 am): We hung out at the putting green for a little while and our patience paid off. We watched Ai-chan go around the clock, putting 4-to-6 10-to-12-footers from just about every hour's position to the same hole. What a slow, rhythmic stroke she has! She must have made about half of them and hit an edge at least 90% of the time, and her speed was almost always perfect. When I asked the FMA later what stood out to her about Ai-chan, what she focused on after her leanness and fitness was her rhythm. She was surprised to hear that Ai-chan had been talking about just that in her interviews the 1st 2 rounds. What I realized was that her emphasis even extended to the way she walked on the course, not just her rhythm on her full swings, pitches, and putts. She has a very long stride for such a short person, sets a brisk but effortless-looking pace, and kept to it on every hole. Even though she was struggling a bit while we watched her, she projects a lot of confidence and determination on the course.
Meanwhile, onechan and imoto were entertaining themselves on the hill between the putting green and the traditional calligraphy-quality hand-written scoreboard that you see at all the smaller tournaments, from USGA and state events on down. Imoto tried to go over, through, and around the little white picket fence (plastic) surrounding the scoreboard, so we must have been quite a sight, with me addressing the girls in Japanese when I wasn't watching Ai-chan putt and the FMA and I chasing imoto when she threatened to go around the back of the scoreboard area. At least we were to one American and one Japanese photographer, who couldn't get enough of the girls (although it would have been nice to ask us permission before taking pictures). We certainly got Morgan Pressel's attention--after she told Ai-chan a funny story on the putting green and before she started her own post-round routine, she called onechan over and gave her a golf ball. Turns out she had autographed it for her! So of course as Ai-chan was leaving I had to approach her with nothing but a program for her to sign, and she graciously did, even addressing it to onechan in hiragana. I remember asking onegai shimas (please) but can't for the life of me remember if I thanked her (I assume the arigatou gozaimasu would be so ingrained in me even after almost 10 months away from Fukuoka that I wouldn't necessarily recall saying it, but I could have been so star-struck and embarrassed at the possibility that the girls being there had disturbed Ai-chan's concentration that I might have forgotten to thank her).
So after that, dinner at the Alter Ego family home was a great way to relax--their 2-year-old girl and ours had a ball, so much so that imoto was asleep before we made it (after many wrong turns on my part) back to the Thruway, and onechan fell asleep a half-hour later after we had made it through the 2nd of 3 thunderstorms I had to deal with on the road back to Dunkirk.]
[Update 9 (3:47 am): All in all, the experience was a great one. Not as fun for me personally as seeing the PGA at Oak Hill had been, and I definitely had the feeling of a missed opportunity to see all of Ai-chan's final 5 holes, as the crowds had thinned out quite bit due to the rain delay, but as a first try for taking the girls to a tournament, this was about as much as we realistically could have done, particularly given that the nap-less imoto was a little crankier and whinier than usual. Maybe next year we could plan it a bit better, take advantage of my uncle's access to free tickets, and meet the grandparents out there, so that the FMA, onechan, and I can roam the course a bit more or at least have more back-up when it comes to entertaining imoto. But she'll be a lot easier to reason with by then, too, so it may not be as stomach-churning an experience as it was for me this year.
While I missed LPGA.com and the instant ability to track anything anytime, the scoreboards were well placed and other spectators were happy to share what they had seen, so you could definitely get your bearings quickly. Still, having some laptops set up for the truly web-obsessed could have been a good way to promote LPGA.com a bit more and give spectators a chance to read profiles of players they were not that familar with. (Rochester is a real golf town, but the people I talked to were not all that knowledgeable about the younger players on tour.) Also, there was nowhere I could see that people could go to watch the webcasts that were being and had been filmed on-site. Susan Hunt and Dennis Williams did a particularly good job Saturday, but you had to be off-site to appreciate it.
Those quibbles aside, this is a really well-run event. Even in the midst of a long rain delay, the volunteers were super-cool and the officials were firm but kind. I'm sure onechan will remember the ride in the cart with the rules official longer than getting that ball from Morgan Pressel and the bouncy inflatable thing longer than any shot of Ai-chan's. And the FMA came away from this a huge Ai-chan fan and much more appreciative of the athleticism and approachability of the LPGA players we saw. Plus she may try imitating Natalie Gulbis's posture for a few minutes a day. ;) ]
[Update 1 (11:21 am): Well, Maria Hjorth finally figured out how to finish a round at Locust Hill--her 66 shows that there are low scores to be had today. And how about that Hee-Won Han finally going low?
[Update 2 (11:38 am): Look who's making a move now--none other than 8A herself! And Mighty Mouse is off to an even hotter start, thanks to an eagle on #1! BTW, nice multimedia course guide from the Democrat and Chronicle. More after we get back from Pittsford!]
[Update 3 (6/22/08, 9:32 am): First, congratulations to Tiffany Joh for winning the Women's Amateur Public Links for the 2nd time in 3 years! Next, the golf at the Wegmans, which of course you mostly miss when you're at the course unless you're parked in front of a scoreboard. But first, shopping! We didn't have the opportunity to do more than buy tickets, diapers, and wipes at the Wegmans in north Buffalo before we had to hit the road, so the cupboards are rather bare this morning!]
[Update 4 (6/23/08, 1:54 am): OK, shopping done, friends entertained, and girls to bed. Back to golf. Still catching up on the webcasts and stories I missed since we left for Locust Hill yesterday afternoon. Hound Dog's highlights and recap are, as always, the place to start. Ben Dobbins does a better job with his moving day AP story, but he's no Sal Maiorana. Also making excellent contributions from the Democrat and Chronicle are Kevin Oklobzija on Eun-Hee Ji, Jim Mandelaro on Hee-Won Han, Jeff Diveronica on Ai Miyazato (although the pronunciation guide he offers to her name is f-ed up--it's mee-yah-zah-toe!), and Scott Pitoniak on Locust Hill's difficulty level.]
[Update 5 (2:14 am): OK, on to the course report. The day was perfect when we left Dunkirk for Buffalo at 8 am and was still fine when we left Buffalo for Pittsford at 1 pm. Although we caught up to a few drizzles as we approached exit 46, there was no rain when we boarded the shuttle bus, so it was a huge surprise to us as we arrived in the entry area/sponsors' tent to see spectators pouring back into it. It didn't take us long to realize, though, that there was a weather delay--the thunder we heard when we made our way outside the tent against the crowd current was another subtle hint. We hung out in the tunnel that connects the 17th green area with the 18th tee area for awhile, and then bounced back and forth between the sponsors' tent (which was shut down during the rain delay--we didn't get to eat that Turkey Hill ice cream until our 3rd try!) and the sports area (tried to give onechan a putting lesson but they were enforcing the 4-putt limit rather rigidly). We got teased by the weather at what turned out to be the halfway point of the delay and were waiting by the 17th green walk-off area (which gave a great view of the pin and fairway) for Shi Hyun Ahn to chip from the greenside rough when the players were called off the course again. But even that experience was enlightening--we realized that imoto couldn't be counted on to remain quiet and that even 40 yards from the green was far too close, so our original plan of camping out there was out. We decided we'd wait for the Natalie Gulbis-Ya Ni Tseng pairing to come through 17 and then follow Ai-chan and Inbee up to the 18th tee, where we'd wait for my uncle and niece, who were following Morgan Pressel in the final group.
As it turned out, they had left the course just as we arrived, so that aspect of the plan went out the window, but we were able--barely--to stick to the rest of it. The thing was, onechan was having a ball at the sports area and didn't want to leave when play resumed. We had to hold her back from doing the maze-obstacle-course inflatable thingie while it was still a drowning hazard, so we actually were bouncing around in the only roofed inflatable structure when the players and caddies were being carted out to the course on the path running parallel to us about 30 yards away. The Full Metal Archivist called out "Ai-chan!" to Ya Ni Tseng before I could stop her, which was not only embarrassing but also made us gun-shy when Ai-chan really went by--but onechan's echo of her mom's call was piercing enough that Ai-chan looked back and waved from 100 yards away! And then, after deciding to avoid the main porta-potties (kusai, kusai!), we were off to the 17th walk-off area, with imoto still refusing to go down for her usual afternoon nap....]
[Update 6 (2:51 am): Got to 17 in time to watch Tseng's explosion from the right-side bunker and both her and Gulbis's putts. Best innocent question of the day came from the FMA after watching Gulbis strut her stuff on the green: "Does she have a back problem?" Later, she did admit that Gulbis was very sexy--and, yes, she is much hotter in person. I'm still appalled that she's one of onechan's 2 favorite players--she may be #1 now after we missed meeting Paula Creamer--after all the pro-Asian indoctrination I've been attempting over the past year. But I did my part by giving Tseng a quick, "Let's go, Ya Ni!" as she walked by us. I was surprised that she looked surprised that someone recognized her, but then I was the only person who said anything to the LPGA Championship winner....
After forcing onechan to go with us around the back of the 17th green rather than head toward the tunnel to follow Gulbis, we made a beeline for the 14th tee, but shifted course when we realized Ai-chan's group had already finished the hole. We got to the 15th green literally just in time to see Ai-chan's approach shot on the par 3 land and back up a foot to come to rest about 15 feet below the pin. By the time she and Inbee got to the green, I was entertaining imoto by lotioning (thanks for those free samples, Aveeno!) and sunblocking her up, but my heart was in my throat as Ai-chan was lining up her putt, b/c imoto could have said or done anything in that stretch. But she stayed quiet and Ai-chan canned it to (as I found out later) make up for her bogey on the previous hole and get back to -10 for the tournament and -2 on the day. I hid imoto behind the grandstand while Park was lining up her tricky downhill par save--and breathed a sigh of relief when she made it.
Then the FMA loaded onechan back on her back and we got as far up the 16th fairway as we could to get as far away from the tee as we could while the players were hitting their drives. We were actually in perfect position to see Ai-chan's drive leak right and get into some tree trouble on the very short par 4 and Inbee's get past the crest of the hill in perfect position to go at the front right pin from the middle of the fairway. Ai-chan had a swing and an angle, but it looked to me like she took a really tentative pass at a punch-fade attempt to thread the needle, avoid the bunkers, and find the front of the green and instead ended up in the rough, short-sided but not having to carry the bunker on the right. She made a fantastic pitch and solid pressure putt to remain at -10 after Inbee nailed her short birdie putt to get to -11.
By that point, we were racing to the top of the hill on the 17th fairway and actually outdistancing those among Ai-chan's Japanese media contingent who had made the same choice as we did, so got to see Park's drive go into jail in the left rough/trees and Miyazato's stay on the left side of the fairway about 10 yards behind Park's. Then it was off to the races again to get as close to the green as we could before the players hit their second shots on the short par 5. If this sounds a little challenging, it was: the players were walking very fast and taking very little time over their shots. They had to wait less than a minute several times for the Christina Kim-Cristie Kerr pairing ahead of them, but overall the pace of play was much faster than I expected. Our sweating paid off, though, as we made it to a rules official's cart about 75 yards short of the green and she entertained onechan and imoto by taking them for a spin while the players were sizing up their shots: Inbee had punched out from the trees to about 100 yards away but was on the right side of the fairway, trying to figure out how to get close to a back right pin on a very banked area of the green and near a greenside bunker; Ai-chan had layed up to about 50 yards shy of the green in the right-center of the fairway, in a kind of low-lying area amid some undulations--she didn't have the perfect angle in, but the bunker affected her approach a little less than Park's. Inbee made a smart play and tried to spin a wedge back off the backboard up in the middle back of the green and let the slope take it back down toward the pin, but it landed soft and stuck instead. It looked to me like Ai-chan chunked her pitch a little--it may have been a little soggier there than she expected, or she may have decelerated just the slightest bit--but in any case she gave herself what looked to be a mid-length uphill-sidehill birdie chance, while Inbee had a tricky downhill-sidehiller from a little further away. Unfortunately, tearing imoto away from the golf cart had the expected effects, so I had to race to the golf cart servicing area far to the right of the green with imoto telling me "no, daddy!" louder and louder with each step, so I didn't see the players 2-putt and had to catch up to the FMA and onechan, who waited for me near the walk-off area.
Didn't see much of the 18th, either, as I had to keep imoto far away from the tee (she was fascinated by the tv camera post near the 10th green) and stay near the pond-side generators powering the 18th-fairway Champions Pavillion area to mask any sounds imoto might make and let onechan burn off some steam from having to stay quiet for so long, but I could tell from the crowd reactions that someone made a bogey. The FMA came back down the hill (she had followed Ai-chan up it to the green) to report that it was Ai-chan.
So all in all a disappointing finish for Ai-chan, as she struggled to par 2 birdie holes after making her birdie on the 15th and then failed to save par on the uphill 18th (much less make her 3rd straight birdie on that tough hole). But a very solid bogey-free 69 for Inbee. And neither imoto nor onechan had turned my worst fears into realities.]
[Update 7 (3:08 am): We hung out at the putting green for a little while and our patience paid off. We watched Ai-chan go around the clock, putting 4-to-6 10-to-12-footers from just about every hour's position to the same hole. What a slow, rhythmic stroke she has! She must have made about half of them and hit an edge at least 90% of the time, and her speed was almost always perfect. When I asked the FMA later what stood out to her about Ai-chan, what she focused on after her leanness and fitness was her rhythm. She was surprised to hear that Ai-chan had been talking about just that in her interviews the 1st 2 rounds. What I realized was that her emphasis even extended to the way she walked on the course, not just her rhythm on her full swings, pitches, and putts. She has a very long stride for such a short person, sets a brisk but effortless-looking pace, and kept to it on every hole. Even though she was struggling a bit while we watched her, she projects a lot of confidence and determination on the course.
Meanwhile, onechan and imoto were entertaining themselves on the hill between the putting green and the traditional calligraphy-quality hand-written scoreboard that you see at all the smaller tournaments, from USGA and state events on down. Imoto tried to go over, through, and around the little white picket fence (plastic) surrounding the scoreboard, so we must have been quite a sight, with me addressing the girls in Japanese when I wasn't watching Ai-chan putt and the FMA and I chasing imoto when she threatened to go around the back of the scoreboard area. At least we were to one American and one Japanese photographer, who couldn't get enough of the girls (although it would have been nice to ask us permission before taking pictures). We certainly got Morgan Pressel's attention--after she told Ai-chan a funny story on the putting green and before she started her own post-round routine, she called onechan over and gave her a golf ball. Turns out she had autographed it for her! So of course as Ai-chan was leaving I had to approach her with nothing but a program for her to sign, and she graciously did, even addressing it to onechan in hiragana. I remember asking onegai shimas (please) but can't for the life of me remember if I thanked her (I assume the arigatou gozaimasu would be so ingrained in me even after almost 10 months away from Fukuoka that I wouldn't necessarily recall saying it, but I could have been so star-struck and embarrassed at the possibility that the girls being there had disturbed Ai-chan's concentration that I might have forgotten to thank her).
So after that, dinner at the Alter Ego family home was a great way to relax--their 2-year-old girl and ours had a ball, so much so that imoto was asleep before we made it (after many wrong turns on my part) back to the Thruway, and onechan fell asleep a half-hour later after we had made it through the 2nd of 3 thunderstorms I had to deal with on the road back to Dunkirk.]
[Update 9 (3:47 am): All in all, the experience was a great one. Not as fun for me personally as seeing the PGA at Oak Hill had been, and I definitely had the feeling of a missed opportunity to see all of Ai-chan's final 5 holes, as the crowds had thinned out quite bit due to the rain delay, but as a first try for taking the girls to a tournament, this was about as much as we realistically could have done, particularly given that the nap-less imoto was a little crankier and whinier than usual. Maybe next year we could plan it a bit better, take advantage of my uncle's access to free tickets, and meet the grandparents out there, so that the FMA, onechan, and I can roam the course a bit more or at least have more back-up when it comes to entertaining imoto. But she'll be a lot easier to reason with by then, too, so it may not be as stomach-churning an experience as it was for me this year.
While I missed LPGA.com and the instant ability to track anything anytime, the scoreboards were well placed and other spectators were happy to share what they had seen, so you could definitely get your bearings quickly. Still, having some laptops set up for the truly web-obsessed could have been a good way to promote LPGA.com a bit more and give spectators a chance to read profiles of players they were not that familar with. (Rochester is a real golf town, but the people I talked to were not all that knowledgeable about the younger players on tour.) Also, there was nowhere I could see that people could go to watch the webcasts that were being and had been filmed on-site. Susan Hunt and Dennis Williams did a particularly good job Saturday, but you had to be off-site to appreciate it.
Those quibbles aside, this is a really well-run event. Even in the midst of a long rain delay, the volunteers were super-cool and the officials were firm but kind. I'm sure onechan will remember the ride in the cart with the rules official longer than getting that ball from Morgan Pressel and the bouncy inflatable thing longer than any shot of Ai-chan's. And the FMA came away from this a huge Ai-chan fan and much more appreciative of the athleticism and approachability of the LPGA players we saw. Plus she may try imitating Natalie Gulbis's posture for a few minutes a day. ;) ]
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