Welcome to my Volunteer Diaries

By Warren Montgomery

Who are we and how did we get here?

The 2003 US Open (Or "where are we going and why are we in this handbasket")

We could only get one of the less skilled jobs -- grandstand marshal, but were eager to experience the tournament, even planning our weekly 36 hole golf outing to finish near Olympia Fields during uniform try-on week to preview our clothing and make sure we ordered the right sizes.  The course was like stepping back in time to that country club I played at as a kid, with it's well appointed and neat pro-shop and manicured grounds.  When the shift assignments came out we discovered we had mainly early morning shifts, two during practice days and two during the tournament, all in different locations.

On Monday of tournament week we started 2 hours before sunrise to reach the giant concrete slab destined to host the areas largest used car lot that was to serve as parking for tournament week, boarded a bus, and walked into the course.  It was eerie looking at the uniformed and armed national guardsmen standing on the railroad overpass as security, still soon after 9/11/2001.  Once into the course we headed for the area behind the clubhouse where we were told we could pick up our "Quiet" paddles and meal vouchers.  It was like stepping into another world -- backstage at a concert.  The Marshal's trailer was in a little trailer village with such sites as "sign boy city", and "scoring central", as well as a large media center, TV trucks, and endless charging stations for golf carts.  Once suitably equipped, we headed back towards the grandstand behind the 13th green.

Passing the clubhouse and coming upon the 1st tee we witnessed an odd sight -- actual spectators, maybe 50 of them, gathered around the tee, even though it was well before 6AM.  The reason soon became obvious when a young black man pulled a tiger head cover off his bag and teed up.  We figured there was no urgency getting to 13 and walked up to watched.  He hit it long and straight, and we watched a few more shots of his on 1 and 2, which followed our route out to13.  On the 3rd tee, I stood directly behind him as he made a pretty smooth swing and launched one down the fairway.  Then it drifted right into the trees.  Disgusted, he teed up a second ball and smoked it down the fairway.  It was time for us to part company and mosey off to the 13th grandstand, but we still had a view of the hole and watched as he picked up the second shot in the fairway and played the one in the woods.  We later came to recognize this as a common strategy for the stronger players -- hit a second to groove the better swing, then play your foul ball to get practice on how to recover from your likely misses.

The 13th grandstand was empty, for obvious reasons.  We were too early for there even to be a flag in the hole.  Eventually, they cut the hole and players started showing up.  It was a cold, damp, drizzly day, and there were never more than 3 or 4 people in our grandstand, so we mainly just watched the players practice.  It was soon apparent, that "Practice round" didn't involve actually playing a round of golf.  They all hit tee shots to the green (a par 3), but then hit other shots whenever their first efforts were imperfect.  Around the green the rarely even bothered to hole out their first shot, and instead the caddies plonked down artificial targets and the players proceeded to launch shots and putts at them from everywhere around the green.  When we looked closely it was clear the targets were in places they thought the holes might be placed later in the week. 

As the day progressed, we were hoping to avoid a weather warning.  When the USGA's meteorologist determines that a thunderstorm is imminent, the leaderboards put up a "weather warning" sign, and one of the duties of grandstand Marshals is to clear the grandstand when this happens.  Indeed, we got the warning, but by then it was raining, and there was nobody to clear.  We retreated under our only somewhat waterproof jackets and waited for better weather.

After our long shift was finished, the weather improved, and we explored the course.  It was of course beautiful, and we scoped out some of the better places to spectate.  One area of note was the wooded area between holes 4 and 7, the two par 3's on the front 9.  7 was a downhill hole along the edge of the property and notable because two of the houses along it had erected substantial grandstands along the hole, reminiscent of the stands on top of the buildings across from Wrigley Field which gave patrons of the establishments a view into Cubs games.  Over time we came to learn that putting seating, tables, and tents in the back yards of houses along tournament courses was a common sight. Some used them only for friends and family, while others sold tickets for what was essentially an outside the ropes VIP tent.

All along we watched players practicing and were interested in the strategies.  For a time we took seats in the grandstand behind 7, knowing Colin Montgomerie was coming.  Monty had a love/hate relationship with American galleries, but I loved to watch him, not just for the name, but because unlike so many he wasn't a poster child for the fitness trailer, but still managed to lead the European Tour every year. 

Like many Monty hit his first over the green near the grandstand, and hit a second solidly on the green.  When he sent his caddie to collect the green near the stand the crowd erupted on boos, but Monty was in a good mood and sent his caddie back to drop 3 balls back there.  The crowd was still ugly, and cheers of "step on it" rang out.  His caddie did exactly that, burying the balls in the long grass.  Then Monty hit all 3 stiff to the pin, and we gave him a big round of applause.

The 2004 US Senior Open (Bellerive Missouri)

In looking at the Tournament Calendar we didn't immediately see another one close to us other than the then Nike tour event in the Chicago suburbs.  (Of course if we knew then what we knew now we may have jumped on it, but as it was we contented ourselves with attending for one day and watching Ricky Barnes and other upcoming stars play to empty grandstands).  We did note the Senior Open was scheduled for a course in the St Louis area and decided it might be fun to go down there for a week, since we never had spent any real time there.  That meant more expenses for a hotel and restaurant meals, but that wasn't a big deal, at least not in the St Louis Suburbs.  This time we decided to try to get in on Leaderboards instead of as Marshals.  The USGA always makes you list your 3 top choices, and you don't always get the first one, but we figured (correctly) that if we signed up early we'd get that one.

Leaderboards is a good volunteer job because you work on an elevated platform, usually with good and unobstructed views of the action, and you usually keep quite busy changing the magnetic numbers and letters.  In the age when everyone on the course carries a phone capable of receiving the scores instantly those boards are an anachronism, but people like the look, and even the players appreciate the ability to keep track on their competition at a glance as they move around the course.

Last Tango with Arnie (Practice days)

We spent Sunday sightseeing St Louis, and the mornings of the practice days playing local courses, including one odd muni with the "clubhouse" in a strip mall, a first hole which when straight up a big hill behind the mall, and the rest wandering through the floodplain of the Missouri River behind the hill.  It wasn't the best course but it was reasonable and an experience.  Tapawingo, an upscale 27 hole layout designed by Gary Player was a better experience, while the 3rd course, one recommended by someone we met at the party (Peevely Farms, or as we called it "Peevish Farms", was a bit of a drag.  (To be fair it was a decent course in good shape, but so spread out that walking it wasn't much fun).  That left afternoons to visit the course and watch the practice action.

We soon learned that the Senior Open was a great event for us.  Not only were a lot of the competitors the veteran tour stars that we had watched on TV forever, but most were just happy to be enjoying playing for fame and fortune when most athletes are long since retired, and glad to be nice to fans and volunteers.  It was fun to see people like Gary Player and Fuzzy Zoeller on the course, and we were glad to see Peter Jacobsen, who for years demonstrated his sense of humor at the Pebble Beach pro-am, and had recently undergone a double hip replacement.  (I should note that the USGA requires everyone to walk).  The one we really wanted to see was of course Arnold Palmer.  We caught up with him on the back 9, and along with a few thousand other fans followed him several holes.  He was old and a bit infirm, and his game wasn't really competitive, but that didn't bother anyone in the gallery.  It didn't seem to bother him either, as he never failed to acknowledge the words of encouragement from the gallery and the applause, even when he was holing out for Double Bogey.  Arnold Palmer was no doubt a major reason so many now older people play golf and a major factor in golf becoming an international sport and a big TV sport, and everyone knows they owe Arnie for that.  It was also fun to see him kidding with his playing companion, Larry Louretti, who can play an entire round of golf removing the cigar from his mouth only for a few seconds to hit a shot. 

We had 3 shifts on the same leaderboard, on the 7th hole, and we made a point of going to see it.  As expected it was in a good viewing position around the green, and we took note of the location of the closest concession stand and "bathrooms".  (Most tournaments don't let volunteers or attendees use any of the real bathrooms, instead there are huge banks of "green latrines", portable restrooms designed to be used by a handful of construction workers for a week or so that instead are called on to support a hundred or so uses in a day, and often become less than "restful" as a result).  We spent a lot of time looking at the course, which like Olympia Fields was great to look at, and like most older courses was compact in design, easy to walk without any areas of houses or other discontinuities inside.  The were designed to work with the natural contours of the land and the old oak trees on the property.   During those days we were reminded of the fact that Bellerive had been slated to host the 2001 Ryder Cup before the event was cancelled because of 9/11.  After being at a subsequent Ryder Cup I can't imagine how a course that compact could have done that.  That may have been partly why they got to host the Senior Open, and partly why the course was in such great shape and had such good access for spectators and volunteers.  Unlike most tournaments, where everyone has to be bused in from distant parking areas and often walk long distances from the bus stop to reach the course, This one used two fields adjoining the course for parking, with the spectator entrance going straight onto the 15th or 16th hole (after first passing through the Merchandise tent, just in case you forgot something).  The volunteers were on the other side near the practice areas in front of the clubhouse, also a short walk. 

Tournament Time (Thursday)

Our first work shifts were on Thursday afternoon.  That was good because someone else had already unpacked all the boxes of magnetic numbers and letters and set up the board.  Someone else had the PDA showing what everyone should put on the board an that was fine too.  The fact that 7 was a par 4 made the job a bit easier as well, since we had plenty of time to get the scores for the group approaching the green and put them up while they teed off and walked to their shots, unlike a par 3 where the scores don't come to the leaderboard PDA until all the players finish the previous hole, by which time they are already teeing off and the crowd around the green wants to know who is on the tee and how they are doing. 

There were I think 4 of us on the leaderboard and throughboard (the leaderboard has 10 lines and shows the scores of 10 players, including the leader, selected by scoring to appear on all the leaderboards, while the Throughboard has 3 lines to show the scores of the 3 players on the green. )  That was good as first timers since there was plenty of work but the pace wasn't frantic and it was okay that we had yet to learn the tricks to the job.  The first day we did mainly leaderboard, which can be quite busy on the first day of the tournament as there are frequent lead changes all the time.  (By the weekend the real leaders are always in the last few groups and very little changes on the board until those players are off the tee).  The throughboard is always busy, especially the first two days when they play in groups of 3, since all the names and scores have to be changed for every group.  The added complication for most USGA leaderboards is that you put the letters and numbers on panels that swing down onto the back of the leaderboard for access, meaning you have to put everything on upside down and backwards.  Keeping track of what orientation the "3"s go in is always a big problem.  In addition, they don't want you changing the board while the players are putting, so you have to keep track of everything that happens when you can't make the changes and then swing into action as soon as the flag goes in the hole and rush to get all the changes made before the next group reaches the green.  There are lots of tricks to that, like using the "pairing sheets" passed out at the gates that show all the groups playing in order to identify who is up next for the throughboard and pull out all the letters required to spell their names well in advance, or putting the score and hole numbers to change on the leaderboard on the back of the doors as a reminder of what needs to be done.  There's a lot of subtle stuff too, like recognizing the difference between a "6" and a "9" and an "O", and a "0", and knowing how to compress the names too long to fit (Eichelberger, was always fun, and as a past winner he had a lifetime exemption and played in many of the Senior Opens we worked.)

By the end of the shift we were done in and ready to get some sleep before our next shifts on Friday.  That, as it turns out wasn't to be.

Washout and Recovery (Friday/Saturday at the Senior Open).

The weather forecast for Friday wasn't good, and it was a bad sign when thunder awakened us early.  As lightning lit our hotel breakfast we wondered if they were going to be able to play, but the standing instructions to volunteers was to show up unless told otherwise.  After a last check of the weather map (bad) and our email and the tournament site with no indication not to go, we headed for the course, but were turned away at the entrance to the now muddy field that was our parking lot.  They weren't sure when they tournament might start or what it would do to our work shifts, and we were to go "home" and keep checking the web for info. 

We got the answer as soon as I got back to the hotel room -- over 5 inches of rain had fallen and the picture on the tournament website showed a leaderboard standing in floodwater -- it was of course the one on hole 7!  No play on Friday, but with luck they would play Friday's round on Saturday and then decide how to get the last two rounds in.  (Weather delays on the first two days of a tournament are more problem than later, because the field starts large enough that it takes a whole day for everyone to get to play.  Once the field is cut, usually to half or less of the starters, they typically play in groups of two all off the first tee, but have the option of playing in groups of 3 off both 1 and 10 and being able to play 2 rounds in a day if they have to that way. 

With no work, we spent the rest of the day in museums and a butterfly garden.  We did wonder what the parking lot would be like.

Indeed, even early on Saturday morning it was clear that the field had become a hog wallow, and cars were already getting stuck in the mud.  We had no trouble in a lightweight sedan, other than dodging the deep ruts left by the bigger and heavier SUVs.  Even the Caddies, who parked in the same area, got stuck, a big problem since they usually take charge of the player's bag and supplies.  The course was in good shape though and other than a few places where a "bathub ring" of mud stain appeared on the mesh skirt the USGA uses to hide the support structure under hospitality tents, leaderboards, TV towers and other structures there was little evidence of the storm.  The bunkers had been pumped, regraded, and in some cases restocked with fresh sand, any debris left by the water was gone, and the greens were clean and green and cut close and rolled to regulation speed.  Having played many courses still in bad shape weeks after a less significant flood I know how much effort is required for that, and it's amazing to see it all done in one night. 

The softer greens meant good scoring and plenty of action for our leaderboard.  It was nice to see Jacobson playing well, but everyone wondered how he would hold up if they decided to play 36 on Sunday. 

Playing the Friday round on Saturday no doubt created some challenges for volunteer chairs.  In general volunteers were told to work their normal Saturday shifts and just skip Friday, but because playing times and groupings are different before and after the cut we knew there must have been a lot of scrambling.  It was easy for us on leaderboards as the board had been scheduled to operate most of the day and they simply asked us to work a bit extra until the last group was through, but committees like walking scorers and standard bearers would have to redo their whole schedule and needed more volunteers than they expected on Saturday.  By then the weather forecast was fine for Sunday, though very hot, so they had decided to play the last two rounds on Sunday, 18 in the AM and 18 in the PM.  This again meant changes in what was needed.  We hadn't been scheduled to work Sunday, but were staying over night and stopped by our chair on the way out to say we would be happy to help out as long as we didn't have to stay too late to make the 4 hour drive home at the end of the day.  He thanked us but said he had enough people, so we expected only to be spectators to the morning round.

Oops -- we really did need you (Sunday)

I still didn't know how they would handle the play on Sunday given that the 2 round format meant play would get to the closing holes a lot faster than it normal would and would last on the front 9 a lot later in the day as well, so just in case we decided to dress in our uniforms and check in one more time on the way to the course.  Just as they were about to dismiss us the guy said "oops" and noticed they had nowhere near enough people on the "Monster Board", the big leaderboard on 18.  Again, in a normal tournament  Sunday nobody gets to 18 until around noon, and even then it's typically the bottom of the field and there are few spectators.  Today, the first groups reaching 18 would be the middle of the field and would get there by 9AM.  So, we headed out to help out.

The Monster board is really rather intimidating. It's typically higher off the ground than the others and much taller, requiring a tall ladder to reach the upper lines.  The format, which gives the player's score relative to par hole by hole, also requires a lot more work to put up and maintain than the typical board which only shows the total.  When we got there there were a few people there already.  After some discussion they decided they could run that board themselves, but had nobody for the throughboard on the other side of the fairway.  That was perfect for us.  We took a PDA and radio and headed over to unpack the letters and numbers and begin picking out the names for the first groups.  The board was a great place to watch the action, and because we were opposite the monster board we could follow the whole tournament from there.  We put up a few groups before the regularly scheduled volunteers showed up to take over, and it was definitely worth coming out ready to work.  Working the board by ourselves also helped us figure out how to do things efficiently and be confident should we get to do it again.

After leaving the board, we watched golf for a while, noting that Jacobson was still leading and showing no signs of having any trouble with those hips.  (In fact, he played all 36 and won the tournament.)  We left before the afternoon round, not wanting to get caught in traffic, knowing we had a great week in spite of the rain out and wanted to do it again.

The 2005 Senior Open (NCR Country Club, Dayton OH, 2005)

In 2005 the Senior Open was again the most interesting option to volunteer at.  Neither of us had spent any time in Dayton,  and we knew there were some interesting things to see and courses to play.  Unfortunately, we had trouble getting an on-course assignment.  We wound up opting for "Disability Services".  This job involves providing help to spectators with mobility limitations to let them get to viewing areas on the course.  Tournaments generally make provisions for this, reserving viewing platforms near popular locations like the first tee and 18th green for wheel chairs and those with disabilities, and reserving parking close to buses or the course entrance for those with handicap tags.  Unfortunately, it's often a long way from where these people can enter the course to any of those viewing areas, and that's where the disability services committee comes in.

Most tournaments have a fleet of power chairs or scooters available to those who need them.  At the USGA championships they are usually donated and available free, while some charge for this.  Those machines are impressive, able to run all day for 10-15 miles and operate on any surface including grass and pine straw, but given the demographics of the typical tournament gallery, there are never enough of them.  So, the disability services volunteers help identify those who can most use them and also operate a fleet of golf course shuttles to take others between the entrance and viewing platforms.  That sounded like a good service job to us.

Again, we went for the week, arriving in time for the Saturday party after spending some unplanned time in a traffic jam on the way.  This time the party was in and around the Volunteer tent, a large air conditioned tent on a platform that would serve both as headquarters for most volunteer committees and a "mess hall", serving a light breakfast, lunch, and providing snacks for volunteers.   On the way in we took note of where the disability services tent was near the public entrance, where they kept the scooters and shuttles that we would be using.  There wasn't much chance to see the course this time, which was spread out "links style" from the clubhouse, but it was a chance to meet some other volunteers and have a decent meal.

My leg hurts (Practice days at the Senior Open).

On Sunday, with nothing going on at the tournament (Sundays the course usually isn't open to the public or off duty volunteers, and the top competitors are usually still playing a tournament somewhere else), we decided to visit the air force museum in Dayton.  We had visited other museums devoted to space and aviation and had heard this one had a particularly impressive collection.  It wasn't a disappointment.  In addition to the aircraft and spacecraft, there were exibits on many of the great air battles, on the development of aviation, and others.  We wound up spending a whole day there, most of it on our feet, and by the end of the day my left knee was stiff, sore, and a bit swollen. 

The sore knee was no real surprise to me, I had had trouble with it before, so I didn't think that much of it and thought it would improve with some rest.  Unfortunately it really didn't, but it wasn't bad enough to interfere with our planned round of golf at Shaker Run, a course between Dayton and Cincinnati that just 2 weeks earlier had hosted the Mid Amateur championship that Michelle Wei had competed in and actually reached the later rounds of match play.  The course was still mostly in great shape (except for 2 or 3 holes where nasty burrowing wasps had bored into bunkers and greens -- We were told they weren't nearly as dangerous as the looked).   My stiff leg meant we were riding, which was okay, it was spread out.  We finished in time to go to the course for some practice round spectating, though I was hobbling too badly to go very far onto the course.  Monday is usually a light day of practice anyway as some players are still traveling to the course. 

On Tuesday, the leg was still sore and swollen, so when we checked in and talked about specific assignments, I decided to take the job of driving one of the shuttles, while Carla worked the crowd at the entrance trying to steer people who looked like they would need help to make the 1/2 mile walk to the course to either the tent or the shuttle stop.  The shuttle carts were basically "stretched" golf carts that would hold 5 or 7 people in addition to the driver.  They were electric, which meant they were quiet enough not to bother the players, but that proved to be a big problem as the mile round trip of the shuttle circuit quickly ran the batteries down.  What made it worse was that it was very hot, and after they had had a lot of the Marshals on the distant holes either fail to reach them or decide they couldn't come back today if they had to walk out there they asked us to provide lifts to the Marshals and other volunteers on the most distant holes early in the day before we had enough spectators arriving to need all the carts.  I made a couple of runs to the far end of the course, probably 2-3 miles round trip, and lots of slopes to navigate, as did the other drivers, which further shortened the remaining battery life.  

Eventually though we settled in to the normal routine -- pick up from the entrance, then make the long run on the flat path to the course, then to the 18th green and first tee area either via a switchbacking cart path or a steep grassy hill, loop around to the putting green and the front door of the clubhouse and then back down the hill and back to the entrance.  Along the way we looked for anyone in distress, either someone having trouble with the walk or someone having trouble with a scooter.  We had radios for medical emergencies, but most problems were solved by giving someone a ride or resetting a scooter.  (The scooters were very capable, but they had an overload detector that would disable one that was working too hard to climb a steep hill, and in spite of giving the users a lot of advice about where not to go invariably some got in trouble.  Some people even rolled scooters on steep sidehills, but I never had to help anyone with that, nor did I have the issue another driver had with a wheelchair rider who crashed after grabbing the back of the shuttle to pull him up or down one of the hills.  Nobody was seriously hurt, but there were some scrapes and bruises. 

Along the way I'd sometimes have to stop for players on the greens or tees, and got flagged down by both players and fans wanting to reserve a scooter for someone during the tournament days.  They didn't do that, but I suggested they could talk to the staff in the tent if they had a very good reason.  Otherwise the only advice I could give was to get there early since the scooters were usually gone by 10AM. 

Wednesday was a free day for us, so we played another local course.  The weather forecast was bad, but again, we were riding because of my leg and I figured we could get to a shelter if it got bad.  The course was nice, but more than a few holes restricted the cart to the path, and hobbling over mounds down into the fairway and back got bad.  We raced the weather towards the end -- and lost, winding up taking shelter on course with 4 holes to play and waiting out a thunderstorm.  When the danger passed we finished, but got soaked along the way and basically just dried out.  We figured nobody would be out practicing anyway.  My leg was still sore, stiff, and swollen around the knee.

A week cut short (Thursday/Friday at the Senior Open).

We had work shifts on both Thursday and Friday, and again, I took the shuttle cart and Carla worked with the scooters.   The storm on Wednesday brought cooler temperatures, and with play starting early they forbid us from driving onto the course to shuttle Marshals, so our shuttle carts did a better job.  With so many fans on the course though it was harder to get around, and avoiding play on the 10th tee, which was in the middle of the cart path we used to climb the hill.  That made it a bit harder to make the circuit, and the carts were always full.  I had no real trouble driving the cart and even managed to prop my bad left leg on the dashboard to keep it elevated and reduce the swelling, but it wasn't getting better and I started to wonder whether I might have any problem more serious than just a sore knee.  Still, with no other problems I figured I'd at least finish the job. 

The biggest problem we had was probably trying to keep shuttle space for people who really needed it.  Many groups had one infirm member, but everyone wanted to ride with Grandpa, and we had to try to convince the able bodied members of the party to walk so I could take people who really needed it.  Most of the time that worked fine, but sometimes it was hard.  It's always the case that these tournaments draw a lot of people used to getting special treatment and consideration from their country clubs and luxury resorts, and not used to being "one of the crowd" at sporting events.  Most are pretty adaptable, but some will argue.

After our work shift we had a chance for some tournament viewing, and made a point of watching Peter Jacobson.  He lived up to his reputation and came over to shake hands with several of the Marshals in the middle of the hole thanking all of us for our service.  Arnie didn't show up again, but the big news was that Greg Norman had just turned 50 and was playing.  We watched him in his shark attire and cowboy hat on the putting green having a lot of fun.  He didn't play as well as he hoped, but he was very popular with the fans.  I watched one of the qualifiers, a club pro who a friend in Columbus knew and was following.  He wasn't doing as well.  I wished I had the mobility to get further out on the course, but we did have plenty of action to watch around the clubhouse. 

Friday was pretty much like Thursday, A morning work shift where the crowds were even larger (and the scooters ran out even sooner), followed by some early afternoon spectating.  It also gave me time to do more thinking about the bad leg, and when it was no better and still visibly swollen I decided reluctantly that we ought to go home early on Saturday.

After returning home, I decided to get the leg looked at and went to the urgent care desk of the clinic where my doctor has his practice.  On Saturday, the physician on duty was one of their newer staff who took one look at my legs and said "Oh my".  After some measuring and prodding she thought I might have a blood clot, which can be serious, so they sent me to the hospital for ultrasound.  After a short wait and some more tests they gave me the bad news. -- a clot, and to insure I didn't have anything worse than a sore leg I'd have to check in for a round of blood thinners and monitoring.  I spent 3 days in the hospital, mostly feeling silly because I wasn't sick, but they didn't want me to do anything, and watched Allen Doyle win the tournament on the TV.  I felt particularly odd sharing a room with a popular local farmer with a big family who had a lot of visitors and a lot of medical attention, and other than periodic  tests of my vitals I got little of that.

The good news was the blood thinners did their job and the swelling started to subside.  My doctor said I still had the clot, but it was stable.  I'd never get the clotted vein back again, but the body would work around that, though I may have to wear a compression sock to help keep the leg from swelling, which I have ever since.  I was a bit concerned that in 2 months I was scheduled to join a group for 3 days of 36 holes a day walking at Bandon Dunes, but he assured me I'd be able to do it, even though I felt like I couldn't walk more than the length of the hospital corridor to the exit at that point.  He told me to keep walking, take the blood thinner and I'd recover, which I did. 

The doctors were never sure why I had the clot.  I didn't have any of genetic issues they tested for associated with them.  They thought maybe the time spent in the car in the traffic jam did it, but the drive to Dayton was a short one for me.  Earlier in the year I'd made a 5,000 mile driving trip spending as long as 14 hours in a car with few breaks, and take two transatlantic plane trips, one 12 hours each way.  I wondered about the day I spent on my feet in the museum.  Whatever, I got some recommendations for how to minimize future risk and vowed to be more careful and take any leg swelling seriously.

The 2006 PGA Championship

In 2006 we were in luck -- the PGA Championship was coming to Medinah, an easy commute from home.  We signed up to be Special Teams Marshals, thinking from the description that we would get jobs a lot like the putting green assignment we had in 2003.  The PGA is sometimes seen as the least of the "Majors", but it's still a big tournament, with large galleries, top players, and lots of hospitality tents.  The location was close enough to home that we could actually attend the training and pick up our credentials in advance, which was fortunate, because they were a lot fussier about this insisting that we present a photo ID to pick up our badges.  I think this was also the first tournament we did that required a criminal background check, which might have been particular to our position, which gave us close access to players.  The PGA also had a somewhat different uniform package for volunteers -- you got only one shirt, but you also got a pair of pants or a skirt.  I was a bit dubious about this, figuring the pants might not hold up, but in fact they turned out to be perfect -- light weight, durable, and good looking, and have become my favorites for volunteer assignments.  (Almost all tournaments want khaki pants, which you have to supply, but of course the rather imprecise definition of that color results in a wide variation of shades showing up.)

When we came for training we got a detailed tour of the locations that our committee was responsible for.  That was basically the crosswalk areas around the clubhouse, putting green, driving range, and the route to the 18th green and first tee.  It was pretty straightforward, with the job being basically what we had done at Olympia Fields.  I was a little nervous about this because of my leg.  Over the year since the clot I had done lots of active things on my feet, taken cross country driving trips and trans atlantic plane flights with no problems, but standing still for any length of time still made me uncomfortable, and we were working 5 hour shifts. 

The parking arrangements for this tournament are worth noting.  Volunteers got to park in the lots of a minor league baseball stadium and ride a bus for about 20 minutes to the course.  You could park there any day as a volunteer, but the parking lot didn't have a lot of extra space so you wanted to be early.  Otherwise you had to go where the general public parked -- a disused horse racing track much farther from where we live and a longer ride to the course.  Unlike a lot of the tournaments this one had no big volunteer tent, just a small one serving coffee and donuts in the morning.  Volunteers got vouchers to cover food and water from the concession stands, and every committee had a designated meeting place on course to check in.  (Ours was a certain tree behind the clubhouse.) 

Monday was uneventful.  We were on the area around the driving range and there wasn't much to do, which meant we could watch the players.  If you have never watched tour pros practice in person, it's an experience.  TV doesn't do justice to the smoothness of their swing, nor does it capture the soft, crisp sound of their iron contact, the same every time.  Crowds were light and respectful. 

We took some time to go out on course during a pro-am day.  That was interesting, just to watch the contestants interact with their amateur teams.  Some almost ignored them, focusing more on their own practice (most tournaments with pro-ams play some form of better ball game in which the pro participates, but the pro can linger and practice around the green after he's out of the hole and many do).  Some spent a lot of time on instruction of their teams, while a few seemed to be constantly telling stories.  I suspect that the amateurs felt they got their moneys worth out of the teachers and story tellers at least. 

When we next had a work shift, the first thing we were told was of the need to be firm in keeping the crowds back.  Earlier in the week (after our shift or on the day we weren't there, they had a serious problem in our area.  Tiger Woods and his Caddie had chosen to walk outside the ropes between one of the practice areas and the clubhouse and were enveloped by a crowd that almost pushed them into a pond as people crowded in.   The tournament responded by beefing up the fencing in the clubhouse areas, replacing ropes with metal fences and in some areas creating double ranks of fences to keep the crowd away from the players.  They had also assigned local police to work with volunteers in some key areas.  We had no problem with either measure.

Our assignment that day was the crosswalk between the 18th green and the clubhouse.  (Actually one of two crosswalks, the one closer to the green was staffed by the 18th hole marshals)  Our area included a wide spot where the players stopped to sign autographs and interact with the crowd.  Almost all the players did it.  Most are happy to sign and have photos taken on practice days.  Probably the most memorable was Padraig Harrington, who was asked by on older woman (who looked like she might be Irish) to get a photo, and he invited her inside the fence to take several pictures of the two of them together.  It clearly was the highlight of her day. 

The saddest day of the week.

Our next assignment was Friday afternoon, on a crosswalk next to the clubhouse. Across from the clubhouse (and inside ropes) was the course parking lot, given over to the players, and the pro-shop, which was the headquarters for the PGA of America.  Between the two was a major access route for spectators getting to the course and all the media and supply vehicles.  There were only two of us on the ropes, though we had a uniformed policeman stationed at the clubhouse door to help insure nobody unauthorized got in.  Figuring out who is authorized is of course a major part of the challenge.  This was harder than with the US Open, because it wasn't just the players and Caddies.  In fact there was a complicated set of codes used on the badges everyone wore indicating where you could go, and to go into the clubhouse required the one of several letters on the badge. 

Usually identifying who could get in wasn't too hard, but there were some exceptions.  One older man wanted to go in but didn't have the right code.  He looked familiar though and when I looked at the name on his badge I knew why -- Rees Jones, the course architect who had refurbished the tournament course recently.  There was even a room in the clubhouse named for him.  I tried hard to convince the cop to let him through, but he had his instructions, and I had to send Mr Jones and his companion to another entrance since none of us had radios to call in a higher authority.  At least he was understanding about it, which not all were.

We had at least two cases of Medinah members seeking access, and they couldn't get it unless they had the right code.  One was particularly indignant, treating us like rebelious servants.  There was a special hospitality area for Medinah members with a great view of the action, and I suggested she go there and if she really needed to get in the club house talk to someone there who might be able to get her the right credentials. 

More than a few players brought wives or girlfriends along, and most had the right credential, though often they weren't displaying them and we had to stop them.
 Most of the players moved quickly through this area, but some stopped to sign for fans.  After a while the fans in the area realized they could anticipate who was arriving by watching their cars come in and the players get out, then rushing to the crosswalk to try for autographs from top players.  One was trying to get all the players who had been in the 1999 PGA at the same site to sign a flag that he said he was going to donate to a charity auction. He actually got most to sign.

During one slow time one of the people hanging out near the crosswalk approached us and started asking about how volunteering worked.  We were happy to tell him anything he wanted to know.  It turned out he was with the Asian tour and they were looking to build a volunteer program for their tournaments and wanted to understand how it worked here. 

When Tiger arrived in the parking lot there was a huge surge of people in the area -- but no Tiger.  I was in position to see what happened.  He and his caddie had decided to skip running "the gauntlet", and instead just jumped the fence and walked through the now empty area between the parking lot and the putting green and cut in there.  Other top players used that route as well, much to the disappointment of fans in our area.

As the afternoon wore on the flow of players reversed and started leaving the clubhouse.  That was sad.  Many of those leaving were dragging clubs and athletic bags, having cleaned out their lockers knowing they missed the cut.  I don't know what was sadder, seeing a dejected Jesper Parnevik dragging his own clubs (almost all the players did this themselves, maybe it's part of the "walk of shame".), or one of the qualifiers for the tournament who was going in and had his family with him and told them to enjoy themselves for a while because this was the last time he and they would be able to get in.   

Stopping the traffic on the path crossing the crosswalk wasn't hard most of the time, though the media were often impatient if the player stopped for autographs and we had to leave it closed.  Mostly though everyone moved quickly, especially towards the end of the day, which had a very "down" feel about it.

And now for the weekend (Saturday/Sunday).

Saturday was an off day for us and we took advantage of our pass to the course to do some spectating.  We visited the "Sergio Tree" on the 16th hole, where a plaque identifies the place where a young Sergio Garcia hit a bold shot off a tree root and chased it up the hill to see where it finished, cementing his reputation as a bold and fierce competitor, even if his charge fell short of catching Tiger.  There was an interesting spot on the course for people watching, where two holes (11 and 15 as I recall) had tee boxes close and crossing such that players on one box had to wait for those on the other.  Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods came to those tees at the same time and it was interesting to watch.  Tiger was leading the tournament and intensely focused.  Phil was well back and not likely to compete, but was smiling, conversing with fans and laughing, clearly enjoying himself.  We caught a glimpse of Vijay Singh, another player sharply focused, and that day not all that happy with his caddie.

Late in the day stopping by the putting green we saw Jerry Kelley talking with his fans.  I'd seen him on TV and hadn't known why the commentators said he was particularly popular, but it was a good chance to see why.  Jerry comes from Wisconsin, so he had lots of fans at the tournament.  He stood in a corner of the putting green talking to them and answering questions about his round for a long time, as well as signing autographs.  It's not something many pros did, and he wasn't going to finish high.

On Sunday, we got a new assignment when we showed up.  It seems that they noticed the  players jumping the parking lot fence and heading for the putting green, so they created a new entrance to the green at the spot they had to enter and assigned us, with a police officer to control it.  Mostly it just looked odd -- a doorway to nowhere, but we had a pretty good idea who was going to want to use it and were ready. 

It wasn't just the players that used the entrance. Several of the TV commentators came in that way on their way to interview players before their rounds.  The job also gave us a chance to spend some time watching the pro's practice routines up close.  Many used practice aids, but what characterized all of them was repetition.  They hit a lot of putts from the same spot and were comfortable only when they were consistently holing them.

It always got exciting when one of the top players entered through our special entrance.  Most of the crowd didn't know what to expect, and surged towards the clubhouse entrance where we had been working on Friday when one showed up, then were surprised when he came through our entrance instead.  When Tiger came to the parking lot there was a huge crowd along the fence.  A small child next to me looked at it clearly considering whether to move, so I bent down and told him that if he wanted to see Tiger he should stay right where he was because Tiger would come right past him.  Sure enough, after the crowd moved toward the clubhouse, Tiger, and Steve Williams jumped the fence and walked straight to the green between us.  My small friend smiled broadly. 

The entrances of Tiger and Phil showed sharp contrasts.  Phil had come earlier, and as usual was all smiles, tipping his cap and talking with everyone along the route.  He even thanked us for being there to drop the rope.  Tiger was entirely focused elsewhere. His eyes darted around the crowd as if he were looking for threats or opportunities, but he never made eye contact or changed his neutral expression.  We were just part of the fence and rope system. 

Steve Williams provided more drama.  After bringing Tigers bag in he went back a couple of times, once to fetch another red shirt.  We recognized him every time he approached the ropes and let him through without him having to ask or justify it and I think he was glad of that. 

Once the last competitor went off the tee they closed off our entrance and we were free to go spectate.  We watched a few players at some of the more interesting holes, but left before the finish to avoid crowds at the end of the day.  Tiger was well out in front and not faltering, going on to collect another Major. 

At the end we decided we rather liked the assignment, and that in spite of the logistics for a big tournament like the PGA being a bit more challenging we'd be happy to do it again.  That was something for later though.  Our next shot at volunteering in 2007 would be another Senior Open at Whistling Straits.

The US Women's Open (Colorado Springs, 2011)

Practice days

Thursday (or We're Hosed for Tomorrow)

What happens on the Short Bus (Friday)

Swingin in the Rain (Saturday)

Balls Up at 6:45AM (Sunday)

The US Senior Open (Toledo, 2011)

Pre-tournament blues

Oh no, not again (not) Thursday

Hot and Bothered on Friday

A Walk in the Park (Saturday)

The Boeing Classic (Washington State, 2011)

Arrival

Pre-Tournament

Day 1 at the Boeing

The Weekend

The US Women's Open, Kohler, 2012)

Pre Tournament

Thursday (or If You Can't Stand the Heat)

Friday at Kohler

Sunday at the Women's Open

The BMW (Indianapolis, 2012)

Pre Tournament washout and Thursday

Saturday (Or Nice guys don't always finish last)

Sunday (After the fact)

The Ryder Cup (Chicago, 2012)

Pre-tournament

Never have so many spent so much time and money . . . to see so little golf being played. 

Tournament Days (Or Sucking on Sunday)

The Senior Open (Omaha, 2013)

Pre-Tournament

Thursday, July 11th

Friday, July 12th

Saturday, July 13th

Sunday, July 14th

The Solheim Cup (Parker Colorado, 2013)

Pre-tournament

Friday, August 22 (Or waiting for golfers, or something like them :-) 

Saturday, August 23

Sunday, August 24

Hotel Fitness Championship (Fort Wayne, Indiana, 2013)

Thursday, August 29

Friday, August 30

Saturday, August 31

Sunday, September 1

NCAA Men's College Regional (Sugar Grove, IL, 2014)

Thursday, May 15 (or this might really suck)

Snow!?!?  -- Friday May 16th at the NCAA Regional

US Senior Open (Edmond, Oklahoma, 2014)

Roger and Me (1st day)

Waiting for Langer (Again)  -- Day 2

It's Scotland vs Germany again (Day 3)

Scottland Wins the World Championship!  (Well of Senior Golf at least -- day 4)

The Boeing Classic (Snoqualmie Washington, 2014)

Day 1 -- learning the course

Day 2 -- moving? day?

Sunday Finish

BMW Championship (Denver, 2014)

Pro-AM day at the BMW

Winning the Lottery at the BMW

Another BMW Parking horrorStory

Saturday, Scoring Again

Final Sunday, an anticlimax

The 2015 Palmer Cup

The US Open, Chambers Bay 2015

Look what they've done to my golf course! (First Practice Day)

What a differencd a day makes (Practice Tuesday)

• Phil Mickelson
• Rickie Fowler,
  
• Brendt Snedeker,
  
• and Jimmy Walker.
  

And the Tournament Starts

Winning the Lottery Again

A disappointing Saturday

A big Finish on Sunday

The 2015 US Senior Open (Del Paso CC, Sacramento)

Practice day

Thursday

Winning the Lottery Again

Saturday -- the bet laid plans . . .

Sharing our Sunday with the Pros

The 2015 Western Amateur (Rich Harvest Farms, Illinois)

The 2015 PGA, Whistling Straits (Wisconsin)

This is Major?

Day 1 -- the straits are really do whistle

Not seeing Day 2 at the PGA

Blown Away at the Straits (Days 3 and 4)

The Hotel Fitness, September 7-13, 2015

Welcome to Fort Wayne

When you work tournaments, you have to be ready for change

Swinging in the Rain

Wrapping up the Hotel Fitness

The 2016 US Women's Open (Morgan Hill, CA, 7/2-7/10 2016)

We knew the way to San Jose (But Untidy Airlines didn't)

I need to learn some Korean

Or maybe Spanish

Catching up on the women's open

Oh, No, not again!

The 2016 International Crown (The Merit Club, Gurnee Illinois, July 2016)

First Look at the Crown

Change is Good?

Finishing just in time

And Now for the last putt of the 2016 International Crown . . .

The 2016 US Senior Open (Scioto CC, Columbus OH, August 2016)

Practicing with Vijay and Freinds.

Time for a quick bucket?

Swingin in the rain (not)

Not finishing on Sunday

An Anticlimactic finish (well for me at least)

The 2017 US Open (Erin Hills, Wisconsin, June 2017)

Dead in the water at the US Open

Practice day at the US Open

Holy Hindenberg! (Thursday at the US Open)

Following the leaders (Friday at the US Open)

Tiptoe through the Fescue (Saturday at the US Open)

Blown away at Erin Hills (Sunday at the US Open)

The 2017 US Senior Open (Salem Country Club, Peabody MA 2017)

Waiting for the Walking Scorer, or someone like him

The tournament course, (the Salem country club) is really in the town of Peabody almost on top of the intersection of two freeways (128 and 95). It's heavily wooded, very green and somewhat rolling. On the practice days we wondered what the USGA might do to it to make it play hard for these guys given there wasn't much water or punitive rough, the fairways are generous, and the greens not fast enough to be real trouble.  Indeed, with the lead at -11 after two days it seems they didn't make it real hard.

We have the early shift all 4 days, and wondered why bother to get there at 7AM for a leaderboard on the 16th hole. We had reckoned without the fact that our headquarters was not in the convenient volunteer tent but of course in the fabulous "cart barn", half a golf course away next to the club's parking lot. (I should have figured that, scoring jobs are always in the cart barn, but that's usually convenient, not relegated to the far end of a large parking lot from anything else.)

On our first shift it quickly became clear that they were understaffed. Leaderboards can have as many as 5 volunteers (really too many), and Carla and I can do it as two, but 3 is really minimum to be comfortable, and that's what we got. I knew our 3rd wouldn't be much help when he couldn't spell "Montgomerie" in 4 tries (he kept putting C's in it), so Carla and I did most of the work and used the 3rd guy mainly to refile the magnetic letters (still a good amount of work and very useful, but harder to screw up).

Leaderboard/thoughboard is really a skill position. It's not hard, but you need to know how to spell out the names with magnetic letters on the back of the board put on upside down and backwards and do it quick, and you need to know how to change the scores very quickly between when groups are putting on the green. You also need to know how to cope with most problems, like sticky doors or bad letters, and you need to be able to tell the difference between the 9's and 6's, O's and 0s, and get the
8's and S's right side up, and most people can't. There are lots of tricks to doing this quickly. We could write a guide on it, but I'm not going to do it lest the USGA put me in charge of training (fat chance).

Thursday I got one curve I couldn't deal with -- when I went to put "Sutherland" on the top line I discovered that whoever assembled the board had simply put a lot of extra long bolts, with no nuts, into the connections between the top of the board and the "flying buttresses" that support it, and they blocked opening any of the doors for line 1.
I started trying to back them out, then realized that nothing else was holding the thing together and called it in. After some discussion Ross (head of scoring) sent out the repair crew to fix it.

It's always fun to have the radio doing any scoring job because you hear about the disasters. I had it Thursday, Carla had it Friday. We each had ample opportunity to learn the walking scorers for this tournament were far from perfect. Lots of scoring errors and lots of just plain odd stuff, like people who didn't know how to put in the players clothing (which helps the laser ball spotters know who it a shot), or simply never got the lesson on how to do provisionals. Several scorers wound up in such deep trouble the USGA sent out help. My dilemma over putting up Sutherland was quickly solved when I heard the scorer was off by 2 shots on him, but eventually they wanted Jimenz on the top line and I was glad to have it fixed.

Another "skill" for this job is the ability to climb on the structure of the board and get the top lines without using the ladder. You can use the ladder, but it's slow and always in the way, and much easier if you can just step up onto one of the supports, which even after two hip replacements I'm pretty good at.

After almost 45 minutes past our nominal end time two replacements showed up and we turned the board over. Neither was experienced or agile or tall enough to get the top lines without the ladder, and we didn't want to see what they did to the board.

Most of our afternoon was spent in the grandstand on hole 15, a long par 3. 15-17 are on the opposite side of a local road from the rest and few fans get there, and 15 is shaded! We thought the hole would be boring, but no, it was like watching a car race -- maybe 1/3 of the players hit shots way left of the green hitting the cart path, going in the woods, or in one case over a stone wall and onto the road. That was fascinating. The guy hit a provisional, but they found the ball on the road, and after some discussion with the USGA rules folks it turned out nobody marked OB on the hole and he played it -- through a little opening in the trees into the rough on the far side of the hole and eventually a bogey, but better than the walk back to the tee. For others it was often a geometry problem to work out relief -- If they hit the path and went in the woods they could take relief from being blocked by the grandstand or the shotlink tower, but whether or not that gave them a playable lie depended on where they dropped. Most took it. On Friday one player deep in decided to go back to the tee. (he made a decent shot but missed the putt).

Friday was much the same -- we worked the board alone (16 green) for an hour before a 3rd volunteer showed up. That was good, because within a few minutes I had to put 6 names on the leaderboard in quick succession.

All around we heard volunteers talking about how understaffed they were. They didn't have enough scorers and some groups had USGA people doing it. Leaderboards were way understaffed and most of the boards shut down way before the end of the day as a result. The USGA wanted to do laser ball position on all 18 holes, but only had enough to do 2 holes on the front 9, and even then didn't really have a full crew on each laser spotter, and even marshals were being asked to do double or triple shifts. It's a real shame, since it's a great venue and an interesting tournament. I don't know if the problem is poor local decisions or a decline in interest in golf in general, but it's not a good sign.

No idea what's up for the weekend. All the leaders finished, but the horn blew before the last groups were in (we were in a pub and quickly collected our check at that point to get under cover before the storm hit). That means we probably have an hour of play tomorrow AM to get through before the 3rd round. More later.

Report from Deep Space 13 (Saturday/Sunday at the Senior Open)

Carla and I spent Saturday and Sunday Mornings on the leaderboard at the 13th hole. This is about as far from anything as you can get on the course. The hole is interesting, a moderate length par 4 with a sharp dogleg and a small green, and you also have views of 14, 6, and 7. Good thing, because we didn't see much play on 13.

Friday's round never quite finished because of storms. We checked diligently for details of the plans for Saturday and got nothing before turning in, then checked in the morning to discover that some time after 10:30PM they sent out a request for volunteers to get there by 5:30. Not going to happen unless you tell me before bed time. We arrived more like 6:45 for our nominal 7AM start and were sent to 13, a hole with no play left from round 2 and that wouldn't see play from round 3 until just before our shift finished. Nevermind they were so short on volunteers boards were being shut down by 3PM with 3 hours left, and that nobody would care if anything were on 13, that's where he wanted us so that's where we went. We immediately got instructions to put up the full leaderboard for round 2 (even though everyone on it or with any
prospect of getting on it was done, and none were going to play that hole and no fans were there). I took a picture to prove we actually did it. Shortly after that they wanted it all down and only the top 3 on the board. We exercised a little common sense and kept the letters out for most of the leaders, and eventually put some back on the board.

We did see a few people playing 6 and 7, and 1 or 2 play 13 before we reached the end of our shift. 61 players made the cut so the first guy out played with the local club pro and played fast. He was an amateur and didn't do badly. The main entertainment was of course the radio. Lots off scoring mistakes, but the big item was the scorer for Colin Montgomerie's group calling in to request they be sent a new standard (the sign with the scores) because the pole in the one they rattled. Monty is apparently notorious for grumping at everything when he's not playing well. Later a marshal told us they had instructions not to use their paddles on Monty's group to signal where the balls went. I'm glad I got to score for him on a good day.

After shift we settled into the 15th grandstand to watch the show. Again plenty of balls hit right and into the weeds. One went so deep the guy had to go back to the tee. Before getting to the stand we asked the USGA rules guy about the lack of OB marking, and he turned out to be the one who officiated when the guy hit one off the road. They did mark OB, with little markers on the side of the road nearest the course, but the road has a curve and that guy's ball was just inside the markers. It didn't save the guy who hit it so deep he couldn't even take two club lengths to improve his situation and got shuttled back to the tee to take his double.

At the top of the leaderboard Perry and Triplett continued to move forward. The big surprise was Jobe, who had a big string of birdies on the back 9 including a rare birdie on 15. (he and his playing partner hit the two best shots of the day there and sank the putts). Corey Pavin birdied the hole with a putt that must have been at least 50 feet.
but there was a lot more bad stuff -- bunker shots that failed to escape the bunker, sculled chips, etc. Maybe the best shot we saw all day though was Jerry Kelley, who hit one right but still inside the ropes in front of the shotlink tower. He hit a super flop shot that landed about a foot from the pin and barely moved.

We got out before the finish and again watched it on a Pub TV, seeing Doug Garwood hit a shank on 18 that he reacted to with a shrug and a laugh. Not much you can do other than hit another and take your lumps.

Sunday we again got no real useful info before morning when we heard that our shift would start at 8. Again we went to 13, with little play before 11AM, but this time they were really short and we were on the board until 1PM and saw some golf. We actually put a few names on the bottom of the leaderboard as players started having good rounds. That was clearly a curse though. As soon as we put someone's name up they bogeyed and dropped off.

The scoring mistakes were if anything worse than before, with one scorer getting so hopelessly tangled they had to send out someone to straighten her out and train her on what to do when the PDA won't let you put in strokes for the next hole. (It's a rookie mistake -- basically you can't score a hole before all players have been noted as having finished the last one, and the mistake is not clicking "in the hole" when the last putt drops.)

Plenty of other foul ups, and pleas for more people to come out to work some of the leaderboards. During our time on the board Ross, head of scoring came out to retrieve the weather warning banners on our board. We talked a bit with him as his assistant recovered the 8 banners (their forecaster said 0% chance of rain today, something he never did, but he was right). He wasn't happy with what was happening in scoring this week and was eager to have us as scorers in the future, so we might just try to work another US Open some time (we are already in the senior and women's for next year).

After the shift we again retreated to 15 for most of the afternoon. The pin was indeed in the back left corner where we thought it would be and another fan in the grandstand said nobody had birdied it and it was the toughest hole on the course that day. Nobody birdied while we were watching either. No balls in the woods today, but as we were leaving one went over the green in the hazard. After considering his options he dropped in a drop area (1 penalty stroke for that) and nearly holed out his pitch to the green from there (but missed the putt -- double.) The leaderboard curse continued. Kelly got on it and immediately bogeyed. Glen Day got on and doubled 18, but basically everyone but Perry went backwards. He had a 3 shot lead when we left and while it got a bit closer it was never in doubt.

That's all the fun we get here -- a couple of days to see Carla's relatives and then we are off for almost 2 months from golf volunteering  The Senior Amateur in Minneapolis is our next event.

Once again it was a blast to do this even if we weren't always used perfectly. Volunteer hospitality and meals were great here and the course was fun to walk and watch. Again I'd encourage anyone out there interested to sign up to work a tournament -- the USGA in particular really seems to need more people for these things.

The US Senior Amateur (Minneapolis, August, 2017)

Carla and I spent last week working at the US Senior Amateur, at the Minikahda club in the Minneapolis area. The course is an old one, revised by Donald Ross nearly 100 years ago and still showing a lot of his handiwork. It hosted a US Open, an Amateur, the Curtis cup and other championships. It's not big enough for a modern Open or tour
event, but with lots of trees, slick crowned multi-tier greens, and tricky doglegs it presents plenty of challenge.

We knew this would be a low key event compared to the Opens, more like the Western Amateur. In fact it's probably even more low key. Some people come out for amateur events involving up and coming players that may some day become stars, but this one is for old guys like us who aren't good enough to play professionally but want the challenge of a national championship, and only their families, friends, and a few club members come.

Most of our assignments were in something called a "Walking Pod". Basically 2 or 3 volunteers walk with a group of players, one scoring, one as a forecaddie, and maybe one as a marshal (though in fact there were few enough volunteers nobody ever did that job, not that it was needed). Carla and I basically worked as a pair alone, each taking 9 holes of scoring and 9 of forecaddie. The format is 2 days of full field stroke play (156 starters in morning and afternoon waves of 3somes off both 1 and 10), then cut to the top 64 for 4 days of match play to determine a winner. The event is so low key that except for the 2 stroke play days we got to park in the club parking lot, right next to the "paddle house", which served as volunteer headquarters. (This is a little building that serves as the headquarters for "paddle tennis", some kind of tennis game played on miniature courts, of which they had 4 or 5, in addition to a center for full scale tennis). There are no grandstands, no refreshment stands (they sell food at the course halfway house and clubhouse, though we get box lunches and generous snacks for free), no flanks of port-a-potties (use the bathrooms on course or in any of the club buildings), and no ropes other than around the first and 10th tee to try to keep order.

The competitors can use carts, caddies and pullcarts in any combination, with the only rule that caddies can't ride in carts, and we saw every combination. They can also use rangefinders, something I'm personally less thrilled about. (Growing golf doesn't need people thinking they need to buy another expensive gadget, nor does it need an army of hackers lasering every pin when they could miss the shot with any club in their bags.)

The technology for scoring this one is different, perhaps a preview of the new scoring platform the USGA has threatened to introduce next year.  Instead of PDAs we had android tablets, sealed in little bags. I think they run off Verizon's carrier network, not WiFi, like the PDAs, and apparently they have limited battery. For this event it was comparatively easy -- you track the shots as they are made on paper, then after each hole enter the scores on the tablet through a typically clunky touch screen interface (you pick a player, but instead of entering the score directly have to scroll through a list of possible scores to pick one, then instead of selecting the next player have to hit "next".) -- plenty of opportunities to screw up if your finger isn't in quite the right place. Finally you have to post and confirm the scores, each with tiny buttons hard to hit that naturally appear in exactly the same spot (so, when after trying 5 times to hit "post", it suddenly decides to respond it instantly posts and takes another previous touch as "confirm", giving you no chance to see it.) No radios either, take your mobile phone and call someone. The bottom line is for this they didn't care much. They didn't even let us score 18, instead having the USGA people check the players cards against the entered score and enter the 18th hole. (Someone said this was to avoid having your entry of 18 collide with any changes they made in scoring, confirming what someone on a leaderboard said which was that the scorer's data often came in very late).

I hope they get the bugs out before next year's open championships.  Going through the carrier data network works fine on a deserted course, but with 40,000 fans and their phones at a US Open venue I'm guessing that would cause serious delays and lost data, and of course this presumes the data gets entered properly to begin with, questionable given  the problems with the interface.

Our first group of players (Pierce, Holmes, and Kmak) created excitement immediately as Pierce hit it onto a side slope of a fairway bunker in this chip shot par 4 (309 yards!) and struggled for bogie, while Holmes had a stress free birdie and Kmak threw his arms up in celebration first after hitting the green in regulation and then 2 putting. All 3 were from the south and clearly had some problems with the cold rainy weather and long wet rough. Pierce settled down and made a couple of birdies (and more bogies), while Kmak fell back steadily and Holmes parred the rest of the front 9 (maybe the easier 9, 3 par 3's and 3 par 5's, one of them fairly short). Then on the back Holmes fell apart after doubling 12 from an awkward bunker lie and just kept making bad shots. Pierce birdied 17 to finish only a couple over, and Kmak had a nice birdie at the last as I recall. All 3 had some shot of making the round of 64.

On Sunday, we had an interesting group off 10, Acker, Zachar, and Bodney (who the USGA tee announcer was joking sounded like a law firm).

Acker was a large man in shorts and a purple shirt who didn't look like much of a golfer. Zachar was a short guy walking with a caddie and looked somewhat the part, while Bodney was a dead ringer for our friend Tex (a tall guy who hit the ball a mile almost always straight. Everything about his game and demeanor reminded me of Tex.) The surprise was that Bodney struggled on and around the green starting with 3 bogeys, while Acker, always way behind the others off the tee was a wizard with shotmaking and around the green. He played the course exactly the way I would, hitting woods and hybrids into a lot of greens, missing, then getting up and down for par out of everything. Zachar was the most solid player.

Both those groups were easy for the Forecaddie. They were rarely in the rough, never lost in long grass. I think I marked only one shot (from Kmak, where his little miss off the tee put him behind a little tree). Bodney gave me a bit of a scare when he pulled a wood off a short tricky par 4 most were laying up on and hit it left, rattling the trees over my head, but he came up clean in the rough where the virtual cart path was (it was "carts on paths", but there were no paths most places so they marked the places they wanted them with little flags). Perhaps he did it because on the previous hole, a short par 5, he made the green in two, then hammered his eagle putt and 3 putted, unleashing a long string of self-recrimination).

In the end, Only Zachar made the matchplay from that group. Pierce made it from our first group, and Holmes +8 total put him on the bubble. 12 golfers teed off in 3 foursomes at 7AM on Monday playing for 7 spots. 4 washed out on the first hole, (including unfortunately Holmes), leaving 8 playing the par 3 11th. One guy doubled it to set the field.

On Monday our match was relatively late. Fogherty vs Fischer. Both were walking, with Fogherty's wife caddying for him and Fischer with a course pull cart. I had forecaddy duty first, so I got only occasional reports of the state of the match. Basically while both started well Fogherty pulled ahead and was 3 up at the turn. It didn't help that Fischer 4 putted the par 3 8th after being on the green while Fogherty made an indifferent chip and still won the hole. Neither played aggressively and both pretty solidly. On 10, Fischer got one back and kept it with a good up and down on 12. Then the wheels came off Fogherty. On the par 4 12th there was a backup since they were using the far forward tee and many tried to drive it. Neither of our guys did, and both hit to a good spot for a layup, but Fischer got the hole, and won again on the par 5 13th after Fogherty's 3rd came up short in a bunker. About then Fischer asked for a cart because his Atrial Fibrulation was acting up. It didn't effect his play though and he continued to play soundly, winning 13. On 14 when he took 3 to get there though and Fogherty was close in 2 I thought Fogherty would stop the bleeding, but no, Fogherty's chip was short and no better than Fischer's 3rd shot from a fairway bunker, and then Fischer canned a long putt (well, it wobbled around the back of the hole before dropping) to square the match. Fogherty stumbled again on 15 and 16, while his wife said he went from elated to discouraged to angry, and it wasn't helping his game. On 17 both made good approaches and 2 putted to finish.

Zachar won his match too. As it happened one of the rules officials working with our group knew him and liked him, saying also that his caddie was a club pro who made the cut in the PGA championship, probably a big plus. We had him again on Tuesday, playing someone who dusted his opponent 5&3. Should be fun.

On Tuesday we had Zachar and and Doug Hanzel in an early morning match. Zachar caught fire early, birdieing 3 of the first 6 to go 3 up even with Hanzel hitting some of the longest drives I'd seen and reaching the 4th in 2. I was forecaddie for the front 9 and got a reminder of why it's important when one of the players in the group in front wound up coming back on the hole to hit a second shot to the green after they couldn't find his first. Nothing like that in our match. After matching Hanzel's 2 putt birdie on 4, Zachar stuffed it on 5 and went 3 up.

Then things went the other way. They traded pars for a while, but Zachar butchered 9, and eventually dropped back even (I think after a nice birdie by Hanzel on 13. 14 was interesting and played a bit like Monday (Zachar reached the green in 2 (regulation), but after Hanzel was ahead of Zachar in the fairway he topped one into a bunker, then stuffed the bunker shot and matched Zachar's par). Hanzel eventually turned it around to 1 up as they went to 17. I had talked a bit to his wife, following the group, and between that and the program learned that he was a regular competitor in the amateur and even the senior open and a very solid player. I expected he would put Zachar, who was stumbling, away on 17, but he pulled his drive way left behind a tree. He had to punch out over the green into an awful lie on a slope, but got up and down to go to 18 1 up. Then he 3 putted -- all square at 18. They halved 1 as the first extra hole, and it looked like they might halve 2 as well, but Hanzel canned a long putt to finish it.

We hung around to watch a lot of the afternoon matches. Lots of great action, but hard to follow. Wednesday our duty was easy -- run the 6th hole scoreboard for a couple of hours in the afternoon, so we played a morning round then showed up. Allie (the volunteer coordinator) offered us another scoring round, but after seeing that two of the morning rounds went to 20 or more holes and the fact that we were beat from golf in the AM we just took the leaderboard. That was easy duty, and we enhanced the board by putting up the competitors full names. Both matches were lopsided through 6, and in the end Simson, who won it twice before and was medalist 3 or 4 other times came through to play Knapp, who never won, on Thursday. We didn't stick around for that, but got a bit of a surprise with some special recognition for our hard work by the Minikhada club before saying goodbye.

In short this was a very different experience, but a very satisfying one and something I'd be glad to do again.

Only one more tournament this year -- the BMW. We are going to be the Shotlink laser operators on the fairway location of hole 5 all 4 days, so look for us in the TV coverage of the early holes :-)

The BMW Championship (Lake Forest Illinois, September 2017)

Carla and I spent the last 5 days at the BMW Championship just north of Chicago.  This was an unusual one for me, since we stayed very near where I grew up, and the tournament course was near where I played golf growing up (though back then Conway Farms was nothing but farmland.)  Just a week ago we went up for our training and the volunteer party.  Our job for the week was operating the shotlink laser on the 5th fairway.  The training was mostly review, though shotlink has replaced the old clunky PDAs they used with Windows phones.  Mostly that worked out fine, and some things really were better, but touch screens are not a great choice for volunteers with fingers greasy from greasy food and sunscreen.  The big change for shotlink didn't effect us since it was at the green. They are experimenting with a new camera system to record balls at the green, which will ultimately eliminate the need for volunteers to operate a laser spotter there, but they will still have volunteers spotting balls the cameras can't get.  (They demonstrated the camera system.  The cameras are fixed, and record only balls landing on the green in their last few feet of flight and the roll of the ball.)  The big thing they want to do with it is project the roll of putts on the green.   Even when the system is fully installed, they will still have volunteers putting in grid squares for the balls at the green.

None of that effected us.  Our job has one person operating what looks like a laser rangefinder, but it also incorporates gyroscopic position sensors that track which way it's pointed, allowing the system to figure out where the ball you spot is on the course given the rangefinder is fixed to a pole at a fixed position.  You shoot the laser at any ball you can see, and if you can't see it shoot at where a marshal marks it or if it's over a hill at the marshal or the player standing over it. Another person on the team has a map of the hole with a 5 by 5 yard grid overlaying it, and tries to figure out which grid square the ball falls in. If the two roughly match, you get some reassurance you got the right location.  If things are too out of line or if where you put the ball doesn't agree with where the walking scorer says it was you might get a call from the trailer.

The BMW party is worth some mention.  Most tournaments have parties for the volunteers, and most are just a free meal, a local musical group, and a couple of mediocre beers.  BMW always does well by us in food and this one was no exception, and they weren't stingy with the beer.  I wondered whether it would be odd to have it in the middle of the day instead of the usual early evening, but it was fine, and less crowded. We had a little time to wander around, but not much.

Thursday was our chance to practice with the equipment, and we did that on hole 8, a dogleg par 5 with a lot of bunkers in front of the green. It was an introduction to some of the problems, like balls in the bunkers or hollows you couldn't see, but not everything that goes wrong on tournament days (like players hitting balls so near you you have to move the equipment).

Thursday our shift started nominally at 8:30AM, kind of a leisurely start.  One nice thing about the BMW at Conway farms was that the volunteers got to park in a mall lot about 5 miles from the course so no problems with rain turning it to a hog wallow and a short bus ride.  The only problem was figuring out how to get to volunteer headquarters and hole 5.  One problem with the BMW is that they always set up the course entrance so spectators have to walk a long awkward route past the merchandise tent and numerous BMW exhibits to get to the course.  The volunteer tent, where we checked in, was well off that route, and there were no clear directions how to get there.  Some people told us just to cut through the player parking lot, but the security there wouldn't let you, others told us to cut through the clubhouse patio (which sometimes worked), but it was an adventure every time.

Once checked in, we discovered play didn't start until 9, and wouldn't reach 5 before 10, so we hiked out slowly to find our 3rd volunteer at the position.  You don't really need 3 people all the time, but since there are only 70 players everyone works for the 6-7 hours it takes for them all to play through and thus you need an extra person so someone can go for lunch, water, or bathroom breaks.  Our 3rd person was a woman our age who worked 2 previous tournaments on that hole and used to live in a house on the course.  She was competent and flexible about setting up a schedule and mostly fun to work with, which was good, because the 3 of us spent at last 24 hours together over 4 days.

If there's a bright center of Conway farms, Hole 5 is farthest from it. It's a long hike down there and there are no bathrooms or food stands within 2 holes of it.  It's a dogleg par 4 with a long carry over marsh off the tee to a fairway that is angled to the tee shot and runs between OB on the left and woods on the right.  The ideal shot is on the left side of the fairway, since trees block the approach if you get too far right, but finding the fairway proved difficult.  Our laser position was about 290 yards off the tee on the left.  Mary, our 3rd volunteer complained the laser was too close to the tee and had been 10-15 yards further down the previous two times she worked there, but the Shotlink guys assured us they examined the scatter plot of where the drives went those years  and we were in the ideal place -- right -- ideal if you want to be a human target.  I swear half the players were aiming at us off the tee, and even the guy setting the tee markers was lining them up on our chairs.

Thursday was an adventure from the start. The first thing that happened was a fog delay of about 20 minutes, but once the action started it didn't stop.  I think we moved the laser 4 times for the first 6 groups, each of which had someone hitting short and left.  Two balls were so far left they were in the trees (but not OB), and a couple were over the hills on the far side of the fairway, impossible to get.  In about the 4th group we got a call from the people on the green to shoot some players second shot -- a punch out that rolled into a drain on the fairway 100 yards short of the green.  We could do it, and shoot the free drop the guy took, which became  a real rules comedy.  He dropped 3 times and rolled into the drain each time, then placed the ball at least 10 times before finding somewhere it wouldn't run down.  Meanwhile the group behind teed off and we got behind catching their shots.  This is tough sometimes.

Towards the end of the day we got the word that Danny Lee had withdrawn with back problems on hole 3 -- apparently he had to be evacuated by medics.  Really too bad.  He's a nice guy and a great golfer.  That meant Lahiri played alone, and fortunately played well.

It was fun to watch some of the top players play the hole.  Most hit it somewhere near us (I only had to jump out of the way twice, once for Dustin Johnson and once for someone else).  What's interesting is to overhear the dialog with their caddies, especially when they are debating 8 or 9 iron from 180 yards out.  Yikes.  Fortunately all 3 of us knew a lot of the players by site and with Mary and I and usually one of the marshals following the balls we never mis-identified anyone and nobody got hit by a ball.   By the time everyone played through we were dead tired and after some rehydration in the volunteer tent on the way out found a brew pub to watch the end and eat dinner.

Friday had no fog, but basically the same routine.  We moved the laser so many times we wore out the support post.  (The laser is on a pole that's lashed to a short post driven into the turf.  The theory is most of the time you can just move the pole and not disturb the post, but at least 4 players needed the post moved (not to mention our chairs, the ropes, and the TV truck down the sidelines in front of us).  One even pulled out one of the calibration stakes they told us never to move, but you don't tell a player he can't pull a stake. )  Mostly we kept up fine.  Once I had to come up with a grid position for a ball 125 yards down the fairway I couldn't get the laser on (a bad punch out that went into a grass bunker and was hidden from the green tower), and got it a bit off, but you do what you can and you can't do more than that.

Then we had our first real disaster -- someone hit a hook that took 3 hops and disappeared beyond the white stakes -- OB.  We signaled, but I wasn't sure how we were supposed to record it.  About then a freight train went past.  (Oh -- I didn't mention that a very busy train track carrying commuter trains, Amtrack, and freight trains ran along the hole and a train showed up every time something dicey happened. Eventually I got the answer -- laser a tree in the woods and grid it (OB), then get the second ball.  Unfortunately we had to do that a again another day.  It was another day we wound up dead at the end of the day.

Saturday they played in twosomes, which meant an early start.  Our schedule said 7:10, so we got up real early and got in by then only to learn that the first one off -- Louis Oosthuizen, would be at 7:30.  As a single he played fast, but not crazy fast, taking time to consider his shots.  We all speculated that his goal was not to be the unpaired player (the rabbit) on Sunday, which he succeeded at.

With only 2 players in a group things went a bit slower, but it was still a challenge handling the ones way off line, of which there were more than a few.  Having "chatty" marshals in the area didn't help, and I got real sick of that train line.  The TV people were out in force though.  Again, the fun part is always watching the players set up for their shots.  Mickelson probably had the biggest gallery on Saturday, and he was playing well, making a few birdies early to get to T-5 and maybe qualify for Atlanta.  (Alas, it didn't last).  Lieshman continued to outrun the field though.  One of our best Lieshman moments was Thursday or Friday, when he hit it left somewhere behind the laser pole.  Mary wanted to move it, but our instructions were not to move anything until the player asked.  Finally, with him standing about 10 yards behind her Mary asked, and Lieshman  said something like "your right mate", and proceeded to hit a bullet right past her to the green.  When you are playing well, you have confidence.

Towards the end of the day Dufner hit a ball OB on the left.  One of the marshals found it and offered it to him, but he had no interest (no surprise).  I got a minor thrill when I watched Charlie Hoffman hole out for eagle on number 4 when returning from my lunch run.  He didn't play our hole as well (well nobody did.  I haven't seen any hole by hole statistics but it wouldn't surprise me if hole 5 played over par on average).

On Sunday we again started early and I was tempted to show up later, but I'm glad we didn't.  Wesley Bryant was the rabbit and was playing very fast, reaching number 5 in about 20 minutes.  I kept hearing reports of where he was, and was amazed to hear he finished by 9AM, less than an hour and a half, and was 2 under par.  Late in the day one of our co-chairs stopped by and chatted about that.  He played so fast that of course they didn't have the holes staffed, so he and another staffer had to sprint ahead (in golf carts) operating the lasers as he passed for most of the back 9.  He was apparently trying to set some kind of speed record and was running between shots and carrying some of his own clubs to make time towards the end.  When he finished he got a roar from the gallery on 18 and he and his caddie triumphantly waived the flag in response.  He was 2 under par for the day -- not at all shabby.  All those slow pokes who took 3 minutes to set up a shot (Webb Simpson was notable for this on our hole) should take notice.

The rest of Sunday was a slow build of excitement. Most weren't making a bunch of birdies up front, but some were.  Zach Johnson was notable, and even though he was one who was way back off the tee, he got his second close.  In the end he was -7 for the day, one of the best rounds.

We had another OB, and several balls in trouble on the right, but by now we had the routine down so getting the positions wasn't a big deal.  We had another OB, and in spite of telling the marshals to leave it alone one picked it up and got chewed up by the player and his playing partner.

The players seemed to be swinging more freely on 5 on Sunday, and we were using more of the grid than we had on earlier days, with some monster drives. Not all were a benefit though as many rolled right and got some interference from the trees.

The last group was a bit exciting.  Of course there were tons of media with them.  When Lieshman hit it right off the fairway and then hit his punch out too long nearly OB near the green someone near me started talking about the start of the collapse.  Fortunately it didn't happen.  He struggled on 5 but played solidly from there on and ran away with it.

Along the way we wound up talking with the chair for walking scorers, who had been our chair for the International crown.  She had apparently considered pulling us out of shotlink to replace some dropouts but backed off that since the shotlink team was also short.  It seems that more people are signing up to volunteer and then either dropping out or just not showing up and it's a real problem.  It's interesting that Shotlink and walking scorer are kind of different twists.  As walking scorer you see every shot for 2 or 3 players and every hole, but nothing else.  As shotlink you see one hole in great detail and see every person play it.  On a fairway position like ours you are usually very close to where they are approaching the green, often closer than the walking scorer, and close enough to hear the discussions, which is a lot of fun.

That's it for our 2017 season.  Next year we are already signed up as scorers for the Senior and Women's opens, and shotlink for the BMW again.  We also hope to do the first Senior Women's open, a new championship held for the first time at the Chicago Golf club, only about 30 miles from home.  (It's a very old and historic course and more than a bit quirky to look at it on a map).  Meanwhile we've got memories of a lot of players to watch in the tour championship next week and during the wrap around (aka silly) season.

The US Women's Open, Shoal Creek CC, Birmingham (2018)

We thought long and hard about signing up for this one, but the opportunity to be walking scorers for another women's open was too good to miss.  With dodgy airline connections from Chicago we decided to drive -- 11 hours, longer than anticipated, but doable in a day. 

Rain, rain go away (Early days at the Open)

So far Rain could be the title sponsor of our adventure in Birmingham.  It started Saturday, driving down, when we got caught in a cloudburst in Nashville and nearly wound up in a massive wreck. All the other cars on the road had out of state plates and nobody understood the crazy labyrinth of turns needed to follow I65 though the city, and in the rain you couldn't even see the signs or lane markings and an aggressive move by a tandem truck nearly pushed us and another car into the center wall.

Sunday, with no action, we played a local course and visited some local sights.  Monday we were supposed to play a local course, but rain and "cart path only" made it unappealing.  Instead we decided to go out to Shoal Creek early to pick up our badges and scope out the course. (Mainly I was worried that rain later in the day would close the course and cancel the pre-tournament volunteer party, not allowing us to pick up our badges.

It actually wasn't bad when we got out there, and we wandered around enough to find where we had to check in for our shifts as scorers. That proved difficult because the course has a bunch of "cottages" around the first hole, most of which were apparently sold as corporate hospitality roping off large areas, but one of which held the USGA scoring headquarters. The volunteer guards in the area had no clue that some of us would need to go there even though we didn't have the right access code on the badges, and some were even a bit hostile.  Fortunately all that loosened up later in the week when it became clear that the only sane route to get fans and volunteers onto the course was up the side of the fairway past those cottages.

We actually went back to drop off our info packets and came back to the course for the party in time to walk the front 9. Everything was soaked, but the course looks really nice. tree lined doglegs, creeks everywhere, and interesting holes. We watched a few of the early arrival players out practicing, and as usual underestimated how far they would hit the ball. One unusual feature is that there are drains in a lot of places in the trees next to the hole and little, usually dry valleys running from the fairway towards them. All these have been carefully marked as little red hazards, so anyone unlucky enough to trickle into the woods may find themselves in a pile of pine straw or other debris within a hazard boundary. I predict some ugly shots.

Today (Tuesday) is a washout. No play. We are supposed to have about 3 inches of rain from Alberto, but it's still right over us. I don't know how much it takes for those creeks to flood, but I predict a lot of pine straw on the course and washed out bunkers even if the creeks don't threaten the fairways. The areas the public walks between the holes are already hog wallows. Part of the problem is the course doesn't have a lot of hard surfaced paths, so all the cart traffic with the tournament have been churning gravel surfaced paths and those with just wood chips into mire, and that's before 3 inches more rain.

The USGA keeps sending out cheery notes saying that even though the course is closed today and they have had to move all the parking lots to paved areas (meaning a much longer bus ride for us), they are enthusiastic about he forecast for the championship and predict a great weekend. The weather service is just predicting more rain and
thunderstorms. We will see.

Still Swimming in Birmingham

Yesterday morning the real storm hit. Not real impressive by the standards of the Nor'easters I remember from my Boston days but nasty enough. No play on the course, and our training was moved to a local hotel, so we spent much of the day in a local Mall. (They actually have one that was mostly still functional, unlike the Chicago area where half the stores in the malls are closed). Not my favorite way to spend a day but it beats staring at the rain. Before heading out we spent more time in the hotel and observed a lot of long faces, including a woman carrying a wedge around who was no doubt trying to use it on the lawn during the breaks in the rain. Late in the day they apparently let the players out on the range, but not the course.

Training was as expected. This year the USGA has a completely new scoring system, and it's based on what look like Windows phones. The screen is brighter than the old PDAs, and the battery life is probably better, but it's all new software. Mostly we do the same things as before, but with a touch screen instead of a stylus, and all the things
you have to select moved around it's going to be different. The one big difference is they now want you to mark where a shot was hit from on a map of the hole, using the usual touch screen gestures to move and zoom the map. It's not hard, but it is a new work item for us that will take some time. The devices also don't seem totally immune to problems. A couple of people managed to hit one of the physical buttons on the phone (it's mounted on a plastic tablet) and turn it off or abort the scoring app. We didn't do that, but I noticed that if you tried to do something odd, like changing the location where a previous shot was hit (a reasonably easy and common correction to make for fat fingering something with the old technology), you can wind up on unfamiliar screens pretty easy. At the time of course we thought we would work it all out today.

Today (Wednesday) didn't start well. We were supposed to be at the course by 7AM to go out for practice scoring with a group. When we got up the weather map showed a solid line of orange approaching, and we shortly got emails and texts saying they wouldn't start the buses until 7AM, so we had a more leisurely breakfast. The breakfast room was of course full of people in volunteer uniforms (those who weren't looked like they might be caddies or players), and a few fans. We passed on the bad news about
a delayed start, but getting no updates took off to get to the parking lot in time for the first bus.

We didn't make the first bus, but were on a bus shortly after 7AM, and it left -- and turned a direction I didn't expect. Nobody was concerned, but half an hour later when the bus was still going east on a road parallel to the one the golf course was on and passed up a chance to turn south to that road someone went up and got the driver to turn
around. I think she would have taken us to Atlanta if nobody had. With some help from a couple of people carrying phones they found a route back to the golf course (which involved climbing a steep grade with sharp turns that weren't fun for the driver), and got there only an hour after we left the lot, for what should have been a 15 minute trip.

The good news is they let us off the bus. It was pouring, and ponded everywhere. The bad news is they herded everyone into the Merchandise tent at the gate and told us to wait for further instructions. That of course was silly for us. Walking not much further we could have reached the scoring center, a solid brick building with chairs, people with information on the plans for the day, and scoring devices to practice with, but no instead we all went into a flimsy tent, and stayed there for 2 hours of lightning and thunder. People carrying phones got updates every 30 minutes saying the course was closed, next update in 30 minutes (They clearly took lessons in informing the public from the airlines).

We did have a chance to have some interesting discussions with other volunteers and provide some suggestions on their jobs to new ones, but other than that it was just stand around and wait. 2 hours later someone from security told us to go home. Not everyone was sure they should. We talked to a USGA rules official stranded there who said he had no real information other than the 30 minute status updates but had heard the course was too wet to play and they were likely to cancel the day, so we went back to the bus (the driver actually knew the way back and covered it quickly).

Finally we got the word -- all morning shifts (ours) were cancelled, and while they were still hoping to get some kind of practice set up for the laser operators, walking scorers weren't going to get to practice.

I'm sure the USGA folks are going nuts over this. Not only are the delays going to make play tough, but with all new technology there are sure to be lots of errors on Thursday. We are scheduled to have some of the last groups on Thursday, probably amateurs and qualifiers, so that's okay -- if we screw up nobody is watching. I do worry about anyone who hasn't done the job before and will no doubt make more basic mistakes, like missing tap ins, giving strokes to the wrong player, or failing to mark a player "in the hole" when they hole out. We expect lots of radio chatter tomorrow -- if there is play.

We never got close enough to judge the state of the course. On the bus it was clear creeks were running high and water was ponded everywhere. Someone said the landing area for one hole had been flooded and was in bad shape, and others were wondering whether the USGA would allow lift clean and place (I don't think they ever have in a national championship). I'm just hoping we get the round in, and don't get pulled off the course in the late evening and have to come back Friday AM to finish.

A messed up situation at the Women's Open

When we got back to the hotel on Wednesday we got the word that they would actually have players out to practice in the afternoon. Not having much else to do we went back and checked in at scoring. We could have gone out and done some practice, but only if we stayed outside the ropes. The course was so wet they didn't want anyone but players and caddies inside the ropes. We passed on that, but decided to try to walk the back 9. That kind of worked. There was no way to get to most of 11 and 12, as the only creek crossing for the public was a creek ford on the cart path, that was completely flooded. Aside from that though we walked the holes.

A Women's tournament is a bit different, and we got another view of that. We were more or less following Michelle Wie's group as we walked, and behind the 15th green we encountered a fan who wanted one of us to take a phone picture (legal on practice days), as he got Michelle to sign a Pinehurst flag from the championship there she won. Not only did she sign, but she posed as I took 4 or 5 shots. Can you picture Tiger or Jordan Spieth doing that? I don't think so.

The day gave us a chance to check out the "Eagles nest", a premium food/beverage tent and viewing area volunteers had access to. It was not bad, with views of 14, 15, and 17. Knowing we had to work the next day though we quit in good time to have a good meal and turn in.

On Thursday we knew we were working late in the day. It turned out we actually had the two last groups, on 10 and 1, teeing off at about 2:30. I had Evelyn Aguelles, an amateur from Mexico who was actually a US college student who spoke very good English, Britany Yada, a native Hawaian with a mexican caddie, and Martina Edberg, a Swedish pro of some repute, who mostly spoke Swedish to her caddie. We went off 10, and getting there was an adventure (very long walk through mud and traffic).
Carl had Christine Song (an Amateur), and Gaeyun Song, a Korean pro, and Olivia Carson, another American amateur. My players all seemed genial, and mostly were distinctive. (Yada was tall and sturdy, Edberg was a slight blond, and Aguelles a slight brunette, all in differing clothing. Putting the clothing in the system was more challenging, as both Aguelles and Edberg wore shirts in some color between pink and orange, and Yada had shorts in some kind of abstract art pattern, for which there is no description.

Things started badly, when Yada pulled her drive into the wet rough and wound up with the ball under some small pine branches. She actually pulled them all off, punched out safely, but then screwed up and doubled the hole. After that they played solidly, but slowly. Mostly the slowness was waiting. We handled 11 okay (a very wet par 5), but waited 10 minutes on the 12th tee and again in the fairway, and by the time we finished 13 it had taken an hour and a half to play 4 holes. Edberg birdied 12 to actually get one under and I thought she would only need one more to wind up on a leader board. Not to be -- she pulled her drive on 14 way left, and while she hit a great recovery shot (after studying it for 5 minutes -- she is very "deliberate"), she 3 putted as I recall to drop back.

The new technology mostly worked okay, but having to locate where every shot was hit from on a map is very tedious, especially around the green, and especially since when you select location to do this you get 5 seconds of circling balls before the map comes up. Whoever designed the work flow doesn't understand how they play -- on the green everyone marks, and they all stalk putts, and at the last possible minute one player puts a ball down and hits it -- nowhere near enough time to pick the player, bring up the map, and figure out where the ball is (which isn't helped by the fact that the map shown is always oriented with the front of the green on the bottom, even though by now you as a scorer are somewhere on the side or back standing on a high spot trying to see the hole and have to reorient your view to pick the right spot.

We finished 9 holes in about 3 hours. Nobody was awful, only about 3 over par. We heard along the way that the other side was playing a little faster, but it was clear both sides would struggle against the darkness. At least there was no real threat of rain -- yet at least.

18 was an ugly hole -- Yada hit it short and left and punched out to the fairway in front of the par 4 (to avoid trying to carry a pond. Edberg, the longest hitter, hit it so far left she was in a swampy area of long grass in front of a punch of hospitality tents. After 3 minutes of searching she found it, and called for rules to get line of sight relief
from the tents. I knew this wasn't going to be quick. Yep, it took about 10 minutes to work out, and she hit a decent shot through pine trees that rolled over the green onto a collection area between bunkers. Eventually she got up and down for par, but Yada didn't.

By now they knew they were behind, so they ran to the 1st tee. My standard bearers (two girls who were golfers and mostly got the changes right on their own) were still changing numbers. I knew I had to follow the players so I did my best to explain where we had to go (a LONG walk to 1) and ran after the players, cuing up Edberg so I could click "shot hit" if I heard her hit it, which I did right before reaching the tee.

The hole was empty in front of them, and I suspect they got a time warning because for the next 3 holes they played "speed golf". Edberg wasn't happy, getting bogies from trying to rush, but the others managed.

Three was a technology adventure. It was a par 5 where they all did reasonably, but when I went to give Edberg her first putt from the green (the 4th shot), suddenly my device asked me to confirm she had an eagle. (What? I already entered 3 shots and she wasn't in the hole yet.  I suspect some glitch with leaning on the wrong part of the touch screen). I successfully backed out of that one and put in the putt but by then I was behind and missed Yada's tap in. I was sure she two putted and put it in that way, but asked her caddie after the drives on 4 just in case, and he confirmed it.

Four was an awful hole -- a long par 4 with the pin on a little plateau, where short shots ran down into one of two collection areas. Two players went there and bogeyed.

By 5 it was looking like a serious race against sunset. Edberg and Agueles were short on this par 3, and when Edberg sculled her chip into the back bunker I thought we were doomed. No, she hit it fairly quickly and nearly holed it. Not bad. They all wanted to finish. By 7 we had caught up with the group in front. We waited a long time in
the fairway as the sun set behind the trees, but they all played on. On 8 it was tough to see when the group ahead cleared the green and tougher to see where the shots went. Cheers from the marshals and a few fans suggested Aguelles and Edberg were close, and they were -- 5 footers for birdie both made. Yada walked up to the green and I didn't see the ball -- then I realized -- another sprinkler head -- her 4th or 5th of the round. That was getting old. Another rules discussion and then a tedious drop, after which she got a par, I think.

I really didn't know whether they would play 9. It was really dark, but they all teed off in good shape. Standing in the fairway I saw Carla's group finish 18. Eventually we hit in and the only memorable event was Edberg sinking a 6 footer in near total darkness for par. We finished! Then the players took off the wrong way down 9 and I ran after trying to catch them to go to scoring. They seemed lost in the dark and I couldn't catch Edberg before she started up the path toward the 1st tee. A woman from the USGA had found us by then and directed everyone towards the path towards scoring, but it took one of the caddies to get the word to Edberg. They said there would be someone up at the top of the path to help, but there wasn't. Suddenly I was the tour guide, following signs in the dark until we dumped out onto a driveway for deliveries to the clubhouse, with no indication of where to go. Fortunately Carla was hanging out in scoring and saw us and yelled, and we got there. Edberg found it  too. No scoring errors and everyone signed my hat -- Yeah! Edberg at +3 had a chance at the cut, as did Yada at +4. Aguelles was already +8 and would be tough. In Carla's group, the
pro had no birdies and a lot of bogies and was out of it while the amateurs at about +4 might have made it.

Finding the volunteer  scoring "cottage" in total darkness to turn in the equipment was tough. Finding the buses to leave tougher, but a decent day.

Friday wasn't a work day, but we came out to watch, spending time in the 9th grandstand and the eagles nest. Our players from yesterday finished
and it looked like Edberg might make the cut -- until she doubled 18. Meanwhile the weather warnings went Yellow, then Orange. After lunch we hung out in the eagles nest area, until the horn blew. Everyone scrampled into the food tent there for a while, but the USGA collected the players and caddies to herd them into vans or the clubhouse. The weather threat looked like it would pass, but it kept thundering, and after a couple of hours was clear they weren't starting soon, so we left. As it turns out they played another hour of golf, then stopped again and quit for the day, but didn't have enough buses so everyone had to wait in the rain.

Saturday we were supposed to have afternoon groups, but with  at least 1/3 of Friday left to finish we knew the schedule would change, so we came out and watched. Eventually we learned that because the 3rd round was going in 3's we wouldn't be working (they had 42 scorers for 21 rounds). We watched a bunch of play, but came back before the finish and watched the end of the round on a restaurant TV (with the worst closed captioning I've seen. Either they hire people unfamiliar with golf, or it's done
by computer, because much of it made no sense at all.) Tomorrow we are supposed to have some of the final groups, but who knows what will really happen. The weather forecast is again bad, and only time will tell.

What Rain?  (Sunday at the women's open)

We were more than a bit nervous about Sunday. We were told we had groups to score late in the day, but we were told that Saturday too, then there was the weather forecast -- thunderstorms. It dawned okay though and we headed out to the course mid morning, after the first groups were off, to be sure we could get the real story. When we
checked in, we found out we had the 3rd and 4th groups from the end -- pretty good.

I had Carlota Ciganda and Wei-Ling Hsu, respectively -4 and -2 at the start of the day, and Carla had Inbee Park and Madelene Sagstrom, both -4. They were good enough to be in contention, but with Ariya a dozen under par it would take a crash to get to the top. We later met the ones scoring for the last two groups and remembered we had met them before. Two older women, asian american, and sisters, who did this every year as well as scoring a lot of LPGA events and always got the last two groups on Sunday. I don't begrudge anyone willing to spend the time that position.

Having established what we had we settled into the part of the 9th grandstand shaded by the TV tower to watch the first few groups finish. It wasn't pretty. MOst were at least +3 on the front 9, and I thought the course must be brutal. By the time the shade ran out at 11, it was time to pick up our volunteer lunch (pork or chicken barbecue sandwiches again -- we always seemed to be too early for the Taco truck), and head back to scoring.

While waiting to go off I learned I had the same standard bearer Carla had on Thursday, a teen age boy who played golf and could manage the numbers and had been out all 4 days (including a round suspended on Friday and resumed Saturday AM). He was great. The first tee was as usual an oven (or maybe a sauna). Fortunately both the caddies were American and everyone spoke English well, and both my players and caddies were friendly. The only real challenge was their clothing -- just about identical except that Ciganda had shorts and Hsu long pants, a distinction you can't put in the system.  Hopefully the laser operators would recognize Ciganda, who got some notariety for her performance in the 2014 international crown.  They both played the first hole solidly, though no birdies. On 2, again both stuck it pretty close and Hsu sunk the putt. Ciganda responded on 3 -- a long par 5 that I hadn't seen anyone go for, but she did, landing in a greenside bunker, then getting up and down after a spectacular sand shot. Nobody at the green noticed at the time since I doubt anyone realized she was there in 2.

4 and 5 were routine pars, except that during 5 I got the ominous warning on the radio to the leaderboards to put up their level 2 weather banner. A year ago the USGA went to a 5 level weather alert system:

• 1means no trouble (and no warning banners),
  
• 2 was a warning that it waspossible we would have dangerous weather.
  
• 3 is a warning that it'slikely and fans should prepare to evacuate,
  
• 4 means leave thegrandstands now,
  
• 5 halts play and clears the course. 

During the first 4 holes I hear a continuing disaster on the radio. Someone in group 11 had to call in to confirm that one of his players hit 3 shots in the water on hole 11. Then later on he called in to add two more strokes to her total, because the rules people assessed her a 2 stroke penalty for tapping down a divot in a drop area. Finally, he had to correct the score again, from 12 to 13 as I recall, because somehow he missed the last putt on the green. Yuck!

Hole 6 is a long par 5 with a creek in front that I had never seen anyone go for. Both my players did, even though Hsu was 25 yards short of Ciganda's drive. Both made it over the creek and wound up in chipping areas around the green and both got up and down for par. Ciganda birdied the short par 3 8th to get to -7, and at that point I knew that there were 4 players ahead of her, 3 at -8 and Aria at -13, I think. Meanwhile another scorer called in in panic that his scoring device was showing hole 10, while his players were on hole 9. Scoring said it was a known bug and eventually fixed it.

9 and 10 were parred, which got us to 11, another par 5, with a creek across the middle of the hole and a lake in front of the green. Again, I hadn't seen many people try to get there in 2. Hsu had a bad drive in the rough, and laid up in the rough between the creek and the lake, but Ciganda was in the fairway, and after a lot of discussion with her caddie, with him urging her to hit left for a shorter carry, she went at it. We didn't know at the time, but it hit the shotlink tower and dropped next to it on the left. I had to guess where Hsu really was, because she went ahead while Ciganda was waiting for the green to clear and then hit a good shot out of the trees on the right onto the green. She almost made the putt. Ciganda had a discussion with the rules official because the drop circle for interference from the tower was closer to the hole than where she finished and she wanted to make sure it was okay to drop there. When that was confirmed, she dropped, stuck the pitch, and went to -8.

12 wasn't kind. Ciganda hit her first bad drive in a bunker on the left, and hacked out into a collection area at the left of the green. Hsu hit a great looking approach, but it failed to clear the sharp upslope at the green and wound up in the same area, further up. Ciganda studied hers a long time, then putted, from maybe 15 yards off the green
and 10 feet below it. It was a great try, running around some slopes on the green to about 10 feet, but she missed it. Hsu chose a wedge and stuffed it to save par.

That was the last thing that went right for Hsu though. She 3putted 13 after being on the wrong side of a ridge, then and bled another shot on the par 3 16 when she was in another bad spot on the green. Ciganda had opportunities, and made a great up and down using the putter from a collection area on another back 9 hole, but she came to 17, still -7.

By then I could see the story on the leader board. H. J. Kim was going forward and had gotten to -10, but everyone else backed up, and -7 was solo 3rd by 3 shots on both sides. On 17, a cute par 5 with a creek in front, both my players wound up in a fairway bunker off the tee. Both hacked out and hit decent shots onto the green, but Ciganda was the only one close enough to sink the putt -- back to -8. 17 was memorable for another reason -- there's no real bridge over the creek from the fairway. There are instead 2 spots where you can walk across it on stones. I always chose the wider and more used place as did most others, but by Sunday one of those big rocks was loose and wobbly. I don't know if it was all the rain, or just that the course probably had more people walking that path over 4 days than it normally does in a year, but it was a bit dicey, and one player nearly fell.

18 was an anticlimax. After both players hit it right, Ciganda went in the right greenside bunker out of the rough, and Hsu barely cleared the pond to get into a bunker on the left. Since the pin was in the very back, neither got close and both bogeyed. That didn't matter to Ciganda -- she was still solo 3rd, as it turns out by 4 shots on either side. I felt bad for Hsu, but as it turned out she finished in a tie for 5th, as almost everyone else under par blew up.

Carlas group didn't play as well, but she (Carla) had fun, and both players were grateful for the effort by her and her standard bearer, as were mine. It was interesting waiting in scoring and listening to Hsu and Ciganda do interviews. Ciganda had the main stage and answered questions in accented English (more accented than what I remember from the round), while Hsu was being interviewed on a smartphone and responded to English questions in Chinese. I guess the reporters know their audience. Both of us cleared scoring with no errors and headed out, little suspecting the drama to come.

When we left, Aryia was up by 3 over Kim and playing the par 5 17th. In fact Aryia bogeyed both the last two holes while Kim birdied one to tie. We saw the 4 playoff holes where Aryia eventually prevailed on TV. I was happy for her. She had a great start to her career, then got injured before winning the US Open, and only recently got back to full strength, so it was a deserved win.

Carla and I signed off with the USGA scoring team looking forward to the Senior Open in about 3 weeks. At least now we know how to use the new scoring devices, and while Colorado Springs has thunderstorms, it doesn't have stifling heat and humidity. Something to look forward to.  After driving the 11 hours back home, we found our volunteer uniforms for the Senior Open waiting on our front entryway.  All summer long there's always something to anticipate.

The 2018 US Senior Open (Colorado Springs)

The Broadmoor resort in Colorado Springs was the site of our first assignment as walking scorers 7 years ago.  When we got an early invite to sign up again it was a no brainer.  It's a nice course to walk (though a bit hilly), a very nice area to visit, and the resort treats the volunteers well.

Rebar Madness in Colorado (Early week)

Well, normally, by now we would have been out to see the course and at least half a practice day, but this wasn't the day. Carla and I are working as walking scorers here, the place we did that for the first time 7 years ago. We got here Saturday in time for the volunteer party and to notice that arrangements are basically the same as they were back then. The Broadmoor treats volunteers pretty well, having volunteer headquarters in a hotel ballroom instead of a tent, and they usually have lots of local sponsors for lunches. Walking scorers get to hang out in the cart barn, which isn't elegant, but it's an underground bunker that provides good shelter from storms -- the real problem here.
We walked a little of the course on Party day, but not much.

We played local golf (Four Mile Ranch in Canon city -- highly recommended, and Pine Creek in Colorado Springs -- not as nice), and did some sightseeing Sunday and Monday Morning.  When we stopped by the hotel and went to make a tee time for Tuesday my phone was dead -- really dead, 0 battery and no good until it recharged, so it got left behind when I headed for the public parking to go to the course.  While the volunteers have a nice lot for work days -- a paved parking lot at a community college close to the course, they don't want you parking there if you aren't working.  I'd been to the public lot here before -- basically just a big field that was apparently once a golf course. It was hard to follow the directions there and then with no guidance as to where to go I wound up in what was supposed to be the "VIP" section of the lot. It wasn't full so I didn't feel guilty as I followed the attendant's directions for where to go, then SCREECH -- something under the car. I had already dodged a lot of rocks in the lot and reached a part of it that looked like smooth gravel, but apparently caught something. The guy thought it must just be a rock and I could back off -- SCREEECH! nothing doing. I got down and peered under the car. No rock, and nothing leaking, but a bent up piece of Re-bar poked into an opening in the skid plate on the underside and then the other end of the twisted mess jammed under a beam that connected the two front wheels.  It was firmly set in there and not going to budge on it's own no matter which way I went.

At first I thought if I jacked up one side of the car I might get it out. Nothing was leaking and no apparently signs of damage. The parking guy agreed and helped get the jack out and up, but that gravel was apparently a thin layer over rubbery clay that squished under pressure and it was hard to get the wheel very high. Two other parking guys showed up and started to try to get a tow truck in there (at their expense of course, that rebar shouldn't have been there), but were getting nowhere on the phone. The
first guy got the piece stuck in the hole loose (after digging some gravel out under it, but the other end wouldn't budge, so we let the jack down. Someone else looked and suggested I might now be able to pull forward and let the car drag the stuck end out, but no dice, just more scratching and screeching, so let's get a tow truck.

That was about 1:15. After 15 minutes they reached the tow operator whose number was on the signs they had put out for emergencies, but apparently that number was wrong. After another 15-20 minutes they got through to a supervisor and finally contacted someone who said he was on his way at about quarter of two.

We spent the next hour and a half waiting, and talking to the parking guys, who apparently are like roadies -- they work for some company that runs parking for lots of tournaments and go where the tour goes, and had been to many of the same ones we had. It was somewhat of a distraction to swap stories while they were making an effort to rid the lot of further obstacles (they picked up enough rocks to build a good sized pile, plus 2 or 3 more pieces of rebar and a nasty looking gas pipe, but no tow truck. By now it's going to be too late for us to do much spectating, but I just want my car back, so I dug out the jack, did my best to solidify the bed I put it on, and started cranking. One of the parking guys helped and ultimately took over, figuring it's their problem. Another tried to contact the tow operator who was now over an hour late. With both of us wiggling the rebar it finally came free -- something like a bent up paperclip from hell. It must have been like an iceberg in the lot, with only a little bit of the bent tip showing, and that caught the underside of my car and pulled the rest out, flipping it over and jamming it under the car.

No apparent damage, though I won't rest easy until I turn the car in, but no time on the course today. Tomorrow we play another local goat track in the AM (The others we have played here are either too distant or too hard to get onto), then on to the course for training and some odd USGA event we got an invite to (Probably USGA people asking for donations or volunteers, but if they will feed me cocktails and munchies, sure I'll come.

The rain and hail have left the course soft and probably a bit beat up, but I'm sure the USGA will get it in top shape by Thursday. We do a practice round Wednesday, then early AM rounds (probably with little known players) Thursday and Friday before they set the weekend schedules.

Media Madness at the Senior Open.

Catching up a bit. Tuesday started with a round of golf at Springs Ranch, a public course that could have been really good -- if it weren't so neglected. Still the greens were okay even if the fairways were crappy and the bridges and cartpaths deteriorated to the point of feeling unsafe, and it was a fun round of golf on a relatively open
course. We avoided the public lot and went early to the course to catch some practice action and walk up to the 12th and 8th holes and back to the clubhouse area to refresh our knowledge.  Basically little has changed since 2008 and 2011. Just a few more yards on some tees, and the crazy change of playing 17, a 540 yard only somewhat downhill straightaway as a par 4. That protects par I guess.

Our training was interesting. We had been told to go to the cart barn, where all scoring related volunteers are based, and wondered how they would project slides there, but when we got there we got sent instead to a ballroom. That created some confusion. The USGA did learn a bit from Shoal Creek, and modified some screens and added a great option -- after a player misses a put and taps in, you can just click "tap in" to handle it, instead of having to go back and re-select the player, locate the ball on a map, then click shot hit and in the hole for the 1 foot tap in. They also put some orientation lines on the maps that helped, but not perfect. The scary thing was that many people in training seemed relatively inexperienced, and when he asked whether anyone had been at the US Open or Women's open this year, only the two of us and another
volunteer we recognized from Shoal creek raised our hands. There was also a big screw up on times for our practice rounds. Some had been given afternoon times, and neither the USGA nor the players wanted to be out in 100 degree heat, so he just said everyone show up early and they would get us out. There was also clearly some problem in shuttling people to the 10th tee, probably a mile and a half from the clubhouse, all uphill.

After discovering a great little brew pub in Manitou Springs Colorado, we got an early bedtime and got up early to get out to the course. It was chaos in the cart barn, but they assigned us both to a group off the 10th tee. Only trouble was nobody knew how we were supposed to get there. They shuttled the two groups before us out there and told us to wait for the shuttle (a stretched cart) to return. When it didn't show until our tee time approached we started asking others and no two people said the same thing. Finally someone said to go out on the road outside the cart barn and flag down a Broadmoor shuttle. That seemed wrong, and none came, so we started hiking up the road. Just about the time I was about to call in on the radio and report we couldn't get to the 10th tee one of our committee chairs drove by in a cart and offered us a ride, Carla in the seat and me standing on the back. It was a long and bumpy ride up there over roads and cart paths, but we got there in time to discover the group we went out with was going to be: Ian Doig, Rick Todd, Todd Hamilton and Glen Day/ Immediately they started picking teams and setting stakes for a match -- YES! that meant that they  would each finish a ball every hole, making scoring easier, and probably play all 18.

Carla and I traded off the scoring device, tracking the shots of Doig, Hamilton, and Day (the most recognizeable players. All played well, but the course was winning. 15 was especially notable, with balls rolling a long way back off the tee, but many other holes had players in big trouble -- deep rough, cockeyed lies, or just bad luck. Still, the match was only one up to Hamilton and Todd at the turn, and they all went forward, as did we (many players quit after 9, especially on hot days, so this was definitely a bonus for us to be able to walk the whole course.

The front 9 got draggy as the temperature climbed towards 100, but the quality of play stayed pretty high, and the 9th hole, a short par 5 over a pond, was halved in birdies after Doig made a great up and down to match Hamilton's two putt birdie.  We actually got Hamilton to sign our hats and a ball from Doig (unusual for a practice round, and caught a ride back on the player shuttle.

After chugging 2 or 3 cokes and the pizza lunch we took a shuttle back to "midway", a street cutting through the course giving easy access to the 11th, 13th, 6th, and 15th greens. We crashed in the 15th grandstand and watched a couple of hours of "hit it in the clowns mouth" golf. The front of the green won't hold a ball, and anything that rolls off goes down 30-40 yards, and more than one player did it more than once.

Thursday was our first work shift. We both had "group 3, 7:21". I guessed that really meant "groups 5 and 6" one of 1 and one off 10, and was right. It's fortunate that our hotel serves breakfast at 5AM, since that's just enough time to get to the course an hour before those times to get the equipment, a standard bearer, and a ride to the 10th tee.
Carla took the first tee group (Dean Pappas, Jacob Ferenz, and Robby Funk (an amateur, no relationship to Fred). I got Jim Mcgovern, John Smoltz, and Bob Ford. (Yes, Smoltz is the hall of fame pitcher for Atlanta who qualified for the event and was a featured player.

I knew I'd have fans and media for that group, and was right. two cameras with us from the start. 3 fans with tee shirts spelling out "Smoltz", and red-brown frizzy wigs (Smoltz actually had short hair and not much of it under his hat, but maybe that was his major leagues look).

We started with a 5-10 minute delay. I heard the scorer in front of us call for a ruling and warned the tee announcer the group ahead might not clear the fairway by our tee time. In fact it took almost 10 minutes. It was immediately clear that Ford was a decent player but way too short to play a 7000 yard plus par 70 course, Smoltz was a bomber but not great around the greens, and Mcgovern was a decent but not great all around player (he talked about having been in the recent PGA members championship at Black Horse/Bayonett.

Lots of people were cheering for Smoltz, but he started with 4 bogeys -- nothing awful, just a missed par putt often 15 feet or less. The others were drifting slowly backwards. On 14, Smoltz had a par, and his fans went wild. The enthusiasm was short lived.  15, the "clowns mouth" hole I described above, started badly, with Mcgovern blowing it way right and hitting a provisional. The search for the ball involved 3 players, caddies, me, a rules official and eventually fans, and turned up 4 balls that weren't his before Smoltz's caddie found it 20 yards past where everyone else was looking. He got it out, but didn't finish well (bogey, I think.) Smoltz was in good shape, but came up short and rolled down 40 yards. He came up short on his second attempt too, and after hacking up and taking too many putts he was 7 over.

It didn't really get better from there. Smoltz looked like he could have been a lot better, but kept coming up a foot to a yard shot and rolling off the green into awful places and getting bogeys. Ford and McGovern had the occasional birdie, but kept drifting back as well. 9, our last hole, was typical. Ford was way short, laid up into deep
rough, hacked out, hit a super shot to the green, then missed the putt. Mcgovern was on in two and almost made the eagle, but tapped in for a rare bird, while Smoltz hit a beautiful second to the green -- maybe 2 feet short, and rolled way back, doing it again and rolling onto a bad slope before hacking out and bogeying. Nobody got mad, no scoring errors, and Smoltz actually signed a ball for me and signed my hat, while spending a lot of time talking to his many fans. I felt bad that after riding the shuttle
back with him the driver couldn't take him where he wanted to go, but I presume he had his press conference eventually.

Carla's group played better, and Pappas was actually two under and the clubhouse leader. Towards the end of our round the wind started howling and we thought the afternoon wouldn't fare as well. In general we were right.

The big thing we both noticed was a whole lot of equipment and scorer problems. Lots of mistakes, broken radios and scoring devices, leaderboards running out of numbers and letters, etc. At one point the scoring people started putting off the calls because it was just too hard to focus on getting the scores right. Neither of us had to call in, though both of us had to fix minor problems along the way -- no big deal. I felt good about putting in so many strokes and getting it right.

We went back to 15 again after lunch and it was just as tricky as before. Lots of big scores with multiple shots that came back off the green. Tomorrow we do it again, but with lesser known players (the second groups off both 1 and 10). Hopefully we will get more known groups on the weekend, but just being here to experience this is a blast.

The Quest for the cut -- Friday at the Senior Open

The alarm worke us up at 4:30 this morning to make sure we would make it to the course an hour ahead of our nominal 7:10 tee times (enough time to navigate a drive, a bus ride, and a short hike through some gates that we sometimes need help opening). That got us there on time, even though the bus drive made a wrong turn (this time I wasn't shy about giving her directions for how to recover.)

Our original plan was for me to take the 10th tee start again and Carla to take the first tee, but then people started trading. The scorer for the first group off 1 really wanted the group Carla had because his local pro was in it, so she swapped with him, then the USGA decided the scorer scheduled for the first group off 10 needed help so they swapped Carla in there. That meant we got the first two standard bearers to show up (both reasonable, though hers was inexperienced and needed guidance on all the score changes -- not good when you have groups of qualifiers who are likely to score big), and we all rode up on a stretched golf cart in plenty of time for the first tee time. My group was Gerry Norquist, a pro from Anthem Arizona, Jim Shuman, another pro from Scottsdale, and Bob Harrington, an amateur from Portland Oregon. It was already getting warm before 7AM, and I figured the two arizonans would do okay in the heat but wondered about my Portland guy, even though he was the only one with a reasonable chance of making the cut. (The pros started +11 and +10, while Harrington was only +3, and I figured the cut would come about +8 if today played like yesterday.

Carla got Christ Johnson, a local colorado pro, Dennis Martin, an amateur from Oakland who had the distinction of shooting the highest round on Thursday (+23), and Bill Breen, a pro from Nashville. Her pros had a chance at +3 and +4.

Our round had few surprises at the start, with everyone leaking shots slowly. None were awful, and all had birdies, but more bogies than birdies. We waited some for Carla's group, and I knew it wasn't good when after clearing 13 a rules official told us that her group had gotten a time warning and would speed up, and should pick up the pace too. That didn't help my players, but nothing awful happened.

The 15th hole wasn't a nightmare this time. With the pin back, nobody came up way short and rolled back. Still everyone was leaking. 16 was fun with one ball close and another great up and down from an awful lie just outside the front bunker with a front pin. 17 was, well what can you say about a 545 yard par 4 -- too long. All 3 of my players finished short and right and one chunked his first pitch short and right again. Yuck. All 3 then pitched on reasonably, but nobody closer than about 10 feet. Just about then a chainsaw fired up in one of the houses across the street from the course. I thought surely someone would get the guy to stop, but no, it went right on (or off and on), while all 3 players sunk their putts. Someone should have collared the guy and given him a hundred bucks to start up that chain saw next to every green we putted :-).

By now there were a lot of fans around, and half way down 18 I heard the unmistakable "ting" of a phone notifying someone they got a text. Why are people so clueless? On the green there was some background sound like a radio broadcast playing in the grandstand. It didn't really effect anyone's play, and there was nothing especially remarkable about 1 and 2 either, except that 2 is a short, almost driveable par 4 and my guys managed to miss the fairway on their layups and I think two bogeyed it. Three, a par 5 with a pond in front was noteworthy only because all 3 laid up, hit it on, and made par -- the only hole on the course on which all 3 made par.

We waited a bit on the tee of the short par 4 third, and heard a roar from 18. I think it was just a long putt made, but nobody was really going forward much. Colin Montgomery came to the adjacent first tee at even par, about where he started, as we waited. Then my guys teed off, and while all 3 looked okay, there was no reaction from the grandstand behind the green -- not a good sign.

Indeed, when we got near the disaster impending was clear. Norquist was just short on a crazy side hill slope of rough, while the other two were long, Shuman in a flat low spot of long rough behind the green and Harrington on the downslope on the far side of that. Norquist pitched first -- not enough, and it rolled back a yard in front of him on the same slope. He hit the second a bit harder -- and it rolled over the green stopping half way down the slope into that low spot. Harrington flubbed into the low spot, then chunked one on, while Shuman made an unremarkable pitch on as well, but Norquist hit two more that came back down the slope before getting on. Remarkably enough Norquist sunk his putt, for a smooth 7, while the other two 2 putted -- 4, 5, and 7 on a short par 3. Yucko.  (As an aside, this is the kind of hole that's really tough to score.  Once they start missing shots like that they often hit so quickly it's hard to get the next shot set up before they hit it, and when someone knocks one over a green you have to scramble to get to where you can see it.)  I had to double check with Norquist's caddie to make sure I got it right -- I did.

On the next hole I didn't need to check. Norquist blew it out right on the far side of a line of pine trees, then practically hit my standard bearer pitching backwards onto the fairway. It didn't really help, he came up short again, and after a bad pitch, another pitch, and two putts had another 7. That took him to +25 -- yikes. It really seemed a shame after he had recovered from a bad mishap on the back 9 where after winding up on a steep upslope next to a bunker he hit it way right on the far side of another hole, then pitched on and sunk a putt for a par.

Six wasn't memorable, but 7 was another adventure when Harrington hit a big hook off the tee. One of his fans was trying to be reassuring, but I knew there was a pit full of 3 foot grass and small trees on that side. He missed the pit, but was in the trees without much backswing. He hit a great punch, but it caught the last 6 inches of the rough and burried (in fact we had trouble finding it) which meant no chance of reaching the green in 3 and a struggle for bogey.

Eight was a bit of a breather. All hit good shots, though once again two were short, one in long grass marked as a hazard on a steep upslope, and the other just in upslope rough. Fortunately the green was forgiving from there, and the guy in the normal rough banked it off a tier in the green and pitched it in, while the one in the long stuff
almost matched it. The one on the green -- Harrington, 3 putted to go to +10.

Nine wasn't backed up today, and while Norquist hit another bad one way left he just laid up along with Shuman and made par, while Harrington had the long ball off the tee and went for it. We all held our breath, but he made it and had a longish eagle putt. I told my standard bearer this was exciting because he might just make the cut if he made it. He didn't, by 6 inches, and unfortunately I seem to have been right.

Carla's two players with a chance fared a bit better, and at least her bottom of the pack player wasn't as bad (Only +14 today for a total of +37, easily the highest number either of us had to put on a standard.)

Her round had many similar screwups to mine, but neither of us had any scoring errors. Things seemed to run better overall, partly because they moved leaderboards to another radio channel, so we didn't have to listen to all the leaderboards running out of numbers and letters (which they still did) or being unable to find their warning signs for excessive heat. A couple of scorers had real trouble, including the guy who wound up with the first group off 1 (they did that so they could send a scoring supervisor with him and have the guy finish on 18 in time to help with score verification, but apparently he bailed out too soon and the guy had plenty of problems.)

As we returned our equipment, the guy in charge said he would see us tomorrow. Since we had heard nothing about weekend shifts we weren't sure what was happening and asked. He had to do some hunting for papers while one of the other people said he thought he knew the answer. We are in fact scheduled to have the last two groups on Saturday and the 4th and 5th from the end on Sunday. I guess they do notice who can do this job without screwing up. All that is subject to weather and schedules and issues like how many players make the cut, but it seems likely we will have late groups both days. Gulp! I guess we better get busy washing our uniform shirts so as not to look bad out there.

Dodging the Weather (Saturday at the Senior Open)

Expecting we would get the last two groups starting at 1:40 and 1:50, we were in no hurry to get to the course. That was indeed the case. Carla gave me the last group with Jimenez and Jerry Kelly, since she has scored for Jimenez, and she got Davis Love III and Tim Petrovic. Not wanting to tire ourselves out we just watched from the 18th grandstand, which can see the 4th green and 3rd fairway, and by standing next to the first and 4th tees. Not much to see really, but that's okay.

The one bad thing about having late groups is the wait. I have to believe it's hell on the players too. You feel like you really should be doing something, but you don't want to spend your energy or burn up your sunscreen too early, so mainly we waited, finishing with a half hour or so of World Cup soccer. (Aside -- I never got soccer. Lots of
running around, injuries, and almost never any scoring. If it floats your boat fine.) We arrived in plenty of time in the cart barn and were glad that they had identified the two best standard bearers for our group. Mine a young man (not a high school student) who had done two rounds the day before and loved it, and Carla's a competent kid. We also spent some time chatting with the USGA staff about various events. Many there will be in Illinois in two weeks for the first Senior Women's Open, something we will do too. Finally, it was time to get our scoring stuff and head out.

The first tee was a zoo. The crowd around the leaders on a weekend is bad enough, but John Elway was also on the tee and drawing people there as well. I almost couldn't see Carla's group teeing off for the 5 deep crowd at the ropes, but I did see Kelly and Jimenez walk in from the driving range and started punching in their clothing colors, one of the things you do as a scorer to help the laser operators identify the players. Jimenez had a pink shirt, and naturally that wasn't one of my color choices, but it's not a big deal. Both introduced themselves to me and my standard bearer and the scoring supervisor with us, bombed their drives down the first fairway, and we were off.

When you have a late group or one with stars you usually get a scoring supervisor, who shadows you and is really just there to help you get out of trouble. Mine was a long time USGA official and mainly we talked about the tournaments we had both done. You also get cops providing security and camera crews, as well as media spotters, commentators, and lots of photographers. It was a good sized crew stumbling up the fairway.

Jimenez and Perry both were way long, and played solidly, with Kelly making a couple of birdies in the early holes. Jimenez was missing a lot of putts and dropped a couple in the early holes, making it look like Kelly would run away with it. Carlas group had lots of pars.

On about the 5th hole we got the ominous word that the leaderboards were putting up their "dangerous weather possible" warning. By 7 they went to the next warning level (level 3 -- 4 forces spectators out of the grandstands and 5 is when they stop play), but the USGA kept telling us nothing was imminent.

After Jimenez missed his birdie putt on 8 the frustration was evident as he bashed his putter into the wooden fence lining the long path to the back tee box on 9. No damage, fortunately. The sky was getting dark and rumbly by then and it wasn't comfortable being on the highest point of the course. Both players hit big drives,
and both went at this par 5. Kelly reached the green and had a reasonable eagle putt, while Jimenez came up a yard short and nearly rolled back into a pond, catching in long rough. His first out didn't stay on the green, but didn't go all the way down, and he got the next one up and down for par. Kelly missed the eagle but made the birdie to
go -7, way out front.

It stayed that way, as we continued to get some reassurance that the weather wasn't immediately a threat, as they played 10 and 11. On 12, the tone changed -- Jimenez made an easy par on this big par 3, while Kelly was a bit long and while he put his putt out of the rough about 3 feet away, he 3 putted from there to drop 2 shots, and eventually dropped to -4. Meanwhile Petrovic in Carla's group was making a good move and got to -5.

14 was frustrating for Jimenez, as from a good drive he came up short and hung up half way down a steep bunker face. The pitch was too long and he bogeyed to go back to even. On 15 though, while he missed short again on an impossible steep face, he holed the pitch to touch off a roar on the green and went through his sword in holster routine to wild cheers. Both players had chances on 16, but neither made the birdie, and both finished with routine pars on 17 and 18, as the sky darkened and rumbled again. Carla's group had more adventures in the closing holes, with Petrovic dropping 3 shots in 5 holes to go back to -2, leaving Kelly the solo leader again. There was a noteworthy incident on 17 for them when a kid went after an errant shot of Petrovic's sliding in to grab the ball, then realized he shouldn't have done it requiring the ball to be replaced.

We both felt good about finishing, and not having any problems. There were plenty on the radio. At one point Carla talked to someone handling the errors who said that they had more scoring errors in one day here than in the 4 days of the US Open at Shinnecock. Not a complete surprise, since the standards for working a US Open are higher, but unfortunate.

Tomorrow we have groups 26 and 27. I get Davis Love and Paul Broadhurst, and Carla gets Jimenez and Sutherland. The weather forecast is good and we hope to finish in spite of a very late start (the last tee times are 2:45 mountain time, finishing late evening in the east coast -- must be a TV thing.)

What could have been (Sunday at the Senior Open)

That's what Sunday in a major championship is all about. Today's tee times were late, presumably to accommodate Fox's TV schedule, so even though we were 4th and 5th from the end we went off later. That meant another morning of time killing (watch more world cup :-). The toughest bit is always the last half hour, hanging out in the cart barn. Walking scorers are often in the cart barn, and often there are no carts there, but with all the golf courses at the Broadmoor, the barn had lots of carts, so all the walking scorers and standard bearers waiting for their tee times would basically take a seat in one of those idle carts. There was lots of conversation. All the scorers for the last groups are veterans like us, and basically we had the same crew both weekend days just assigned to different groups. The guy we met in Birmingham is on his 5th tournament this year and one of that crew too.

Finally as tee time got close I picked up my stuff and two standard bearers "Skyler" and "Tyler", both experienced, but not perfect as it turned out. We watched the group ahead, with Colin Montgomerie go off, and noted that once again John Elway was on the tee box greeting players. Some of the standard bearers got him to sign a hat or a program. I have a lot of respect for Elway, but limit myself to getting signatures of people I scored for. After Monty left we struggled through the crowd and ducked in, and I punched in the clothing colors for Davis Love and Paul Broadhurst, both nicely different. (Another of those inside jokes for people working tournaments is watching them and noting whether the player clothing colors matches their caddie bibs. It's a lot easier when the player with the caddie in red wears something red and the one with the blue caddie wears something blue, but they rarely do.) I could tell there would be cameras and commentators with us from the start. Two good drives and we were off.

Having pulled something in my back the night before I was a bit dubious about today, and the first couple of holes weren't fun. Over the years though I've learned to just suck it up and play through the pain, and after a few holes I no longer noticed it. Nice to know what you can do if you have to.

Both played solidly on the first few holes. Davis dropped a shot, then got it back with a two putt birdie on 3. (What was more notable was Broadhurst's play, where he wound up going for it in 2 and went right of the green in an area somewhat in front of the par 4 4th. He went over and immediately walked up to the green, but the cameras set up behind his ball and there was a lot of angry shouting from the 4th tee. I remembered Monty was in the group up there and thought he probably wasn't doing well. The media backed off and they hit, and the standard listed both of them at +2 for the day as they passed. Broadhurst saved par, something he did a lot of.

Love was unbelievably long, but not always straight, even when he took less than driver. That was his downfall on 6, when he hit it left on this short par 4, into an area of long grass and pine trees. Carla had described this strange little pocket of "other" that one of her players got in earlier and wasn't sure of the hole, but it had to be this one.
He chunked out but failed to make the fairway, rolled over the green in 3, then failed to get up and down for bogey. Yuck.

8 was also an ugly hole, with two bogeys on what seems a simple par 3, just less than perfect shots. Perhaps understandable in the howling wind. I should note that before we even got out of the barn we got the ominous news that the leaderboards were posting "banner 2" a warning that dangerous weather was possible. I wasn't really concerned since forecasts showed little chance, but the Broadmoor is a microclimate all it's own, crammed up against Cheyene Mountain. That saved us on Saturday, but sometimes it screws you.

9 was another hole for amazing drives. Love was all the way to the bottom of the hill, well over 300 yards, and stuck his approach close. I really thought I'd be calling in an eagle, but he missed and both birdied as I recall. 10 was unremarkable except for my scramble to use the public bathrooms mid hole (making a pit stop as a scorer is hard, you have to plan carefully). Davis continued to get in trouble off the tee and make good recoveries, but that wasn't helping him move forward. Broadhurst did the same.

About then I started to notice that nobody was playing well. Kelly faded and Toms and even Goydos were rising. Behind me Jimenez, in Carla's group was coming forward, but he then started making lousy bogies, especially on the par 3s.

The weird incident for us was 12, a par 3 where love was short of the bunkers on the left. I cued up the location and was ready to record his pitch, when suddenly he was taking a drop. Huh? I assumed it was a free drop, backed out the shot, recorded a drop, then the shot, and he sunk the putt. As I came to the green both the rules official and the fox TV spotter asked me why he dropped and I said I'd have to ask his caddie. Eventually I did -- sprinkler head, as I suspected. Free drop and indeed a good up and down.

He couldn't buy a birdie putt though, and even though he outdrove Broadhurst by 30-100 yards a hole it didn't help. He also had some really bad luck, winding up in a fairway bunker on 13 or 15 with an impossible stance. On 17, he must have hit is drive at least 375, getting under 200 yards on this 545 yard hole they made a par 4.
Broadhurst was probably 150 yards shorter in the left rough, and hacked it out into the right rough 100 yards short of the hole, but he made his putt and lLve didn't By now it was clear neither of my players would figure in the finish. Broadhurst was in a horrible lie on the upslope of a bunker on 18, but chunked it out over the pond in the middle of the hole and got up and down for par, while Love, with an iron hit it to the end of the fairway, and stuffed the approach, then missed the putt -- two "routine" pars for this round.

No scoring errors. Both signed balls for me and my standard bearers and signed my hat. In Carla's group both birdied 18, getting Jimenez to -2 which was momentarily in a tie for the lead. Toms birdied one of the incoming holes though and hung on to avoid a playoff. We watched the finish on the projection TV in the volunteer headquarters before heading off for a last dinner at a Colorado brew pub and home tomorrow.

This was in short a trip that exceed expectations, even though our expectations were very high. Certainly not our cheapest gig, but always a fun place to go, and a great experience.

The 2018 US Senior Women's Open

The greatest tournament nobody ever heard about

Carla and I are working as walking scorers at the first US Senior Women's Open. It's an event that many in the LPGA and USGA have been working towards for years, and it's being held at the Chicago Golf Club, the oldest course in the US, one that's hosted US Opens and other major events, but nobody around here seems to know about it.

The course is only about 35 miles from where I live and almost within sight of the old Naperville Bell Labs, but almost nobody knows it's there. It's a rectangle of land surrounded by hedges and houses, and so private nobody else gets to play it. It's a McDonald Course, and one of the odder courses I've seen from air photos. A lot of the greens have 90 degree corners (one seems like a perfect square). There are a lot of skinny bunkers wrapped around the greens, and lots of cross bunkers. While the trees are think around it, inside it's treeless with long dry fescue between holes, definitely not like anything else in this area. What it most looks like, after walking all 18 holes in a practice round today, is Lawsonia Links (an old course in Green Lake Wisconsin we have played) -- not surprising since it was probably made in much the same way. A local told me that 30 years ago the course had more trees and rounded greens, but they've been taking out the trees and squaring off the greens to return it to the original design. It's an unusual setup for a championship. Only 6088 yards and par 73. There are 5 par 5s, some as short as 420 or 450 and definitely reachable. Only two holes have water on them.

The field is a small one for a USGA championship (only around 100), but is packed with LPGA hall of fame members. There are a few who are either still playing the LPGA tour or have recently done so who are no doubt the favorites, but you never know what's going to happen on an unusual historic golf course. Carla and I have shifts all four days, early on Thursday and late on the others. I think the event has TV coverage only on the weekend on FS1. If We read the tee sheet correctly we will both wind up getting a trio of hall of famers (Pat Bradley Amy Alcott and Betsy King), as well as a couple of others.

The event is unusual in other ways. Apparently there are no ropes except around the greens and no grandstands (Someone said that the hall of fame players requested that to make it more intimate with the fans), but the USGA is going in with all the other trappings of their championships -- walking scorers, standard bearers, leaderboards,
merchandise sales, etc. The purse may not be large by modern standards, but I'm sure it's substantial by the standards of the legends tour, the small tour for 50+ women that only started recently.

Today we walked a practice round on the course. One of our players (none known names) who had been an LPGA player for years and was returning said she
had played a lot of courses and this one may have the best green complexes of any she played -- they were really in great condition, and very interesting. Large greens with lots of odd rolls and steep slopes on the sides. For the front 9 we had 4 players and just picked the 3 with the most distinctive outfits to do practice scoring on, but of
course they weren't really playing out anything so it was mainly just practice exercising the devices. With players hitting extra shots whenever they hit into the fescue.  I recorded a lot of "provisionals". Walking scorer practice is usually like that. We did have a couple of glitches, one when it seemed that the whole scoring system locked up
(everyone called in) Carla had already done a reset, and another when it just seemed to crash out of the scoring app and return to the home screen, which I fixed by restarting it. Hope that doesn't happen the rest of the week (spoiler -- of course it did!)

On the 9th tee two of our players quit, and a 3rd was only going to do a bit of chipping, but Amy Alcott stepped onto the tee and joined and they all played most of the back. It's an easy course to navigate, but having no ropes except around the greens will be interesting because the fans will get close (and probably get in the way sometimes). Probably the biggest "problem" is on 18, where fans and players going too and from the range and the 10th tee cross the fairway, and with no marshals
and no ropes it's a bit of a shooting gallery.

As I write this I received a plaintive email from our committee chair bemoaning that relatively few people did training or practice rounds. That's no doubt a problem, we will see. The weather forecast is good the first two days, not so good on the weekend, More later.

By the dawn's early light (Thursday at the Senior Women's Open)

Carla and I got up well before the sun this morning to be sure of making our 7:33 and 7:44 tee times. People sometimes wonder why most of the tournaments we do are not near where we live, but we find in many ways it's easier to do ones we travel to. Usually we can stay some place within a 15 minute drive of where you park for the tournament, while from home it's often an hour or more, and when we travel someone else does all those household chores like the dishes that occupy time in the
critical path of getting to the course on time. As it turned out the road construction and traffic lights weren't a big deal and we arrived just in time to catch a bit of the opening ceremony: flag raising, collection of memorabilia for an exhibit in the USGA's museum, and some brief remarks. It was odd standing around the flagpole and notice about a third of the audience in volunteer blue, and another third carrying a golf bag or wearing a glove. A few fans got up for it but not that many.

Then it was off to scoring headquarters. As usual it was in a shed where the club kept the few golf carts it had and some of the maintenance equipment, which you reached by going out the back door of the volunteer tent and over a patchwork platform of plywood overgrown by tree branches and down a wobbly staircase, or just snuck between the last port-a-potty in a bank of them and a pine tree and avoided all those stairs. Elegance isn't part of the volunteer experience. It was a mob scene in there, with lots of scorers showing up early (good thing -- after they were concerned people wouldn't show I was glad to see a full house in there). There was also a mob of young people who were part of a caddie training and competition program for the Evans Scholarships ready to carry the signs. After getting a radio I could actually hear (a not uncommon problem) and a scoring tablet setup and verifying it had the right group I picked up my standard bearer -- a girl from Chicago just out of high school who caddied at one of those very private clubs in the northern suburbs and had a scholarship to the University of Illinois), I noticed she had no scores on the sign -- neither did any of the others. I asked if she had "E" or "even" in the number kit and she did. About that time I spotted the guy in charge of the standards and asked why they hadn't put even out since it was usual to do that and he said "oh, that sounds like a good idea", and got all of the others waiting to do it too. The first day is always a challenge.

Carla got a kid who caddied at the place I grew up learning to play -- small world. She had the longer walk out to 10 for her group: Pat Bradley, Amy Alcott, and Betsy King. Her standard bearer didn't realize who they were but got the idea it was a special group when lots of fans wanted to take their picture with the standard, and more so when they were all announced as past champions of the women's Open.

My group had one name player: Jane Blalock, along with Laurie Carson (an amateur), and Jean Bartholomew, a pro I thin I'd heard of but not often. It was neat when we stepped into the tee box and Nancy Lopez, who was announcing the groups, introduced herself and all that player's came over to do so.

Before we ever got off the tee I could tell it was going to be a challenging day. The scorer two groups ahead of me fell and injured himself in the first fairway and had to be taken off in a medical cart, and the one in the group ahead had a technology failure half way through the hole. Everything worked fine for me and for Carla (in spite of the
fact that the screen on her scoring device was cracked), but the radio traffic wasn't encouraging. Also before getting off the tee we ran into the woman who ran scoring for the international crown and the BMW who asked if we wanted to score for the BMW this year, which we did, having already signed up to do it and being assigned to be laser operators. I don't know if that will actually happen, but it would be fun to do that one again.

My players all started with pars and for a while it looked like we were going to have a pretty routine round. Blalock was clearly a bit uncomfortable with her swing, constantly rehearsing her turn, and was shorter, while Bartholomew was long and pretty solid. Length wasn't a limit though and after a par Blalock birdied and went on the leaderboard with the other -1s. It didn't last. She bogeyed 4, 7, and 8, mainly by rolling off greens or 3 putting, to go back to +2 at the turn. Carson fell victim to the steep sided elevated greens on about the 5th hole, rolling over the green after what looked like a good approach, then leaving a pitch off a steep slope short and failing to get up and down from there. After a few more pars she hit a definite "WTF" shot on 9, a half topped hybird which skipped over a pond, hit the bank on the far side and dropped in. After dropping (the first time I got to put that in this year) and rolling just off the side of the green onto another nasty slope she failed to get up and down and took a 7 +5, all on 2 holes. Bartholomew played solidly, birdieing one and bogeying one on the front 9.

The back was a tougher story for most. Blalock got on the bogey train. She just couldn't get close enough with her first chip or putt and missed putt after putt to drop into double digits. Carson lost shots mainly in pairs, again missing little putts or getting stuck on bad slopes from which it was difficult to recover. Bartholomew backed up a
stroke, then got a really bad break on 13, a par 3 with a sharply elevated green surrounded by narrow bunkers. She plugged in the end of a bunker with a severe ball-below-feet lie and a fried egg, which she chunked out pretty well, only to have it run over into another bunker -- eventually a double. Then at +3 she righted it, with birdies on 4 of the last 5, bogeying the other hole after nearly reaching a long par 5 in two, but being left with a shot off an awkward slope that rolled away and then took 3 putts.

On 18, I thought I might get to call in 2 eagles. The hole is only 425, but being played as a par 5. both Carson and Bartholomew reached it, Carson with a 20 footer from the fringe and Bartholomew with only about 6 feet, but both missed and tapped in for birdies. Everyone was cheery enough in scoring in spite of the less than perfect play.

One of the more interesting things in working scoring is again listening to the players and caddies debate their shots. This was especially interesting in this tournament, since these players were closer in distance to what I might hit, but also creative about how they play them so it was interesting to hear the discussions about how to hit the approaches and look at the results.

Carla's group played more consistently, just a slow leak of shots for each winding up at 4 or 5 over. She had consistent crowds watching, while my group had a few. (Most of the fans in my area were two groups behind, with Inkster and Davies).

There were some real problems in other groups. Scorer 5's device failed again, causing him to miss a shot while they were getting him a replacement. Another scorer called in asking how to put in two shots OB (it's not hard, just hard to believe that it happens in a competition at this level). Another had a player penalized 2 strokes for removing a divot from the path of a ball rolling back to her off a green, turning a double into a quad. It was clear there were several people without much experience at scoring, calling with mistakes or questions about how to handle a drop or a provisional. It looked though like everyone would make it through.

For a brief while I saw Barb Mucham (the player a friend of ours caddied for for years before he passed away) show up on the leaderboards as one of 2 or 3 players who had gotten to -1, but she dropped back a couple, not out of it yet. Laura Davies and Julie Inkster both did well, but they aren't running away with it.

Tomorrow we have afternoon groups. I think I get the hall of fame group Carla had today, while she gets a group of lesser known players, one of whom was +21 today and the subject of several scoring corrections (probably the fault of the scorer, not anything odd about the player), but another only +3 and with a chance. Mainly we know it's going to be hot and hopefully dry, and we hope to have another enjoyable round.

Walking with Legends (Friday at the Senior Open)

Today we knew which groups we would get. I was getting the Pat Bradley, Amy Alcott, and Betsy King group. I'm the right age to have seen them all on TV in their prime and realize this was a special pairing. All 3 started with a good prospect for making the cut too, which is kind of neat for people long past their competitive golf years. Carla had a group of lesser known players: Laurie Brower, Christa Johnson, and Julie Wirth. Johnson started at +3, a good prospect for going on, while Brower at +10 was a long shot and Wirth at +21 was going to enjoy playing 2 days at a unique championship. She was a little concerned about the prospect of getting an inexperienced standard bearer, since the group would probably make plenty of bogeys, and usually Friday is the toughest day for scoring -- 3 players, and the need to post both the
"today" and "total" scores on the standards. You really need someone who is good at changing numbers.

As we waited for our 12:54 times, we watched the leaderboards on-line and later in volunteer headquarters, noticing that the scores were going nowhere but up. Nobody was showing up as lower than -1 for the day, and many were way over already. I figured the cut would be somewhere around +12, given that after day 1, +6 made top 50 and ties.

After getting to the course and getting lunch (which I learned was being prepared by one of those non-profits that trains people needing jobs to prepare them to work in the restaurant business, and wasn't bad.), we went to pick up our gear and standard bearers. Today, most seemed to come from local golf clubs. I got a young girl who caddied at the Chicago Golf club, but didn't play. She knew the course and enough about golf to follow what was going on. Carla got a young boy who was also a local caddie and golfer -- which turned out to be essential.

It figures that today was a day the player clothing coordinated nicely with their caddie's bibs -- King had a blue shirt and was assigned the blue caddie bib, Bradley had a red patterned shirt to go with the red bib, and Alcott was in yellow, not white, but that was just fine. (Having players wear the same colors as their caddie's bibs is a big
help in recognizing unfamiliar players, since those colors appear on your screen whenever you select someone, but this was a group I was sure to recognize without help).

It may have been a preview when right off the tee, while everyone was in the fairway, Alcott was on a sprinkler head up ahead of the others and started working out her drop as Bradley worked out her approach shot. (You have to record everything, including the free drops, so deciding whether Alcott would complete her drop before Bradley hit was an immediate dilemma.) In the end, I think two of them bogeyed, which meant plenty of standard changes, and we didn't even have anything on the "Today" numbers yet. My standard bearer did pretty well in getting the numbers up, but often took long enough that she caught up only as we approached the green.

Most of the front 9 was without much drama, just slow shot leakage by all of them. Each had birdies, but more bogeys. Looking at the LPGA and PGA tournaments on TV this week I realize how different a classic course like this one really is. The elevated greens with steep slopes and crowned contours mean any slight mistake around the green loses a shot, and maybe two. Every shot to the green is tense because they can't get the ball to just hit and stick, and it's a delicate balance between being too short and rolling back or just a bit long and running over, always into an awful lie. That's why the scores here are big, not rally a difference in the quality of play.

As an aside, everyone, including the hall of famers, has had trouble with the bunkers. They look very ordinary to me, which means rough dry sand on top, and heavy wet packed stuff underneath. I saw some great sand shots, but I saw a lot of chunks, skips, and sculled shots out of bunkers. I've always thought I rally wanted to see pros demonstrate how to get out of the kind of bunker lies we get here, and the answer seems to be that sometimes they do, but sometimes they don't. It's not easy.

The heat was becoming really oppressive. I had two 20 oz bottles of water on the front 9, mainly because a lot of it is on the southern border of the course, where trees block any breeze and you just bake in the sun. 7 on this course is a "fun" hole. It's a par 3 with an odd green with a big hump on the right side, where everything rolls left and into a little corner on the back left, which is where the pin has been both days. Two of my players found the green, but one rolled off left into a bunker, and chunked the first bunker shot onto a steep slope in front of it before getting clear.

Even after all that, all 3 of my players were +3 for the day coming to the 9th tee. 9 is a par 4 that ought to be easy, but it has a pond across the last 90 yards of fairway and that's enough to spook even these veterans. Betsy King, who had been solid, yanked her tee shot into the fescue, where she had to punch out, then yanked her 3rd shot left of the green and failed to get up and down -- oops.

10 is a little par 3, but over water. Carla was dreading starting there since one of the players she had had butchered the hole, but I figured it would be routine for the veterans. Then Amy Alcott drop kicked her iron and splashed. She went looking for a rules official to make sure there was no better option than re-teeing. Just as I was about to call for someone, a rules official appeared and said it wasn't. She predictably hit the next one too hard and rolled over onto an awkward slope, then hit that too hard and rolled back into the rough in front of the green and was lucky to get up and down. Someone else bogeyed, and suddenly all 3 players were in danger of missing the cut.

About a minute after we found a rules official, I heard Carla's voice on the radio and wondered what was up -- not a scoring problem, just a request for rules. One of her players wanted to be sure she was doing the right thing when dropping for a sprinkler head. 11 wasn't much better, with more bogeys, then as we came off the 12th tee a rules official warned our group we were behind -- that would only make the pace and play worse, usually.

Well 12 was actually a pleasant surprise. In spite of catching the face of a cross bunker 80 yards behind the others, Amy Alcott punched out, then nailed her 3rd from over 200 yards to 6 feet from the pin and sunk it for a birdie. Both the others got up on or near the green and birdied as well. Looking better, but lots of work on the standard.

13 is a par 3 that looks harmless, but is in fact deadly. Anything short of the pin comes back off it, and most of the shots that land up where the pin is roll over. I saw 3 good looking tee shots, and discovered at the green that 2 hard rolled off the back into bunkers, while the 3rd was saved only by lodging under a rake. Nobody got close with their second, and when I went back to where my standard bearer had finally caught up with the birdies on the last hole I told her I hoped these players could make some putts and not make all that effort to put those birdies on the sign in vain. Well, two did, but Alcott continued to fall back and was in serious danger of missing the cut.

Most of the rest of the back 9 was a blur. King and Bradley seemed clear of the projected cut, but Alcott at +12 was struggling. She falied to birdie the par 5 16th, then had to sink a long one to par 17, but I was confident as they came to the 18th tee. 18 is all about birdies and eagles. Indeed, all 3 were in the fairway, and King and Alcott were on in 2 with short putts, while Bradley was over the back, but didn't need a birdie to make it. (She didn't) Both King and Alcott missed their eagles but made birdie to get safely clear of the cut.

Carla had warned me that these players were deliberate in scoring, asking to have their cards reviewed several times. That's how it went. I had all the right scores and after reviewing her card with Bradley for the 3rd or 4th time she was effusive about how important the scorer was and that I had done a good job. The USGA guy behind the desk volunteered that their group had a very good walking scorer. I'm glad someone noticed.

The conversation in scoring is always interesting beyond the scores. Bradley talked about needing a therapist, and not a physical one, for the way she played, and all of them talked about how different and difficult it was to play competitive golf again after not doing it for years. I can only imagine what that must feel like, "retiring" at the
top of your game, then coming out to play again and remembering how hard it is just to make pars. The good news is all 3 were safely inside the cut and will play the weekend, giving others a chance to see these legends of the game play.

Carla's group actually played well, for 15 holes. Then had a series of disasters on 7 and 8. She had one player who sculled a bunker shot over the green and up against the woods on 7, and after whiffing an attempt to hit it had to take an unplayable and eventually a quad on the hole, while on 8 someone hit it in the long grass left of the hole, which isn't all thin fescue. After 5 minutes of looking it was back to the tee (in a cart supplied by a rules official), and another shot into the crap, while the other two were playing on. Before recording all the strokes Carla had to querry all 3 caddies and reconstruct the stroke trails, since there was no way to follow everyone in real time. In the
end, 2 of her players made it, but the one who started at +21 finished at +40. (That of course wasn't the highest -- there was a +50 and a +49. Yikes!).

Once again the radio was amusing and distracting. There were several scorers who were clearly struggling. At one point scoring contacted one who wasn't to ask whether someone really had a hole in one on 10. She didn't, in fact she hadn't teed off. No doubt a technology hiccup of the sort I had in Birmingham when it suddenly asked me to confirm an eagle for a player who already had 3 strokes without holing out and wasn't even the one playing. Another reviewed the scores on all holes for one of her players 2 or 3 times because somehow her paper total didn't match what the system said. I think eventually she found a mistake in the score recorded on one hole. What's really odd is the woman who usually does all the score corrections isn't here this week, but her replacement sounds just like her and has the same patient voice, even when the mistakes and requests get tedious.

Everyone finished and the cut was indeed +12. Tomorrow is really up for grabs. The current plan is to send them off both sides in 3's about 8AM, with instructions to us to show up at one of two times to figure out what, if any, group we get. From other emails it's clear the Senior Players, also in this area, is doing the same thing, no doubt trying to dodge the bad weather, which is pretty much random all day long. That kind of screwed up our plans for the day, but you have to be flexible. Hopefully the compressed schedule will let us finish tomorrow, then play in twosomes on Sunday which is supposed to be better weather.

Bagged at the Senior Women's Open (Saturday)

To appreciate the sub-title properly, you have to realize that Wheaton, the town the course is in, was once "dry".

We went to bed and got up thunder this morning, which wasn't promissing. No further word from the championship office, and it did look like the storms would move through by 9AM and maybe give us enough time for the tournament. We packed up and headed in, dealing with the fact that the overnight rain had turned the parking lot into the traditional golf parking hog wallow. (Only after getting home at the end of the day did I get the email sent about the time we departed saying they were still closed and wouldn't start the shuttles until 8, but that was after we got there so we went right in, walking in in light rain.)

Checking in at scoring we were given groups 8 and 9. Carla had 8 -- Martha Nause, Cindy Figg-CUrrier, and Sofia Gronberg Whitmore, all at +10, and I got 9 -- Lorie Kane, Kristi Albers, and Suzy Green-Roebuck, all at +4. (When they go in 3somes, the top half of the field goes off 1 and the bottom half off 10, both starting with the players in the middle, so after a few groups the players teeing off 1 will have lower scores than those off 10) No matter, we do this because we enjoy it and can be useful not because of who we get.  The one thing nobody enjoyed was the weather forecast, and the fact that we were all being issued oversized ziplock bags to stick the scoring tablet in if it rained.  "Scoring in the bag" was no fun with the old technology, and while the tech team had assured us in Birmingham that the devices they were using now would work under water if necessary, they were apparently taking no chances.  Whether the device would work in the rain or not, the paper record clearly would not survive heavy rain well, even though they use water resistant paper.

Of course not everyone reporting got a group. Some were asked to be walking marshals or do other jobs. I don't know if the USGA had a hand in picking who scored and who didn't. We met some of the people we had worked other tournaments with who were also scoring, no surprise. One even said today was his last day because he's going to Carnoustie. Maybe he's one of the lucky few who the USGA sends as scorers to the Open every year (2 or 3 I think), in some kind of exchange with the R&A.

Her standard bearer was a caddie on the course, while I had a pair of boys who had done it before and were quite good at it. They needed to be.

The rain had stopped by the time we were on the tee, but I heard the ominous instructions to the leaderboard to put up their level 3 weather warning -- not good. That means they really expect lightning or high winds within 2 hours. Still okay as we went off though. I wasn't too worried about it since in Illinois we often have "vampire" storms that rage overnight, then fade away at sunrise. My players were all casual and friendly -- all the players and caddies introduced themselves (something that sometimes doesn't happen with the named players.

Lorie Kane and Krista Albers seemed to leak strokes on the front 9. Nothing awful, just missed putts or approaches. Suzy had pars until birdieing 4, and which point her family and friends crowded around to take pictures of that red -1 on the standard.

As we came down 6, we got the ominous message from Ross that they expected rain for the next hour, maybe some of it heavy. It was already raining a bit off and on and I had been using the bag they issued us with our scoring tablets as a rain shield already, so I stuck the whole thing in the bag and moved on. I had no rain gear -- it's basically too hot for anything waterproof anyway, and I'm not going to melt if I get wet. My standard bearers were keeping up pretty well with the action, which was unfortunately mostly backwards.

Then on 7, disaster struck. 7 is a par 3 in the corner of the course with a bizarre green. The green has a huge hump on the right side, and every day the pin has been in the only flat spot at the back left, behind a bunker. My players all hit decent shots, but Lorie Kane came back off the front onto an area mowed as fairway, while Kristi Albers hit it on top of the hump, stick on the fringe. Suzy was somewhere on the green. I stayed back for Lorie's shot, tagged the location, but when she hit it and I went to enter it the thing came back saying I hadn't picked a location. WTF? I could see the red marker for her ball on the map, but somehow it claimed I hadn't makred it. I tried everything -- backing out of selecting her and trying again -- no dice. I even reset the device and reloaded the scoring data. Meanwhile Kristi hit her fringe shot and I couldn't see where it went because of the contours. The rain was coming down pretty good, so I moved to the back of the green and kept trying under the shelter of a hedge, but no dice, so I called in for tech support. Pam, the one running scoring just told me to try everything I tried before, which I did again without any luck, and keep track of the scores on paper. (Hard to do with the paper in the bag). She called for someone from tech support to come find me and told me to radio in the scores and stroke trails. By then my players were nearly finished, but I wasn't sure I had all the strokes. My standard bearer's thought they knew where they stood, but I didn't agree, so I just waited until the next tee and asked each caddie as his or her player hit. Two bogeys and a par. I quickly wrote down the strokes and radioed it in. Pam said she'd enter it. I waited a bit and reloaded, but was still stuck on hole 7.

Half way down the 8th, the tech showed up, and suddenly my screen asked me to refresh. He was fiddling it by then, and noted that if he put someone on the 7th green it would enter a stroke, but I just told him to refresh and let's move on and see if it worked. After the refresh I could enter 3 tee shots on 8. By then they had all hit fairway shots which I entered, and said I was okay for then. The scores looked right so I told Pam I was okay again. Everyone had two putts and routine pars.

9 wasn't pretty. One of my players (Kristi?) hit it left into the long crap and had to just pitch out, while Suzy, flawless up until then came up short and in the water on her second. Around then another scoring supervisor came by to ask if it was okay, and caused me to assign the puch out to the wrong player -- aargh! After Lorrie chunked out of a bad lie short of the pond and put it on I went back and reconstructed the correct stroke trails (good thing I'm getting better on a touch screen).

Nothing got better on the green. Suzy actually got up and down from the rough on the left for double, but the others 3 putted for doubles as well. As one caddie said when I confirmed those "double your misery").

During all this some other scorer called in with exactly the same problem I had. He was on 3, and after thinking long and hard about it at the end of the day I have a theory -- for some reason the USGA refuses to allow you to enter "fairway", as a location for a shot on a par 3, even though most courses have acres of grass mowed to that
height on par 3s. Both my situation and the other scorers involved players in those areas. My hypothesis is that the scoring system is confused by this, and while I can mark a player in that area, it doesn't supply a default cut of grass for that, and without that information it won't accept the shot.  Normally I'd probably have noticed this, but with the device in a bag that's fogged up and covered in water droplets you can't see much detail.   I'll have to test it tomorrow, if I get a group.

10 wasn't bad. Lorrie Kane even made a comeback birdie. By now the rain was over and I was out of the bag again (and not likely to go back in, part of the problem was that with my wet hands the bag fogged up and I had trouble reading the screen). On 11 though Lorrie lost it right into the fescue. She could only hack sideways. A mighty swing produced a bloop that stayed in the junk, from where she had to ask another set of fans and players to move so she could hit forward, which she did, then finished in an approach and 2 putts for a double. Ouch.

Unfortunately there was more pain to come. 12 is a par 5 that they often birdie. Lorrie managed though to catch the first bunker on the left (well, not the bunker, but the steep grass face in front of it). -- almost exactly the same spot where Amy Alcott made birdie from yesterday. Unfortunately when she swung at it there was a mighty thunk, a clatter as she fell backwards into the bunker, and a yelp of pain. Her foot had slipped and she chunked into the ground not moving the ball and pulling something in her right leg. After minute or two of what looked like painful exploration of her movements, she set up more gingerly and punched it out. Her approach didn't look awkward, but wound up left in the rough, but she got up and down for bogey and looked able to continue. Someone else birdied the hole, so we had work on the
standard, while I could see the lead group of Davies, Inkster, and Johnson had reached the 9th tee, shared with the 13th.

We squeezed through the crowd, noticing that the 9th fairway was occupied and the 13th green wasn't, so our group would hit first (the players are careful to avoid hitting while someone is hitting on the shared tee box to the other hole). All the shots to 13 looked good, but Suzy's came back off into a bunker, while Kristi's had rolled over onto a hump of rough in between bunkers. Kristi hit first with a nice little flop that trickled towards the whole to building cheers and went in. Very nice. Suzy had a good out, but it wasn't enough, bogey.

15 was uneventful, but I was hopeful that they would do better on 16-18, two par 5's separated by a par 4 that wasn't playing too hard. The drives of 16 were good, but Suzy's caught a cross bunker, while Kristi blew it right into the long crap --yuck. Both had to punch out. Suzy got it up and down from 120 yards out for par, Kristi didn't, and Lorie Kane again missed a birdie.

On 17, nothing strange happened -- Kristi canned a bomb to get a stroke back. There was a roar from the direction of 12 and 13 and I was sure one of the leaders had an eagle. The call came in, Laura Davies eagled 12 to get to -9. With the softer greens her length was allowing her to make birdies where others struggled. After 3 good drives on 18, Suzy's caddie started talking to me praising the course, saying they had played it 6 straight days and it never played the same twice. The players must all be massochists who love a challenge, and this course provides ample challenges.

Kristi and Suzy hit the green, while Lorie yelled fore on a miss right that actually came up short of the green and the fans in light rough. Unfortunately she sculled her pitch over the green. As I went back to see where Lorrie had gone I was cornered by a TV spotter who wanted to know if Suzy's putt was for eagle. I told him it was, as was Kristi's, but I'm sure he was interested because an eagle would get Suzy back to -4 and in the top 10. Lorie made a good pitch from the back, but missed the putt, while both the others missed their eagles, and Kristi missed her birdie. Suzy's birdie was enough to get her to tied 10th though,
not bad at all.

There was again lots of discussion from the players about their scores in scoring, but the ones I had were all right (phew -- this was a tough round for that). Everyone was grateful for the help I provided in verifying everyone. I stayed on to double check I had reconstructed 7, 8, and 9 correctly, and it all seemed okay, so I moved on.

Carla's players had less fanfare with them, but one, Martha Nause, started well playing the back 9 in -2. Then she doubled 1 and 2, and with two more bogeys sunk back to +14. Her others didn't do as well, but all seemed to be enjoying the competition.

Laura Davies looks to be running away with it. Julie Inkster also played well and they will no doubt play together tomorrow again. Barb Mucha continues to play solidly at +1, but probably too far back to contend.

Tomorrow the notice is out that they will go in 3's off both sides again, this time at 7:30AM. No clue as to what groups, if any, we get. Kind of makes it hard to plan our days, but as I said that's one reason why this is easier when you travel and have nothing else to plan around.

And it's History (Sunday at the Senior Women's Open)

After a bad nights sleep (I kept waking up thinking about the screwup with the device yesterday, and wondering if I should alert someone to the problem I suspected or whether there was any way to verify it), we got up to a clear day and a benign forecast. If they had known that yesterday, we wouldn't be getting up early, but never mind. A quick trip in had us checking in about 7:30, and finding we had groups 13 and 15, the 3rd and 4th from the end. That meant the USGA still liked me, since the last two groups were sure to go to the two sisters who do all the women's championships flawlessly, and we knew they were here for this one since we had talked to them about finding accomodations for the US Open next year, which they are doing as well.

While killing time before gearing up we saw Pam, the woman running scoring for this tournament and I described the source of the device problems yesterday. Basically whenever you want to record a shot, you have to mark where the ball is on the map, and in almost all cases the system will pick a location, basically a cut of grass like fairway, 1st cut of rough, or green, based on where you mark the ball. The trouble is that for some reason the USGA believes par 3's have no "fairway", while the maps presented by the scoring devices show accurately that several of the par 3's here (and every other course I've worked) have large areas of grass cut to that height. The real problem is that if you try to mark a ball in one of these areas the system does not pick what "location" it is in, it just leaves it blank. You can override that by manually selecting something, if you can see what is happening, which we couldn't yesterday when our scoring devices were burried in foggy plastic bags covered in rain drops. I felt good about letting her know so she could help anyone who got in trouble today even though we were not going to have to work inside a plastic bag today.

My players were Alicia Dibos, from Peru, who turns out to be the head teaching pro at Winged Foot, Suzy Green-Roebuck, who I had on Saturday, and Helen Alfredsson, a well known star from Sweden. Carla in the group behind me had Liselotte Neumann, another Swedish star, Barb Moxness, and Rosie Jones. Both good groups. We both had standard bearers who had done the job before and were caddies at the course. (That's one of the good things about getting the groups near the lead on the weekend. In
addition to competent scorers they usually give you good standard bearers. In addition, I had another scorer assigned to walk with me and keep the scores on paper. I don't think he was happy about not getting a group alone, but because they were going out in 3somes there were more scorers assigned than they could use, and he would be useful both as confirmation and as someone who could help if players wound up on both sides of the green. He also turned out to be another one done in by the no location problem.

Suzy and her caddie recognized me immediately. The others introduced themselves as well. The first tee was like being in a steamer -- hot, humid, and still. Everyone started well in the fairway and I thought it might be an easy day.

Unfortunately Alicia and Helen bogeyed the first, Alicia with a 3 putt as I recall and Helen by missing right into a bunker, then chunking the bunker shot to roll back onto the rough, and a good up and down. Oddly enough, Carla said that Liselotte Neumann also missed right on the rough, chunked it and didn't get up and down -- must be something about Sweden :-).

Alfredsson got the shot back on 2, a short par 5, but Cibos didn't. Mostly they all made routine pars. Even though everyone was on the green on the par 3 3rd, I deliberately marked one initially on the "fairway" area in front of the green, and as expected, it failed to supply a "location" for the shot. I quickly marked the real location of the ball and recorded their routine pars.

The nasty false front on the par 5 4th claimed another vicitim in Alicia, when her 3rd came up short, and she had to work for bogey on the hole. I think 5 was the hole where Alicia and Suzy were a little right and caught the bank in front of a cross bunker. When we got up there there was only one ball visible - Alicia's. We found Suzy's buried in the long rough at the base of the bank, where she could only chunk out and made bogey. Alfredsson birdied the hole and 6 to go to -2 on the day. With all the action I tried to verify the scores with the other scorer tracking them, but he thought Suzy had doubled the hole. That was easy enough to confirm -- she didn't.

We waited a long time on the 7th tee while it was apparent that the group ahead was struggling on it. My players all hit good shots, and Alfredsson had another birdie opportunity but wound up 3 putting and backing up. 8 was uneventful, and all 3 were in the fairway on 9 and nobody went in the water. Suzy bogeyed it though after coming up a bit short and 3 putting from the fairway in front of the green.

On 10, everyone had reasonable birdie chances but only Alicia made the putt. She lost the shot on 11 though, one of the few times she failed to get up and down to save par. 12 was a particularly impressive example, when she caught a cross bunker and had to chunk out, then wound up on the front of the green with a monster putt I wasn't even sure was possible. She hit it too hard, but made the comeback. Alfredsson birdied to get back to -2, but generally was missing a lot of opportunities. She was longer than the others even without hitting driver which gave her lots of short approaches and even short putts, but she couldn't make them. Still, -2 for the day and +3 overall wasn't bad.

On 16, I saw the first leaderboard in a while. Laura Davies was still running away with the tournament, even though the birdies and eagles weren't as numerous today. Alfredsson was however the only other player on the leaderboard under par for the day. That of course was a jinx.  She came up short on a short pitch for her 3rd, then 3 putted to bogey a birdie hole.

After Suzy sunk her short birdie, unfortunately both she and Alicia bogeyed 17 after bad drives. Still, 18 was waiting and sure to provide opportunities. All were in the fairway. Alfredson hit it close, and Dibos was short and had to pitch on, but Suzy hit a worm burner that rolled onto the front of the green. Nobody sunk an eagle, and only
Alfredson sunk the birdie.

During all that I was presented with another problem. As I came up to the green area I noticed I had never closed out the last fairway shot (by saying it didn't go in the hole), and when I did it the screen flashed and went dark, then showed only the icon for the scoring app. Having encountered this one I knew the app had crashed and I could restart it, so I did, and it seemed to have the tee and fairway shots okay so I just finished out with it. Basically this is a job that's all about experience, and having experienced device failures you learn how to work around them and recover.

There was as usual a lot of discussion over the scores in scoring. Only Alfredson had the scores for the player she was scoring right. Alicia originally tried to correct her score on 4 to a par, but I showed bogey as well, and before I could dig up the stroke trail to remember what happened one of them remembered the roll back off the green. All good. Alfredsson commented on how hard and draining this was, that while she could still handle the physical rigors of a tournament round, the mental pressure of having to perform at your best for 5 hours was a lot harder than it was when she was in her 20's. I thought that was interesting.

Carla's group played similarly. Not perfect, but respectable. All the players in both groups were in the top 20, which means they will all be exempt into the event next year. We eventually got to watch the whole Fox broadcast of Sunday, because it was time delayed because of the early tee times, and one thing they played up was the battle for the top swede between the players in our groups. After a double Neumann played solidly, but again missed a lot of opportunities. She had a putt for eagle to get to -2, but missed and finished tied with Alfredsson. It seemed fitting. Rosie Jones in her group turned out to be an exuberant player and the character of the group. It's nice to see people enjoying an open championship. Too often in these things I feel like the grim reaper, reminding them that the clock is ticking and their opportunities are slipping away, but this event had a different feel.

There weren't as many scoring errors today, and virtually all came from the first few groups off the back. Not surprising, since I'm sure the USGA controlled the assignments to the top half of the field. Scoring errors aren't a disaster, but you don't want a bad score to go out for one of the leaders, or any player people are following, because they see the error and bombard the tournament office with calls and emails to get it fixed.

I had originally thought we might stick around for the trophy presentation, or at least long enough to try to catch Barb Mucha who was in the group behind Carla, but she had a bad day and I figured wouldn't want to talk about Uncle Kenny, and we were fried by the heat and the bad night's sleep, so we packed it in and returned home to watch the TV coverage. On the way out we passed Ross, the director of scoring, taking in the weather warning banners from the leaderboards. He asked how it had gone and in particular whether having the fans in the fairways was a problem. I replied it wasn't really a problem for scoring, but clearing the fans from the landing areas for the players had been a problem on several holes. It's hard to be too tough on fans willing to come out and spend hours walking a course, but it would be nice if they were all more aware of play. I closed by saying we would probably see him next at the US Open next year.

Looking back on the week it was clear this was a huge success for the players and the fans that came out for it. Many had been waiting a long time for this championship, and having Laura Davies win it wasn't unexpected and she is a popular champion. I hope it was successful enough financially to insure it's continuation. Next year it's at Pine Needles, in May. We hadn't had it on our schedule because the timing is a bit awkward, but are reconsidering doing it after this week, because the event has such a different feel. It's also clear then need competent scorers, and we are clearly on the A-list for that. We will see as the time gets nearer. I really wasn't sure what to expect this
week, but the event far exceeded my initial expectations. Just seeing and walking this course were reason enough to do it, but the opportunity to walk with and keep score for many of the legends of women's golf was a real pleasure, as was the feeling that we were performing a valuable service to the tournament and the players by getting things right and handling the problems. It's certainly a week I won't forget.

The 2018 BMW (Philadelphia area)

We had signed up for Shotlink for this tournament, and in the end that's what we got.  (The woman running scoring had approached us about the possibility of tapping us as walking scorers, but in the end they had enough for that and not enough on Shotlink.  As a result we got assigned to the 18th fairway all four days.  Philly was a little far to drive, so we made the "mistake" of flying -- 5 hour delay getting there, still early enough to play some local courses (including a nice Donald Ross course gone public, and attend the volunteer party.  (A pretty good offering as usual for the BMW, even though it was fiercely hot. 

Monday also had our training.  As expected, few of the volunteers had done it before.  The changes for us were mostly minor, just a new rangefinder device, but not that different.  The green position though was very different.  In the past every green has had a little tower, next to the TV camera tower, where two volunteers operated a big surveyor's rangefinder to locate the ball and plot it like we do on a grid.  That's gone -- they now use 3 cameras mounted on poles around each green to locate the balls, and the two volunteers have a tablet that they use to indicate where the ball is (both as backup for the cameras and to plot areas they can't see into. 

One interesting thing was a difference in how we were instructed.  In the past, the focus has always been on accuracy.  Now apparently speed is more important.  So, rather than wait for a player to show up when you can't see the ball, take your best guess at where it is and grid it or sight the laser on something close.  Not a big problem, but interesting.  Apparently there are so many people out there now using GPS to map shots that Shotlink wants to make sure they are first to have the data.  Another instruction related to gambling.  We were told to be suspicious of anyone taking unusual interest in what we are doing or asking about ball positions.  I guess people bet on these things and are looking for an edge.  Not a factor for us if our position is where I think it is -- inside the ropes between the 9th and 18th hole nowhere near the crowd.

The heat is mainly what characterized the practice days.  The BMW is unusual in only having one real practice day, Tuesday, since most playing are playing the previous week's tournament which finishes on Monday (Labor Day).  What was odd was that few people were out on Tuesday in spite of that.  Most do play in the Pro-AM on Wednesday, but that takes up the whole course all day long and clearly gives them less opportunity to practice.  I guess the top 70 players just don't need as much practice time on the course as the bottom half of the field for the open's, most of which have never seen it. 

The course was gorgeous.  We got to see most holes one day or the other.  There aren't that many public grandstands on it, and almost no shade in them, but there is a nice one on 8 that has shade most of the day.  The hole is a monster par 3 over a creek and always fun to watch, and if you sit in the right place you can also see 10, a nice downhill par 4.  Like the Ross course we played it had lots of flanks of small bunkers, elevated small and contoured greens, and interesting doglegs.  That won't phase the top players much, particularly if, as predicted, it's wet.   Wet will also no doubt create problems for parking -- Volunteers park on a field 3 miles from the course, but that's not likely to be available if it rains.  The public lot is a paved lot for a local expo center, but 35 minutes by bus without traffic -- not fun.

Philly melt (Thursday at the BMW)

With the forecast of hot and humid with late day thunderstorms, when we got a note that they had changed the tee times I thought they would do something sensible like start early -- nope -- 3's off both sides starting at 11:19. Couldn't be hotter. We got there in time to wait a while in the only somewhat too hot volunteer "tent". (This was actually a permanent structure, a dome covering some small tennis courts. The problem of course is it was way too big and high for us meaning the A/C was not up to keeping it really cool. We did enjoy lunch and luke warm water (usually you get a choice of water or pepsi stuff at these things, but this one only occasionally has small bottles or cans of gatorade or diet pepsi, and the water goes fast enough it's never cold. As the time approached to go on duty, we met up with our 3rd staffer for the next 3
days, a local who had never done this but had done a lot of golf tournaments in other jobs, and hiked to and over the 18th fairway to our sunny perch.

The heat was only bearable because there was a pretty good breeze blowing down the hole (tailwind for the shots). We scoped out the grid mapping of the fairway, trying to notice where all the sprinklers were, but that is tough -- after a while there are unreplaced divots on the fairway that at a low angle look like sprinkler heat holes, and many of the sprinklers are in the intermediate rough where you can't see them from the other side of the hole. The equipment was all there though, and the advantage of being on 18 is you can look at the entries for player clothing for almost all the players before they start to arrive and copy that info onto the clipboard used by the one doing the grid placement to make it easier for everyone to identify who hit which ball.

Almost from the start we discovered our biggest annoyance would be too many marshals. We were in a strip of rough not accessible to the public between 9 and 18, yet there were generally 5 marshals from our hole and a couple from 9 in our area, all wanting to park their packs and water around our chairs and equipment and sit in our chairs. You don't get to sit often while doing shotlink, but it's nice to be able to take a 30 second brake when you can and not stand for 6 hours.

I had the first shift with the laser and once I got used to the new buttons had no trouble. We had excitement right away when Bubba and Phil both nearly hit us, both landing about 10 feet from the laser. Of course they had TV spotters and cameras with them so it was a crowd around us while they played the shots, and Phil failed to clear the next bunker up so we had to shoot and grid that one too.  As they walked up and Bubba noticed his drive was a little farther than Phil's he naturally got in a dig.

The laser we have sits behind a cluster of 3 bunkers, and there was plenty of action there too. You usually couldn't see the ball in the bunker, and it was a challenge just figuring out how to hit some area of sand near it with the laser. Even putting it on the grid wasn't easy,  since they want you to use a grid square entirely within the bunker, and these bunkers are small enough there aren't any!

The big problem though was on the other side of the hole. Two players hit shots over there (DJ and John Rahm), outside the ropes, where you couldn't see the ball and the crowd immediately swallowed the area. I wound up shooting the laser at the shoes of the marshal who was trying to protect it, but figuring out where that was on the grid was a challenge. One (Rahm as I recall) had to take a drop for line of sight relief from a TV tower, which normally is easy to spot, but I was busy marking the place one of the players on our side went in 2 after chunking their second, and almost missed the drop. Mostly though it was routine -- ball in fairway, mostly around the bunkers or past them, and pretty easy to figure out the grid square and easy to see with the laser. Rory had the long drive as far as we could tell, about 340, though many were long. We were only vaguely aware of the flow of the tournament to know that Rory and Tiger finished tied at -8.

The rain held off all afternoon, and even for the long wait in line to get a bus back to the volunteer lot (only a few miles, but the bus pick up area is basically too tight to get the buses in and out efficiently, and the town has terrible traffic.)

Friday is supposed to be stormier early, so we knew already they moved the tee times way up (3s off both sides starting at 7AM. That's when it's nice to work on 18, especially when we had a wait to get in for dinner (damn all those Eagles fans who want to go out to a sports bar to watch the game anyway :-)

Beating the weather at the BMW

Friday dawned cloudy, not rainy, and not hot. The forecast is for the rain to hold off long enough to get it in, and we were optimistic. We still went early just to not get caught in what locals say is a bad rush hour (we are normally 20 minutes from the course, but most of that is on 476, a beltway interstate that gets congested). When we got to the volunteer lot it was clear they had more rain than we had where we were staying (actually it looked like there was rain in a lot of places, given the delay in the football game). That was starting to turn the baked clay into mire. Today was okay, but I don't know if it would take any more rain.

When we got out to the laser we discovered the wind had changed and was now a slight breeze in the players face. Again, we were out in time to get all the setup done but as the players started coming it was clear they were hitting a lot shorter. That meant lots more work for whoever was doing the grid (with 3 we rotate every four groups -- one works the laser, one does the grid, and the 3rd has the radio and helps the other two spot balls and resolve any mismatches between grid and laser spotting). The person doing that often got to go back 50-75 yards to get even with the drives and it meant becoming familiar with a different part of the grid from yesterday.

We saw Shauffele early and notice he was having the round of the day. In general though there was less "excitement" than Thursday. With the shorter drives the marshals mainly moved towards the tee where they landed and kept out of our way, and did a better job marking shots than they had done before. We had a few balls in the bunkers, including one who failed to get it out the first time (two laser shots and grids in the sand), and again a couple of shots in the crowd on the other side. Once again Phil's group was a challenge, though this time it wasn't Phil, who hit his drive in the sweet spot (one grid square got maybe 1/3 of the drives) and up to the green, but Bubba went left and short, and Smith when lefter and shorter. Smith compounded the fun by yanking his next one left and hitting it into the crowd across from us where we couldn't see it. I had to follow the other player and ignore that ball until he got up there and it was clear where it was, when we could get a laser shot on his bag and I could grid the position. Fortunately he took some time there, giving a signed glove to the woman his shot had hit.

Mostly though it was uneventful. Only a couple of players failed to get their second shots to the vicinity of the green, so we generally didn't have to worry about plotting second shots, unlike some holes where they were constantly debating who was in a better position to locate a ball half way from the fairway laser to the green. We knew Phil and Bubba had been having a bad day when hole 10 called in grid positions for their wild shots on either side of the hole that had gone wide of the hole grid.

We watched Tiger hit a good drive, then clearly be unhappy with the second shot, while the crowd went wild over Rickie Fowler's second and he clearly had one of the few birdies.

It was a pleasure to leave the course about 2PM after getting lunch after finishing, no line for the buses or traffic on the freeway. They are expecting rain overnight and have moved our parking to a nearby office park (often tournaments can use office lots on the weekend, meaning you really want no rain early in the week). It's not supposed to be good either, but they are still planning to go off in 2-somes starting at 8:30 and running until 2PM, so we are going to have a very long day.

Well, it could have been worse (Saturday at the BMW)

The word came early that they would go off in 3-somes at 7, then 9, then 11.  We didn't go anywhere until they committed to actual tee times.  Finally, we got word that they would start at noon we headed out thinking we had plenty of time. First we waited half an hour for a bus (apparently nobody told the bus company about the late start and as a result they only had 2 buses expecting not more than a trickle of volunteers coming onto the course at that time). Then we jammed up going through the
metal detector (which is apparently set low enough it doesn't trigger on my 2 metal hips). Arriving we heard that others hadn't been told about the weather delay, including the caterer responsible for preparing breakfast sandwhiches for the hospitality boxes. With the people they were planned for unable to get in before noon, they offered them to any volunteers there, of which there were plenty, since many left for the course before the first delay mail came out.

By noon the rain had mostly stopped, just occasional spitting drizzle. The wind hadn't yet come up but was in their face on 18, meaning short shots and more hiking for whoever had to get the grid squares. Knowing that we explored further down the fairway towards the tee box to have some idea where the sprinklers were, though the fairway was sloppy.

Our first group was all in the fairway, but of course there was an immediate question -- do we need to re-mark all the players who take advantage of "lift clean and place" to move the ball. No, thank goodness, since most did, usually moving the ball sideways to get away from the edge of the fairway or improve their clearance of the large
overhanging tree.

Jordan Spieth provided the first real excitement by hitting it outside the ropes on the left. That's tough for us since we are on the right side. We could see the ball and actually get a good laser shot at it, but it seemed that no matter what grid square we tried to put him in it said we were 50 feet away. Not good. If they actually play tomorrow I'll have to pace from the ropes to the fairway in that area to figure out how to plot balls over there.

I think Phil was the only one in the bunker -- right in front of us. He had to punch out short, meaning another ball to plot for us, and failed to get up and down. There were a couple of others in the left rough, but that's not too hard if the marshal on that side flags it, which they did.

One thing we noticed was the laser spotter didn't seem to work as well today. In some training we had for this in the past I remember someone saying that the device will actually try to detect a golf ball and focus on it, like a camera that finds faces, and I thought maybe it was having trouble doing that with all the mud on the balls, but it might just have been the wind (which made it hard to hold everything still) and the fact that we were shooting balls further away than before because almost everyone came up way short.

Pat Perez provided some excitement when he hit the tree and the ball dropped out of sight somewhere -- into the bunker beyond us as it turned out, so having already had a discussion with the shotlink people on the green about where to draw the line between what they could get and what we could get we shot the face of the bunker and gridded a position in there for him.

Jason Day had the most interesting drive of the day. By that time I couldn't follow the ball in the air (too little contrast) so when the marshal signaled way right I looked and just barely saw the ball flash by a bit short of us going sharply right. I should say that with the wind in the face nobody was reaching us, and when they signaled right, it often landed the fairway in front of the bunkers. This one was different. I was on grid, so I started back towards the tee to find it and a marshal pointed at a ball on the adjacent 9th fairway. It was actually very close to a sprinkler on the edge of that fairway that was on the edge of my grid map, so I gave "W28 as the grid since while W
wasn't on there it was one square right of the last one that was, "V". The guy on laser thought he got it, but the ball was just barely visible over the lip of a bunker on the other hole and almost flat to the slope of the fairway so nobody was surprised when his shot was nowhere near that position, and nobody seemed to care. (Of course our radio periodically went out, producing a loud squeal in the headphones until you turned it off and on and I don't know that anyone heard anything we were telling them on the radio.

Another player in a late group came up short and I thought maybe we would have to move the pole with the equipment. No, just us and our chairs. He hit a low punch (one thing that really impressed me was the number of players who were hitting low punch shots to stay under the tree that overhangs the right side of the fairway, and still getting the shots close) that looked okay (i.e. didn't go in a short bunker or hit the tree, so it would wind up out of our coverage zone), but as he walked by he asked where it went because he had no clue. I told him over the bunker and left of the tree, probably up at the green (he was over it up against the grandstand dropping for relief.

It got seriously cold as the day ended, and the rain started picking up. By the end we were all shivering (hard to imagine after Thursday), in spite of all being in our volunteer jackets (except for one Marshal in the area who wound up buying a jacket at the Merchandise tent because he didn't take his volunteer jacket to the course, probably a $100 mistake). I don't know what we are going to do if they play on Sunday, which is forecast to be 10 degrees colder, wetter, and windier. We have
nothing warm, so will probably layer on multiple lightweight shirts, of which we have plenty. It seems really unlikely they will play though.

After the finish there was the usual jam getting out, and some excitement when we were ushered into a bus for another lot and the driver stopped at the exit to wait for another bus to show him the way to go, but no worries. Waiting in line there was a lot of speculation on what would happen on Sunday with a virtual 100% probability of rain. The official word was prepare for a 7AM start off both tees, but most though they would simply call it at 54 holes.

When we got up Sunday they had pushed it back to 9AM, maybe, in the emails for the volunteers, but the word to the fans was "postponed indefinitely. As I write this the new word is "noon" maybe. Looking at the weather map showing heavy rain stretching hundreds of miles west I doubt that. At this point I'm hoping they won't play, because trying to find balls in the rain while keeping the equipment as dry as possible isn't a lot of fun, even if it were going to be warm, which it isn't.

In fact, the pushed noon to 1PM, then 2, then 3:30 before giving up.  It rained moderate to hard all day, and the course was basically underwater.  We had already told our chair that we couldn't do Monday because we were flying back.  That's unfortunately, but understandable.  Saturday night the calls went out for anyone who could do Shotlink or Walking Scorer on Monday.  That's probably not a bad way to get a chance, but it's not going to be pleasant. 

As it turned out the rain let up on Monday, and after a couple of hours delay to put the course in shape they actually played.  We watched some of it from the airport, and the last couple holes and the playoff from our home later in the day.  At least next year it's local and we will be able to help on Monday.

The 2019 BMW Championship

Everything Changes in August

That was the PGA tour's slogan promoting it's new format and schedule for the FedEx cup playoffs.  They went from 4 tournaments to 3, moved the schedule up so they finish before Labor Day, and reconstituted the tour championship as a season finish competition for the FedEx cup with a handicapped start (essentially your performance up to that point translates to a 0-10 shot "head start" over the rest of the field.)   The BMW Championship became the middle tournament of the 3 week finish, and was essentially unchanged in format (70 players, four rounds, no cut). 

Unfortunately this was a year everything changed for us, as medical issues prevented us from doing 3 of the four tournaments we planned for 2019, all as walking scorers, and left only me able to do the BMW doing shotlink.  That, and other factors contributed to this being an unusual event.

Getting ready

When you do shotlink you need to do substantial training, and they insist you do the training every time.  The first stage of that is an online course off a web site.  Through that I learned that there had been substantial changes to both the equipment and procedures for shotlink.   Getting through the web course isn't easy, mainly because it's hard to navigate, but also because some of the exercises are in my view at least badly structured (e.g. a requirement to put 7 steps in locating a tee shot in proper order, with limited information about the process to that point and no feedback on what's wrong when you make a mistake.)  Completing it though does help you understand what the screens are going to look like.

The second phase of training takes place on the Saturday before the tournament on the same day as the volunteer party.  That was good since it would let me find the volunteer parking lot (which was in an area where roads had been rebuilt and I got conflicting information on what was there) and assess how much time to allow to reach my assigned work location every day.   As it turns out the parking arrangement was one of the best I've seen -- we parked in a paved lot of an underused office park that was only about 10 minutes by bus from Medinah, and the bus drop off point was near both the public entry gate near the first tee and the volunteer entry and volunteer tent.

We had worked two other tournaments at Medinah, the 2006 PGA and 2012 Ryder cup.  The course didn't look much different, but the BMW had far fewer tournament facilities on it making it much easier to see and get around, a nice feeling.  I in fact arrived early enough for the Volunteer Excellence program training.  This was a new program to teach volunteers about their role in tournaments that I hadn't originally signed up for, but there was plenty of room.  I was not optimistic about it since the training was run by Disney for the tour and I didn't have high expectations, but in fact it was entertaining, informative, and unlike most training finished on time.  Much of the training was devoted to giving examples of how volunteers can make the fan experience better by how they interact with spectators.  I've had plenty of experience at that, and it was interesting to see some other examples.  Probably the most useful thing for me though was the clear expression of priorities:  Safety, Competition, and the Spectator experience.  Safety issues, like storms, take highest priority and can interrupt the competition, while maintaining the integrity of the competition can mean moving spectators and keeping them from interfering with play, but beyond that they want us to make sure the spectators have an excellent experience. 

The Shotlink classroom training came next, and went through largely the same material as the on-line course.  New for this year, there are no laser operators at the green.  Position of the ball on the green is captured by cameras and confirmed by a volunteer with a tablet showing where the camera though the ball was.  If the ball isn't on the green (e.g. in a bunker or the rough), the volunteer has to map it on the tablet screen.  Much of the discussion was about potential problems, including a long list of cases where the cameras might put the ball in the wrong place, and what to do if the ball is off the green.  How all this works is rapidly evolving, and the trainer from the company working on the technology explained that their goal is to be able to do things like follow balls on the green with the camera and predict whether or not a putt would be holed as early as possible. 

The fairway position has been changed too.  They replaced the laser rangefinders with a newer model.  Externally they are much the same, but apparently the internal position tracking now uses by gyroscopes and a magnetic compass, which makes them sensitive to any magnets on the volunteer operating them, so there are new instructions about not using the radio (magnetics in the headset) or anything else magnetic.   Last year's phone based device has been replaced by a larger tablet, allowing them to display a map of where the laser located the ball for you to confirm and eliminating the need to mark the position of the ball on a grid map (well sort of -- we learned later that they still want us to do the grid as a backup for when the technology fails).  The connection between the laser and tablet is apparently sensitive too requiring you to keep them on opposite sides of the pole and at least 18 inches apart (not hard, just another thing to remember).  The tablet now connects using mobile data, not WiFi, which was supposed to give better coverage, but apparently that's sensitive too and doesn't work perfectly. 

Probably the biggest change though is that they really want both the green and the fairway positions to use the system's indication of who is hitting each shot, which is generated by the walking scorer selecting the player.  That's easy, when it works, but if the walking scorer goofs or communication goes down it's hard to see what's going on 300 years away.  In the past we had the color of the players clothing to fall back on, but Shotlink really wants to discourage that so this year, we got no clothing colors.  That should be interesting.

There was a poignant moment at the end of training, when the committee chair for shotlink for the tournament announced that this was his last year.  He had been volunteering for this tournament for nearly 60 years, and got a standing ovation for his efforts. 

The volunteer party was held in the beer garden area behind the 18th green, and lived up to prior experience with the BMW -- an open buffet with good food and this time an open bar policy at the beer/wine tents, accompanied by a low key live band.  Volunteers also get a modest discount at the merchandise tent on party day which I used to pick up a ball marker for me and for a friend who collects tournament souvenirs. 

The final phase of training is normally a chance to practice on the equipment during the Wednesday pro-am tournament.  Typically they set up lasers on one or two holes and let the volunteers practice on them.  It would also be a chance for me to hike out to the fairway of number 9, where my work location was, and figure out the most efficient way to get there and how long it takes.  The practice laser was set up on the first fairway, and there was a long line for it, so I headed out to check out 9.  On paper it's only about 2 holes walk, but with crosswalks and other details it took close to 15 minutes to make the trip.  9 is a dogleg left and I was reasonably sure we would be on the outside of the dogleg 300 years off the tee, but there was no equipment there to confirm that.  Most  PGA tour tournaments are held at the same course every year or a small rotation of courses and shotlink has data on where the shots go to place the equipment, but Medinah last hosted the western open before shotlink, so they had no data, and the big unknown would be how many competitors would try to cut the corner over the trees on the left side.

When I got back to the training setup they had changed the process and took volunteers in groups.  They had no radio connectivity to actually demonstrate the process, so they could only walk through a scripted demonstration of how to do it.  Naturally the demonstrators contradicted elements of the training, including instructions to grid each shot and keep a record as backup to the radio connected laser and tablet, and more strictures about what not to do when operating the laser or tablet.  Finding the position of balls not visible in the rough was another controversial topic.  The consensus was to work with the marshals on the hole to get them to stand near the ball long enough to take a laser shot.  There was also a lot of discussion about the process.  One new thing is that when each ball is struck, the shotlink volunteer has to indicate whether or not it's in the fairway before doing anything else.  This proved awkward, since the tablet pops this question up even if you are in the middle of taking a laser shot of another ball.  Shotlink wants us to shoot the positions as fast as possible, but the interrupt for the fairway question caused lots of volunteers to wait until all the drives had been hit.  There was no agreement on whether or not to do this.  I always tried to shoot each ball before the next drive was hit, but that's not possible when the ball lands out of sight.

One aspect of training worth noting were the admonishments about sports betting people trying to interfere with us by asking questions.  Apparently people bet on drive distances and if a hustler can get information from the shotlink volunteer while delaying the volunteer from confirming where the ball is they can win a bet.  Who knew.  Fortunately we've never had that kind of interference.

After lunch and a bit of watching of the pro-am we headed home.  Pro-ams don't give you much information about how the job will go, since the amateurs hit it all over the place, making it hard to judge where the pros will go in the tournament.  They also kept forcing us to abandon the equipment so someone could punch out of the woods.

Human Target Time (Thursday at the BMW)

Going by in a blur (Friday and Saturday at The 2019 BMW)

It was 2 years later when I got around to finishing the writeups here and realized I had lost my daily logs.  It was much of the same, tech problems, players all over the place, and a grueling day.  One of those days (Friday I think) we had a stoppage for weather, which meant we had to hike all the way back to the volunteer tent and everyone crammed in there (not nearly big enough and seems absurd as I write this during the era of Social Distancing.)  The weather cleared and we went back out without further problems. 

One bad thing about being at a distant post and having to stay through the end of play is that I managed to miss the daily "reward" for volunteers at the volunteer tent, usually ice cream or some other treat, because by the time I got there it was gone.  That's typical of the more interesting jobs -- it's hard to get the normal volunteer services.

Probably the most interesting incident was Patrick Reed's errant drive.  In a group with lots of media coverage and fans, including a roving commentator, Reed hit one right off the tee, right of the camera truck, an into a commentators cart.  The ball was perched on a little metal shelf behind the two seats.  He was surprisingly good about handling that, naturally getting lots of ribbing from the fans, but he actually posed in several positions with that ball so everyone could get a shot.  Reed has an up and down reputation on course, but this was definitely one of his better moments in handling a situation that some players might consider an embarassment with grace.

What rain (Sunday at the BMW)

Today didn't look good. The plan was to play in 3's off both tees starting about 10:30, hopefully after the rain went through. When I got up around 6 though there was a line of heavy storms that hadn't even entered Illinois, and watches and warnings through 1PM. As we had a leisurely breakfast (the reason for the early hour) though the storms
ebbed and flowed and reformed into two lines much further east, and by 8:30 it looked like the worst of it would to through Medinah by about 9:30, letting them get out, warm up, and get make those times. It still looked bad for later in the day. I knew I couldn't work both Sunday and Monday (by now we were running out of supplies, and both my cars needed work), and originally I thought it would just be one of those days when they delayed an hour at a time before putting it off and I'd be better
off just not trying, but I decided odds were good for some play today and that would be enough for me.

I flew on the roads in towards the course, seeing the storms retreating ahead of me. As I approached Medinah I saw a big bolt of lightning near on the east. I strongly suspect that was indeed the one that hit the hotel some of the players were in and caused concern over whether they (including Mickelson) would make their times, having been evacuated without their clubs and playing clothing. All worked out though, they got back in.

I had one false start at the bus, realizing I had forgotten my beat up umbrella I went back to it and missed the bus and had to wait some more,
but I knew I had until at least 12:30 to get to the 9th hole. Indeed, by the time I got there the first group had barely cleared hole 2. I had the same two colleagues I had on Saturday, so we all knew the drill. It took some time to get our gear handed out, but everything worked when set up and we were ready long in advance, time enough to watch some play on 10 and get some hot dogs.

When they play in 3's on both sides, the top half of the field tees off 1, with the leaders last, while the bottom half goes on 10 with the bottom 3 last. (Aside -- I've never understood this -- if you sent the back half off 10 in the usual worst to best order the holes on the back 9 would see the field in normal order instead of screwed up order.
There must be some other reason why they go this way. Maybe the TV people want to insure that by the time the last few groups are finishing nothing interesting could be going on on the front 9 that they would want to cover?

The play was mostly uneventful. Tiger was about 3 groups in and naturally had a big crowd. He had a decent drive, but didn't like his second and wound up in the right bunker (the pin was set front right, just in front of a bunker). He chunked it out and I watched as he stared at it and didn't mark -- sure sign he wasn't on the green. he
bogeyed it and after a good start stumbled a bit there and didn't get near theT6 he needed to make the tour championship.

As the leaders started to come through we looked hard at the passing standards for the scores. Nobody was making a serious run and Justin Thomas, who started with a 6 shot lead. The closest going past us was Lucas Glover, who missed the fariway, but hit the water bottle (a bottle from a volunteer marshal, who must have snuck it in, since the tournament passed out water in cardboard boxes with a big claim it was more earth friendly. I don't know, those boxes had plastic spouts, like juice cartons, and what seemed to be foil liners. likely more material and less recyclable than all plastic bottles). He hit a decent shot over our heads to the green.

I had a memory moment when the Thomas group came through. He hit a long one and I watched Maltby walk into the fairway past us and quickly looked over to see his cart -- yep, the same crappy blue soft cooler full of ice and diet coke he had in his cart 5 years ago in Edmonds Oklahoma.

I did make one mistake on laser, reversing Paul Casey and someone else in his group. I don't know whether it was strictly my error or getting the wrong info from the system. There were a lot of problems with communication from the walking scorer, and a lot of scoring errors today. That error is easy to fix -- call the shotlink truck. I also
had the duty to call a rules official, something that never happens for shotlink. Max Homa hit one way right into an area trampled by fans and carts. I had the radio and no other responsibilities so I wandered near there to help spot the ball for the laser guy. When Homa arrived he asked me to call for a ruling. Turns out he thought someone had stepped on the ball which was embedded in mud. They let him lift and place it, and since the laser and tablet were in his line I had to radio that to
shotlink too since nobody was there to record his free drop.

All along we heard about problems on 5, a par 5 with OB on the left where there was always confusion about who hit a provisional and what ball counted, and 7, where the walking scorers seemed to be making a lot of mistakes. Nothing much on our hole though, until Oosthuizen hit a really nice shot from right in front of us. There was a bit of noise from the green and a signal that it went in. Sure enough, it did for an eagle.

It was sad watching the end of the field, which included some real stars (Koepka, Mcilroy, Fowler, DeChambeau, and others. Oh well, we got to
watch these guys close up and see how they sized up shot and planned them. Very cool. Cameron Champ had the longest drive of the day -- also the last one hit. A monster up the left side that hit a tree, and still got 350 yards off the tee just barely in the rough. An impressive blast to finish with.

That was all for us, and a quick walk back and short wait for a bus got me home not long after 6, way better than I thought it might have been. I don't know that we will do this one next year. It's in the far southern suburbs of Chicago (Olympia Fields) which is too far to commute for us, and the August date puts it in conflict with other events we are thinking about doing next year, but I'm not sorry I saw this one through. Medinah is always worth looking at, it's a beautiful course and probably the first place I experienced tournament golf (The Western Open in the 1960's). It's also nice to feel you are making a difference in an even that raises millions for the college scholarships.

Who knew this would be the last event for 2 years, and the next one would be a very different experience for me.

The 2021 Senior Open

Alone again, unnaturally

2020 was a lost year for most, for me more than most.  My wife of nearly 50 years and partner in all the tournaments up until now suffered a recurrence of cancer and I lost her in early 2021.  COVID made the whole world strange for over a year, and pretty much shut out the tournament volunteer business.  As Carla's heath declined I did make a decision to sign up for two events in 2021 figuring I could cancel if she were still with me, but if she weren't the familiar routine of tournament volunteer life might provide some comfort.  Fortunately I picked the two that actually used distant volunteers.  The US Open and Women's open, which had both been on our list to do, wound up not using anyone from outside of California.

The tournament took place in Omaha, where Carla and I had done one in 2013, which made the whole thing familiar and totally alien at the same time.  I drove the 6 hours alone, something I hadn't done in a long time, but have to get used to now, and checked into a local hotel not far from where I'd be parking for the tournament.  Being in Omaha a few days early allowed me to take two days to drive and play golf in two states I had never done so, Kansas, where I played at a casino resort course rated the best public in the state, and South Dakota where I played a humble local course with friendly people, mature trees, and an interesting design.  That makes 37 states I have played in with the prospect of getting several more from my second tournament stop in Connecticut.

I expected the biggest problem I'd have would be finding restaurants where I wanted to eat alone.  That was a problem but not in the way I expected.  The problem was that everything shut down for the 4th of July, which produced two days of the largest fireworks show I'd ever seen, a 360 degree panorama of skyrockets that went on for two ours each of 2 nights courtesy mainly of ordinary citizens of Omaha, but reduced me to fast food one night, and many places had closed during the Covid shutdown but the restaurant guides had not been updated.

Getting to know you again (Tuesday at Omaha Country Club).

Tuesday, after a quick 18 at a local muni course near my hotel (surprisingly good), I headed for the course.  I hadn't really planned this but with nothing I needed to do until a 4PM class in scoring I wound up walking the whole course backwards.  It was a good way to see a lot of players practicing and take note of changes.  The layout was the same as it had been in 2013, but they took out a lot of trees (in this case an improvement for sure), and built some new "way back" tee boxes.  That only accentuated the hills in the layout.  A couple of deep valleys run through the course, and many holes either descend into them or rise out of them, or in the case of 17 and 18, cross them.  The new tee boxes mean even some holes that run in the valleys now have tee boxes nearly at the top.  I noted that most of these were ones I wouldn't need to walk back to as a scorer.  

The biggest change in the course was that there were no grandstands.  That meant no place for fans to sit. I really wished I had brought along one of our small folding chairs for that day, but there were a lot of shady picnic tables near the concession stands and on Tuesday at least there weren't many fans out there to use them so I took advantage of several.  Later I got the story on what happened.  Apparently the USGA had to plan the construction long before COVID restrictions were released and at the time grandstands were considered unsafe.  By the time they relaxed that it was too late to build them, especially since that would have required changing the layout of hospitality tents and other structures around holes to accommodate them, so this is no doubt only a temporary setup.

By 3PM I was beat and crashed in the air conditioned volunteer tent, where the class would be.  They had some snacks and drinks too.  The fancy insulated water bottle they gave all the volunteers really came in handy that day since they had set up refilling stations for them everywhere.  Those were open to everyone, so fans were refilling their gatorade and purchased water bottles as well.  (Another change I noticed was the water bottles they sold to fans and gave to players and volunteers were unusual, with smooth, thick walls.  I wondered whether this was because the walls on the standard bottles had gotten so thin that the bottles crackled when you drank from them as they collapsed in your hand, and the noise bothered players.)  Unfortunately the quality of snacks for volunteers was not what it was in 2013, when a local food giant had donated supplies of jerky and other products they produced for volunteers.  This time we mainly got the things they sold in the concessions, and had tickets for concessions food for lunch.  Oh well the food wasn't really why I came.

As the class approached other scorers started occupying the seats and I recognized a few from other tournaments.  We gathered at tables and talked about how we all spent the last 3 years and those who had worked about the oddness of tournaments during that time.  Being alone I guess I talked more to others.  My hat full of pins no doubt pegged me as a long time volunteer people wanted to talk to.  I ran into Ken from the USGA who I knew from many tournaments and most recently from correspondence over the online course in scoring, which had an answer wrong in one of their quizzes that I reported and Ken fixed and wrote back.  He said Ross, head of scoring would be there too but not that day, and that Pam would be doing the scoring central job.  Sue, the woman who usually takes the radio controls also does something for the Olympics and I wasn't surprised she would miss this year.  Pam also works with the PGA tour in scoring.

The class was pretty much review, but I did note some changes.   They were using the same windows phones for scoring as before and the app was mostly similar.  Maybe the biggest change was that they had figured out how to mount the thing sideways on the clipboard, which gave a bit more room for some things than the old "portrait" screens.  The work flow had been simplified a bit so you were now lead through all the pre-round activities of putting in player clothing, your name, and reporting "in position", and I think the exception handling (things like provisionals and penalty drops) had been simplified.  There would be only two holes with lasers and only for drive distance so we were told we didn't need to record every free drop, and we wouldn't be doing "stance and lie".  I never minded that stuff but didn't mind the change.

One change I liked was that they apparently took my (and probably other scorer's feedback that the device needs to provide a default location for every place on the course.  This was a problem in 2018 especially around par 3's, where there are many areas mowed to fairway height, but the USGA says par 3's have no fairway.  Apparently the problem was the app was using a tee shot landing on a fairway for statistics and didn't want that for par 3's.  Now they can map areas on par 3's as fairway without counting a ball landing there as a fairway hit in statistics.  (The trouble before is that the device required you to pick some other area off a menu, which scorers would forget to do especially if the device was in a bag because of rain and the screen obscured, and it wouldn't go to the next player or next hole without that.  They also repositioned some buttons that I think make it harder to record "in the hole" accidentally.  Declaring a player "in the hole" prematurely is the one problem you can't fix yourself, and has the other bad effect of reporting an incorrect score to everyone else. 

We were also given some hints at where scorecard verification was, which I noted having had the experience before of getting lost trying to find it in the dark, and where we would be getting our devices and standard bearers, the clubs caddie shack.

Another Interesting Practice day (Wednesday at the Senior Open

Wednesday is practice scoring day.  I started out bright and early after being awakened by storms at 4AM to find the VIP lot they put us in. That's a good deal -- it's a paved high school parking lot with limo buses to get you to the course.  It's still a walk to the lovely "caddie shack" where scoring suits up, but it's a flat walk behind the driving range.  I was early there in the drizzle so I just watched the practice.  Putting practice routines of the pros can be interesting.  One guy had a level,tees, and a sharpie he was actually marking the green with to set up some kind of drill.  Mostly though they just beat balls, mostly with irons

The Caddie shack could have been in the movie.  An ugly battered shed with green painted metal sides an a metal roof that looks like a few branches have landed on it and is growing weeds, and just about as nice inside, but it's dry and big enough to hold all the scoring clipboards, radios, standards, and other gear plus a few people. They even set up a tent and some chairs nearby for all the volunteers using that area.

This was a little different from past practice days, in that they sent us off in groups of 4, everyone getting a radio and a scoring device (no need to share).  We were told just to pick up the first group on the tee and practice everything.  The first group on the tee was Langer, Pavin, and two qualifiers, not bad.  There was even some talk about a match, but apparently they didn't do it.  The round was the usual jumble of extra shots and nothing really completed.  (Langer and Pavin didn't even try their short birdie putts, just picking them up and putting to other place on the green.

I had a chance to try just about everything in the scoring system, provisionals, drops, penalties, and even editing stroke trails to fix problems without calling them in (something they don't usually tell you, but with one scoring control operator serving 26 groups on the course at once it can get a little backed up getting things fixed if people are making errors as they often do.  Everything worked pretty well (other than my usual problem with touch screens sometimes deciding they don't like me.)

There are a lot of experienced scorers here, but many who have done it only for PGA tour events.  Apparently the systems used have diverged a bit since Carla and I did a PGA tour event (hard to believe that was 7 years ago now), so I got to show a lot of people how to do provisionals, penalties, and other things you hope they don't need to do.

They mowed the grass a bit overnight, creating a more reasonable "first cut", but the stuff is still crazy long outside the ropes, and unless there's a surge of fans tomorrow to trample it going there is basically a punch out only for anyone who goes there.

It was interesting watching the group.  Pavin is a fine player around the greens, but his lack of of length is clearly going to be a problem for him.  He hit from a forward tee box on a couple of the long par 3s, and still didn't match the shots played by the others, and he was always the first to hit on the fairway.  His caddie actually rode a golf cart, something I hadn't seen before.  The qualifiers were as always, sincere, with their wives following them the whole way.  I wished both of them the best of luck the next two days, fully knowing that most of those that didn't play on tour fall to the cut on Friday.  There's just too much learned knowledge in playing super slick greens and nasty rough that you have to learn the hard way.

The drizzly weather did cause one problem -- the radio transmitter of one of the guys I was with started turning on by itself, locking everyone else out.  The trouble was we were all together and it was tough identifying whose radio was the culprit, because the mike was picking up everyone's voice.  I was a little relieved it wasn't mine, but I still shut the radio off when I used a porta potty.  There are just some things you don't want to accidentally broadcast.

The course is a major hike, but there are plenty of places scorers don't need to go back to the tee box which saves some and saves a lot of climbing.  It still left me without much leg power at the end of the day to do anything but cash in my lunch ticket and eat it at a table between the 1st and 10th tees, then go home. Since several of us scoring that group had considerable experience in various courses there was some discussion on which was the worst to walk.  I don't think this one is worse than Erin Hills, but it's probably second among the ones we did. Apparently there's a course in Iowa that sometimes hosts an event that's even worse because in addition to having lots of ups and downs it's even more spread out, meaning lots of hiking to tees.  Snoqualmie Ridge, where they play the Boeing Classic is a bit like that but they have volunteers with shuttle carts to get everyone past the worst of the climbs and walks.  No help here.

The tee times for Thursday and Friday are out.  I don't think I've got any big names, but it's always fun to do this.   I just hope the weather isn't bad.  Forecast is now okay through Friday but bad on Saturday, but at least once the cut is made they have options to speed up the finish.

Just when you think you've seen it all (Tursday at the Senior Open)

After doing almost 20 tournaments as a walking scorer I don't often encounter a new situation, but I did today.  It was cool and overcast most of the day.  They are still a bit disorganized and apparently had a lot of no shows for volunteers, so there was a bit of a scramble assigning scorers and standard bearers, but I got the group I was originally scheduled for and a capable high school kid to carry the sign.  I had Mark Hensby, Barry Lane, and Estavan Toledo.  3 international players.  All were usually pretty straight.  Hensby out drove the others by 30 yards or more on most holes and it quickly helped him get under par and on the leader board for a while.  Lane struggled and mainly went backwards, while Toledo hung around even for a long time.  Nothing remarkable happened on the front 9, but I noticed Hensby had taken 3 stops for the port-a-johns along the way, not typical.  Half way down 10, after hitting a good drive, he called to get first aid because he was experiencing a rapid heart rate. Someone official outside the ropes (Rules, I think) heard him and handled it.  He played out the rest of 10 in poorly, bogeying it after hitting 2 approach shots short, then first aid arrived and started checking him while the others teed off.  As I crossed the tee box to find out whether he was going to play one of the caddies said they thought he was done and they were going to move on to the green (11 is a par 3).  I radioed in to scoring that we were going on and it was likely he was done but I would await official confirmation.  (The person on scoring control will notice if you start putting in second shots for a player before everyone in the group has hit a first shot so I wanted to reassure them I hadn't screwed up). Toledo and lane finished about the time I got word from Pam, the scoring control operator that Hensby had withdrawn, and I had to remove him from my player list (not hard to do, but under most circmustances it doesn't really work because if your scores ever get refreshed the player re-appears.  This time they had already taken him out and my removing him avoided the need to reset my device, which I did. )

Toledo and Lane played on reasonably for the next few, but Toledo had a disaster on 14, a short (for them) uphill par 4, when he chunked 2 approaches short (the second onto the green), then 3 putted for a double.  That seemed to be the end.  Lane just leaked shots, including a trip to the "native area" on 16, an area of long grass and weeds adjoining a creek running between 16 and 12.  At least they found the ball, better than what happened to someone in the group ahead.

I had a minor scare on one of the holes on the back when I was trying to use the information on the green map that is displayed so you can position where the ball is to help sort it out and I noticed that next to Toledo's name and distance from the hole it said "5 shots".  Huh?  I only put in 4.  Lane's shot count was correct, so I couldn't have accidentally given a stroke to the wrong player (a pretty common error), so I ignored that nervously while I positioned the ball and recorded his putt -- his 5th shot.  After which the device correctly displayed his stroke count.  Apparently the software counts the shot you are setting up for (which hasn't actually been made yet) in the count it displays for the player you have selected.  Bad design.  (I later had a chance to report it to Ken, who I know took it seriously since he remembered I found the wrong answer in the online course quiz which apparently nobody else had reported.)

No further incidents and a smooth finish, but at +5 and +8 those guys are not likely to make the cut.  (Followup.  Toledo at +5 after one day didn't, but Lane actually was under par on Friday and made the cut.

After confirming the scores and statistics, then turning in the gear I grabbed some lunch, zoned out in the air conditioned volunteer tent (which required hiking all the way down and up 18 again) watching the TV coverage, and watched a bit more play on 10,11, 16 and 17 (all from one shady spot above the 11th green) before heading back.  Everyone seemed to be falling into a collection area left of 11 (which my players avoided), and Verplank had a disaster there, coming up short twice before getting one on the green (and saving a double), then going left into the natural area on 12.  From his current score it didn't get much better after that.

That's it for today.  I'll be back later tomorrow for the 1:59 tee time off number 1.  (According to current info that's Doug Baron, Glenn Day, and David Mackenzie, but there's no guarantee that won't  change or that they won't switch me to another group if there's a shortage of scorers like there was today.)  I'm just hoping the predicted storms hold off long enough to finish.

So far I haven't seen anything on Hensby's condition.  I hope the guy is okay,  You really don't expect to see a player have a serious medical problem like that, especially one who I think was among the younger players in the field and looked to be in good shape, but you never know.  (After 3 days I still don't know how he came out, but I learned he was the player assessed a 10 stroke penalty for playing a ball with an incorrect marking in violation of the "one ball" rule in a PGA tour event a month ago and was only 49 at the time, making him one of the youngest players in the Senior Open field).

A hot one (Friday at the Senior Open)

The forecast for Friday was very hot, with the potential for strong storms late.  It wasn't bad in the morning.  I spent some time watching play on 10 and 11 (you can sit in the shade there) when I showed up, but my shift didn't start until 2PM.  In the morning it was temperate and breezy, which made for some big scores on 11, a par 3 with a tiny green surrounded by trouble.  By 2 the wind had died and the temperature soared.  I was lucky enough to get a standard bearer who was a caddie at the course, so he knew where to go, how to keep hydrated, and most importantly how to know what the players scored and change the standard numbers.

My group wasn't big names, but they were all capable of making the cut:  Doug Barron, who turned out to be a big hitter and capable, Glen Day, who was deliberate and the shortest of the group but mostly pretty accurate, and David Mackenzie, another Australian who was the highest starting score but played solidly.

We starred well with Barron getting a Birdie to get to +1.  About that time a radio call said a caddie in some other group went down with a bad knee and they needed another caddie.  3 minutes later they called back to say that the standard bearer in that group was a caddie at the club too and could take over.  Nice opportunity for someone. That meant he just left the Standard on the 12th hole.  Much later they would pick up another standard bearer and scoring had a bit of a scramble to find the dropped one and get it too him.

Lots of scorers had trouble - equipment failures, and lots of messed up shots.  We just chugged along getting mostly pars on the front 9 and birdies to balance bogies.  Day had lots of opportunities, but couldn't sink a putt for anything.  He even 3 putted by missing a putt of less than 2 feet in one spot.  As we were teeing off 14, there was a roar behind from the 13th green. (There's a big hospitality tent high on a hill behind it) 13 is a short par 4 that most (all of my players) hit an iron and then try to wedge in close, but Jimenez hit driver and hit the green, with about 10 feet for eagle.  (He missed.  The only eagle I heard called in was my guy Toledo, who got on 6, a short par 5, in two).  14 proved eventful.  Day chipped in from about 40 feet from the intermediate rough.  (The course has no fringe around the greens, just nasty intermediate rough, which probably does stop a few balls that would otherwise go into the really long stuff).  He birded the next one, a par 3, too, while the others missed putts for par after getting in trouble off the tee.  On 16,  Day tried to reach the green with a wood out of the intermediate rough and nearly went in a hazard, stumbling to a bogie, which didn't help.  18 was painful.  Mackenzie and Day were left off the tee in the woods and had to lay up and eventually bogie, but Barron came up short as well and bogied too.    I really felt bad for Mackenzie, whose bogie took him from +7 to +8 and one over the projected cut.

Tomorrow is going to be all messed up.  Forecast is for thunderstorms most of the day, but they want to start in 3's off both tees at 7:15 to try to get it in.  I don't know if I have a group to score yet, since those decisions tend to be made later in the evening when the committee and USGA folks look at how many groups go out and who can score for them.

At least the next two days aren't supposed to be hot.

Trashed Twice (Saturday at the Senior Open)

I got the word late the night before that I didn't have a group to score on Saturday, but was assigned as an alternate to come in at 8AM.  I knew I was unlikely to wind up with a group but didn't mind that given the forecast.

I awoke to storms at about midnight, and think there was a fire alarm or a tornado siren about 3, but by the time I really woke up all was silent and nobody seemed to be evacuating so I just went back to sleep.  Just about the time I got up to get ready my phone displayed a message that play was being delayed. and we would get word by 9AM when to come in.  It was too late to go back to sleep, so I dressed and had breakfast, then waited.

We got the word to come in for a 10:15 start.  I was only an alternate today and didn't wind up getting a group.  Getting to the course was an adventure.  Power was out in the area so no traffic lights.  As we were riding the bus and wondering what would be working on course it occurred to me that there are advantages to having everything powered by generators, which most of the stuff is. Things seemed pretty normal coming in, until you looked around on the course.

There were lots of trees down, some cleared, and some just dragged to the side.  Leaderboards and TV towers got trashed too, so the coverage might be a little unusual as a result.  They were still working on some of the other structures (hospitality tends, concession stands, and even some of the stairs in the entry way which is about the highest point on course.

I spent a couple of hours waiting near the caddie barn in case scorers didn't show and a lot of time talking to other scorers. Some are familiar since we worked the same tournaments, and some aren't.  People have all kinds of patterns and reasons for the tournaments they do.  Some mostly do the PGA tour events and prefer them.  One woman there did lots of events every year but had no interest in women's events.  We all swapped stories about players, rules issues, equipment failures, and other aspects of the tournament life.  For me it almost seemed like a reunion, since I've been out of this for 3 years.  I did get some interesting perspectives.  About 3 years ago the USGA stopped having walking rules officials with each group in their championships.  I thought they might have had trouble getting enough people for that, but apparently the players had been complaining about the rules people because some were "chatty" and that became distracting.  It is true that the ones that walked with me often wanted to talk to me or the players.  Maybe with experienced scorers getting rid of the distraction of having the rules official want to talk will help, though the rules official was often useful as another set of eyes to see what was happening on course.  (Though at least once I had one who was convinced I had the score wrong when I didn't).  Another discussion was on why the players seem extra touchy about fan noise -- the answer is the long COVID shutdown that kept the fans out.  Now that fans are back and walking and making noise while they are playing they aren't used to it any more.  Makes sense.  There was lots of talk about various tournaments.  One that some had tried to get into that they couldn't was the Phoenix open.  They apparently have a long waiting list for scoring volunteers.  I wasn't sure if that would be my goal in tournaments, but oddly enough I ran into another scorer in the hotel breakfast area the next day who worked that tournament.  He was retired and spent the winters in Phoenix and had been doing it a while.  He said it was normally really fun, but the 2021 event held during the COVID shutdown was spooky.  Only 5,000 fans total, and the 16th green, which is normally surrounded by a 3 tier grandstand, had only one tier and only a smattering of fans there.  I asked how he got on the PGA tour and he said it was because he had done an event in Iowa where he lives many years and then got onto scoring.  Another scorer I talked with several times talked about the trouble of getting into the Solheim Cup.  Carla and I did two Solheims on leaderboards, but got re-assigned to something else at the one in Iowa and wound up working the Senior Amateur instead.  (It didn't make sense for us to do what they assigned us to which required local knowledge).  He was one of 3 people who weren't members of the host club who got to score for that one and did so only because he had a long scoring record and had long worked for a company sponsoring the event.  Connections really matter, unfortunately.

The course itself seemed fine, but the weather forecast wasn't.  After all the players were away and I wasn't needed I left my mobile number with the chair for scoring and spent a couple of hours watching play. The other alternates either did the same or went home. (I guess when you are near home there are more pressing or interesting things to do than watch from outside the ropes.) I didn't see anything spectacular, but it's always interesting.  I kept an eye on the weather though.  This is the first tournament I've done where I was glad to have a phone on course and be on a plan with enough data that I felt I could use it, and it was clear another line of storms was forming to the west.  When the weather advisory went to orange (you get yellow for the possibility of bad weather, orange for when they think it's coming, and red when they are about to stop play), I came back near the clubhouse so I could either get on a bus or take shelter in the caddie shack if things got bad. When it looked like the storms would arrive very soon and the line of storms was thick enough that it would stop for a while, I decided I had had it.  A long delay meant scorers and standard bearers would be brought in and need the caddie shed space and play would be suspended for hours, so I headed for the bus, reaching it about 30 seconds after the horn blew.  It was raining by the time we reached the parking lot, and I drove back to the hotel in a deluge. Still no traffic lights in the area, which was made doubly fun by rain so hard it was tough to see the other cars at those dead lights.  The rain was so hard that when I reached the hotel I sat in the car for half an hour, and still got soaked making the short walk to the door even though I had an umbrella.  There has to be major standing water on the course now.

Update -- they actually restarted, 3 hours later, and finished the 3rd round, so Sunday is supposed to be normal.  I just got the final schedule, and I have the second to last group, Steve Flesch and Retief Goosen.  At least I won't have trouble keeping them straight, and I'll likely have a good standard bearer and probably a scoring supervisor to work with as well.  I might even wind up on TV, so if you see a white haired guy in a blue shirt with his face buried in a green clipboard with that group it's me.  I just hope I don't have any trouble with the sun on the phone, which makes it hard to see and hard to make the touchscreen work.  I think Furyk has a 4 shot lead, which looks pretty solid, but all it takes is one bad hole to make this competitive.

Almost a winner

I showed up nice and early for my assignment today.  That was partly because there's not much to do in a hotel room alone, and partly because I wanted to make sure I'd get a parking space in the lot I had a pass to and didn't want to be late.  I spent some time talking with another scorer who was at my hotel before that.  He had an earlier group, which was fine with him.  On the bus I rode with a woman who had a group about an hour before mine and was nervous about it  No need for that, it really goes well, most of the time.  I rode back on the bus with her too and she was apparently a bit thrown because they sent out someone to check on her when her device had trouble with connectivity.

I spent a couple of hours just watching golf from various places.  The trouble with starting everyone off the first is it takes a long time before you get play on the back, and the back is much easier to get to to watch than the front, most of which is down a big hill from the clubhouse.  Not that much going on. I was a little surprised that Barry Lane, one of my players from earlier, recognized me along the ropes and said high.  I told him it was good to see him playing the weekend and wished him luck.

At about an hour to go I trudged down to the caddie shack and found things very quiet.  No alternates hanging around, just a couple of scorers and standard bearers for the last few groups.  I quickly met my standard bearer, a capable young man who had done it and played golf.  I was a little concerned about whether the wind would be a problem, but it really wasn't, he handled the standard mainly by himself with my checking in after score changes. One poignant moment was when the scorer for the last group came in and asked about Carla.  I had to tell him why she wasn't there, and he was genuinely sorry.  We had worked with him at Chambers Bay and several other tournaments.

One place I had waited was behind the clubhouse, where there was a cop in a cart waiting and he said he was going with the last group.  I asked if anyone was going with the second to last and he confirmed we would have security.  At about 2:30, we all met up on the tee.  In addition to a police officer, we quickly picked up a TV spotter, a commentator, and camera and microphone operators.  They were all walking, so it wasn't really a big problem for everyone to stay out of the way.  Goosen and Flesch both introduced themselves.  The tee announcer and I were old friends by now.  (I think he's done other tournaments.)  On a humorous note he made a special point of telling us not to stand in front of the Rolex sign on the tee, so we slunk off to the back.  I probably still got into any coverage of the tee shots, not deliberately.

The first hole started well, with Goosen birdieing to get to -4.  We then played pretty steady for several holes.  Both of my players mainly kept it in the fairway and on the green.  When we finished 6 with two birdies, I looked at a leaderboard and noticed that Furyk had stumbled back to -5 and was now only one shot ahead.  That's as close as things got though with both Goosen and Flesch backing up a bit.

At the turn I picked up a scoring supervisor.  I expected one the whole group as I had with other late weekend groups, but he said they were short handed and he got to the course late because he had to drive Pam, the normal scoring control operator, to the airport.  He quickly realized I was doing okay and didn't get in the way.  On a humorous note when one of us stumbled on something in the rough that turned out to be just a walnut, he talked about the problem of odd balls on the course.  In fact in this tournament someone tried to drive the first green and lost the ball.  His ball wasn't found but several others were.  He says whenever he finds odd balls on the course he picks them up just to avoid any potential for a competitor to play the wrong ball.  Sounds like a good idea.  Lots of stuff just gets lost on courses.  Somewhere there's a candy bar I took out of the 10th tee cooler on Friday that disappeared off my clipboard before I could get to eating it, probably somewhere around the 10th green where my players went over and I had to scramble to see where they shots went.  Hopefully some marshal or fan got a good snack.

Of course I had a screwup on 10.  I gave the fairway shot to the wrong player, but I realized it and fixed the stroke trails.  The locations of a couple of shots are off but that's less important and there's no way to fix that.  The problem is it's very hard to see the screen when the sun in shining on it and easy to pick the wrong player in the fairway.  I mentioned that to the scoring supervisor and he said there's a change in a new scoring app they are trialing that allows you to select black text on a white background, which is much more readable in bright conditions.  I look forward to that.

13 was an interesting hole, a short driveable par 4.  Both players used 3 woods and wound up right of the green in rough.  Goosen actually got up and down for birdie.  After that my scoring supervisor was trying to correct the standard bearer's scores, and I had to remind him the hole was a par 4 an the results were par and birdie, not bogie and par.

On 15, a downhill par 3, Flesch was long and right in a bunker, and holed the bunker shot for a birdie.  Goosen was all over 16, a par 5, and made birdie after being in the woods right off the tee, then almost putting his punch out into the long "natural area" near the creek, but hit a great 3rd out of deep rough and sunk the putt. That got him back to -4, but unfortunately Furyk was moving forward again and had gotten to -7.  That's where it finished.  Flesch unfortunately had a blow up on 18, a drive way left in the woods, a punch out too far right, a shot out of the rough short of the green, followed by a bad chip and two putts for a double.  He started playing those shots fast and I suspect had lost interest.  He was the only player who didn't give out signed balls, and I didn't ask.  When a pro has a bad finish, the best thing is just leave them alone.

That's it for Omaha, just a little rest and the drive home, and in 2 weeks I'll be arriving in CT for the senior Women's, after stopping in Rhode Island to pass on some things Carla wanted her cousins to have.

The tournament was fun, but it's tough not having my partner to talk with in the evening, and so much of the whole process of doing this reminds me of her.  Not only was she responsible for getting me into this, but she figured out a lot of the logistics for both of us, including how to dress, some special items like a super thin wallet and secure pill carrier to carry the things I need to take before those late rounds finish, and a lot of the tricks of how to do the job well.  I know she would have loved this one, even if it would have been a very tough walk for her even without the cancer.  So many good memories.  I do plan to keep at this as long as I can do it and look forward to the Senior Women's and at least 3 next year.

The 2021 Senior Women's Open.

The Senior Women's open was also cancelled in 2020, and unlike the men's tournament the women's just pushed it back a year in the same place, Bridgeport CT.  I signed up eagerly since I had been planning a trip to Rhode Island anyway to pass on some things my wife wanted her family to have, and after a mostly successful trip for that.  (The only bad part being a hotel that lost all their staff during a long weekend and left all their guests locked out of their rooms), I moved on to Bridgeport.

The Preliminaries at the Senior Women's Open

I showed up on Monday just long enough to walk in from the high school we parked at early week and get my credential and uniform.  That's quite a hike, 3 long holes worth, but the setup looks very nice. I played a local course in the afternoon getting paired with an older couple walking who had great stories and ideas for other places to play. They had tickets for Thursday or Friday and were really psyched for that. 

Tuesday I played another course, nice, before showing up late afternoon at the high school for training.  It was again odd doing the scoring training today alone.  Lots of familiar faces, including two sisters from Canada who do all the women's events who only recently got permission to cross the border from Canada to do this one.  I don't know if I'd do that given the constantly changing rules -- too much chance you won't get to go back.

This tournament is being done much like the first one, except no fans on practice days.  For the tournament fans are in, though no grandstands, but no ropes either -- you can walk with the players, and those include Laura Davies, Julie Inkster, Annika Sorrenstam, and many more (but not Barb Mucha, uncle Kenny's player for many years this time).   I'm scheduled to work four days at the tournament, relatively late times Thursday/Friday/Saturday, and Sunday''s times haven't been assigned yet.  The weather is dubious Thursday, but good the rest of the time, and this isn't a full field so some rain delay can be tolerated.

The layout is a bit odd -- they are starting on 1 and 12 tee, not 1 and 10, because 10 doesn't come near the clubhouse.  The course is an older course (Tillinghast I think) with some hills but nothing extreme, and a bit spread out for an old course.  I haven't had that much opportunity to preview it -- tomorrow's practice round should be interesting.  One curiosity -- This is the first time volunteer headquarters has been a bowling alley.  The place has an 8 lane alley under the clubhouse and of course that's where we have our staging area.

Practice makes Perfect (Wednesday)

Wednesday was practice day, both for the players and the scorers.  I showed up at dawn for the long hike to the clubhouse from the pre-tournament parking (basically 3 long holes to walk), and showed up in plenty of time.  Again it was interesting chatting with other scorers about experiences.  One hadn't done USGA scoring but had been an LPGA caddie (no he didn't know Kenny, maybe the wrong era).  Others had done amateur or state events, where all they needed to get right was the score and wondered about the difficulty of this, which I tried to explain the way it was told to me -- the tour and the USGA both want to be comprehensive information suppliers so fans will stay glued to their online sites (and watch their ads) rather than going for other sources of golf info.

Overnight rain slowed the start and thinned the field of competitors a bit.  It wasn't until near 8 that I got into a group of 8 scorers to be saddled up and sent as two groups of 4 to the tees.  At some point I had the inspiration to suggest the guy ask who had experience and when there were only two of us who had done it send one with each group.  That got me a group of 3 older women, all Brooklawn members, to help train.

We waited a bit for a group of at least 3 on the tee, and finally got one, with 3 qualifiers nobody knew.  Their clothing was distinctive enough though that identifying who was who wasn't a problem and as expected they were all good consistent players, not perfect.  My trainees could actually help me figure out where the next hole was most of the time, which was good, while I got them through all the usual rookie scorer mistakes and a few I had never seen before.  Our players and their caddies were pleasant enough and just as curious about what we were doing.  One of the caddies, a younger woman, had in fact been a walking scorer and knew all about it, but most had never been in an event with scorers before.

The course is going to be a challenge, both for players and scorers. All the greens are elevated with bunkers very close, meaning not much room around the green to stand where you can see the putts go in.  The good, or bad news for us is no standard bearers, so one fewer person to have to stand there but one fewer pair of eyes to look. It's also sneaky hilly, like many older courses, with fairways that dip into little creek valleys with steep sides.  Not as much as Omaha, but definitely a hike (at least the rest of the week we won't have to hike those extra 3 holes in each direction, the shuttles used take you right to the clubhouse.

The greens are fast, hard, and have lots of subtle undulations.  I saw a lot of chips that went nowhere near where they were planning, but that's why you practice.

Our players quit on 13, and that was enough, and I took off for a 40 minute drive to Pound Ridge NY to check another state off my list of places to play. 

Thursday  I have the 1:25 tee time, 3 players I don't know, and probably weather trouble.  Friday  I'm 1:06 and think I have one player I've heard of in the group.  It should be fun as always, and hopefully we will finish up here without weather problems before the virus shuts down the world again as seems to be starting elsewhere.

Awash at Brooklawn (Thursday)

With an afternoon tee time I got in relatively late, riding the bus with another scorer I had a nice chat with along the way, then we watched Annika, Laura Davies, and other stars of the morning wave play most of the last 7 holes (3 of which finish near the clubhouse).  Laura Davies is still amazing.  I don't know how she manages to always wear a black quilted vest, even on hot days, but she hits the ball a mile and she's decent around the greens.  Annika looked like the Annika of old.  She actually missed a couple of putts on those holes or she would have been even lower, but -5 was good enough for the lead, though she was eventually tied.

After collecting my lunch (my choice of items from a couple of food trucks that came in for the tournament, way better than typical tournament fare), and watching a bit more golf, I headed down to the bowling alley to gear up.  I had group 32:  Amy Kennedy (an amateur qualifier), Kimberly WIlliams, and Tonya Gill Dankaert (both listed as pros, and both probably not much more than 50. )

They all showed up at the last minute, much to my relief as I listened to another scorer trying to figure out what to do when one of his players wasn't there on time to start.

Amy had an odd swing, like she was compensating for joint problems, and was consistently the shortest hitter, but mostly played the rest well, while Kim and Tonya bombed it and mainly played solidly.  The weather was overcast and windy, and the forecast not good. After a mostly uneventful downhill par 4 to start, it started to rain a bit on the uphill 13th.  Kim, who played the first hole very solidly hit a bad drive and ultimately took 3 to get on and 3 putted from short range. Ouch.  I was busy stuffing my scoring gear into the plastic bag to keep it dry and figuring out how to record the strokes in there and wasn't absolutely positive I had the score right, but they shot off the next tee in an order consistent with my scores, so I went on.  (With a standard bearer, a player will notice a wrong score quickly, but we didn't have standards so unless a player shows on a leaderboard there's no way for them to know their score is wrong in the system).

Kim righted the ship with a long birdie on the par 3 15th, and when she birdied again on the tricky dogleg uphill 16th to get back to even I finally got to her caddie on 17 to verify the double and recovery.  I appologised saying an under par score would probably put her on the big leaderboard and I didn't want to miss that -- little did I know.

Amy had a disaster on 16, coming up short in 2, then sculling one over the green and chunking the return, ultimately taking a 7.  About that time I noticed the ominous orange glow from the odd little electronic leaderboards they had in various places.  That meant the weather was at DEFCON 3.  (The USGA has 4 levels for weather -- 1 means no problems, 2 means dangerous weather is possible, 3 means it's coming, and 4 means get under cover fast).  No word yet over the radio though, so we played on, while Pam in scoring was trying to unsnarl several scorers with problems (all men, which meant none of the ones I trained the day before).  There were radio failures too to be fair.

As we were coming up to the 18th green I noticed that while I had run out of holes on the back 9 I still had 2 unused spots on my score sheet.  Then I realized -- we started on 12, not 10, and I had been scoring holes on the wrong line for 7 holes.  Nothing to be done about that -- I just crossed out the pre-printed hole numbers and wrote in the holes I scored there making a note to try to explain it to the volunteer reconciling the paper and electronic records.  I doubt I was the only one to do that since I've never done another tournament where the "back 9" was really 7 holes starting with 12.

Kim birdied 18 to go under par, then hit two great shots to number 1 to leave a short putt that I thought was for birdie.  By then Ross had taken over scoring central and warned us that they were tracking one cell that popped up over NYC and was headed our way, but no problems yet.

Kim missed the putt and tapped in and I was surprised when the system was asking me to confirm that was a birdie.  The score was right though, so I went on, with Amy putting out for a 5, and when Tonya two putted for another birdie 4 I realized that even though two of them reached the green with irons and Amy who hit no farther than I did nearly reached it with driver hybrid the hole was a par 5, not a 4.  -2 for Kim was definitely going to get noticed

Hole 2 was a long par 3, and Kim and Tonya missed the green and both barely missed saving par, while Amy, hitting a hybrid off the tee got on and two putted from long range.  By then it was getting dark and ominous.

The 3rd tee is on the other side of a road and we had already been told that on holes 3-10, there would be someone to help if we had to suspend, while on the others you were expected just to walk in to the clubhouse.  All 3 hit the fairway, and just about the time we got to Amy's ball (she was consistently the shortest), Ross says we are 30 seconds away from the horn and I warn her about that saying she can hit if she likes but expect the horn very soon.  She marked, as did the others, and the rain started up.  Ross said we should expect people in golf carts to evacuate, but could also just walk in, which all my players started to do.  As we crossed the road near 3 parked buses, I noticed their luggage compartments open, and a USGA person directed us isntead there saying they were going to hold us in the buses hoping to restart.

Those buses, big tour buses with lots of luggage space, were the best evacuation vehicles I've experienced on a course -- plenty of room for the clubs, unlike short school buses or vans, and lots of room for everyone on board.  We sat there maybe 20 minutes before the driver got out and closed the compartments and start up as word came they were taking us back to the clubhouse.  Not good.

When play suspends, if it's only a short delay, they just restart.  If there's enough rain to damage the course or the suspension is longer than about 45 minutes, they take everyone back and let the players warm up again before going out, and the transportation and warmup pretty much means you need something like 45 minutes of dry weather before a shot is hit, making a restart less likely.

At the clubhouse the players piled inside, leaving the scorers to stumble around the back to get to the stairway to the basement bowling alley.  It was full in there but not so packed there was no seating (unlike Scioto, which had long rain delays).  SMT took our scoring phones to put them on chargers, but the rest of us just grabbed snacks and drinks and sat around talking.  There was a growing movement to get the club to turn on the bowling alleys and let us bowl down there, but it fell on deaf ears.  (I can't complain about our treatment here, the bowling alley is actually quite nice, even if we can't bowl.

Then the usual periodic updates started.  Of course now most of us had phones (which actually worked in that dungeon) and were looking at weather pages full of warnings and filling in with storms.  I doubted we would restart.

At about 5:15 we got the word we were done for the day, along with the news that we wouldn't recognize the world outside because of flooding and they would hold us down there a bit longer until it was safe to walk to buses.  Naturally I turned in my scoring gear, said I'd come back tomorrow to finish, and headed up the stairs and yikes!  They were right.  Rivers were running over the tee boxes, and we were on the highest part of the course.  When the rain let up enough that some of us thought we could sneak around the end of the clubhouse and go for the bus we did, but I still was glad for the waterproof shoes and softspikes to give me a little extra clearance as I waded through streams in the street.  The bus navigated big ponds in the road and a couple of detours to get back to where we parked, but that parking was at least dry, and after a quick beer and pizza stop I'm writing this before crashing.  No word yet on how early the restart is going to be, but I'm betting we need to be there by 6AM to finish 9 holes, then rest and do 18 more later in the day.

A very long day (Friday at the Senior Women's Open)

Without hearing when the restart of the unfinished rounds would be I set my alarm for 5:30.  Even though I got the word when I woke up that the start would be at 8AM I started early, having nothing better to do, which meant getting to the course before 7 and having a chance just to sit in the bowling alley.  Apparently things got more exciting there after I left, with water coming up through the floor and into the gutters for a while, but they kept ahead of it and cleaned up.  The course looked a lot more playable than it had right after the rain, even though they were still working on bunkers and other areas.  Other scorers started showing up and most were in the same situation as me -- holes to finish early, then a long wait for a late afternoon tee time since all the Friday rounds were pushed back 2-1/2 hours.  That meant my Friday round would start at 3:36, touch and go to finish before dark.

As it got past 7 I was wondering when the people who handle the technology would show to pass out our devices, and getting close to just grabbing a radio and trying to reach someone, but they showed just in time, and we had a choice of walking to our holes or riding the bus.  I opted for a 2 hole mostly downhill walk to limber up the legs, and was soon joined by an older man carrying a golf bag that looked like the one belonging to my amateur player.  It was Amy Kennedy's bag and he was her husband, who had been spectating the day before, and said he had taken the bag down because her caddie was late showing up.  The caddie walked in from a different direction saying that caddie parking had been moved and he couldn't get to the clubhouse in time to make the restart so just walked down here.  Both had trouble reaching Amy, who had been left on the putting green where she was supposed to meet her caddie, but she showed up on the bus with the others, and I updated all the clothing and passed on some answers to rules questions (yes, they could clean the balls they marked and lifted last night, but no general lift clean and place, something the USGA doesn't do in championships).

There was a lot of delay finding the last players and scorers, but finally the horn blew and the fairway shots were hit.  Play continued along the same lines as before, with Kimberlie and Tonya mostly making pars and Amy losing a few more strokes.  Hole 7 brought a penalty situation.  It's a long par 5 with a creek in front and a big slope in the fairway ahead of a a flat area behind the creek.  Amy didn't make it all the way down the slope with her second and hit a thin one into the creek, which the rules official in the area saw and tried to help her work out where to drop, though his spotting disagreed with mine and the others.  I never got into the discussion since it wasn't going to matter, she'd never make the cut.  All that fussing didn't help and I think she made double.  Hole 9 brought another strange one -- Tonya hit her drive into the intermediate rough strip on the right, next to a sprinkler and asked for a ruling on whether she got a drop.  The rules official said she could take a drop. (She was 2 inches behind it and would probably have hit it with a good swing with an iron taking a divot).  Of course the 1 club length let her drop in the fairway.  I dutifully recorded the original position, the drop, and the new position being curious whether the player is credited with a fairway hit in this situation.  Naturally, when we got to scoring that hole alerted as a problem because of the stroke sequence showing shot two from the fairway but shot 1 didn't land there.  I explained it all but the guy was more interested in just clearing the error and moving on.

When they entered scoring the USGA person on duty said he would tell them their tee time after they finished verifying the scores.  That was about 10:25.  After 3 or 4 minutes the word came out that they were going out at 10:36 for their second round -- no time to eat, drink, or do anything else, just hike to the first tee and tee off.  I've heard a lot of debate over whether it's better to be "early late", or "late early" in a 4 round tournament where the first two rounds are scheduled one way or the other, but it's clear "late early" gets screwed when play is suspended.  Kim finished even par which was tied 5th, and Amy finished +16 after taking an adventurous 8 on the last hole (into a greenside bunker in 3 on this par 5, then sculled way over the green and almost into the picnic tables for the fans, short and dribbled into another bunker from there and finally out and two more putts.)  They were all having trouble in the bunkers, which were hard packed from all the rain and having been roughly prepared by raking vehicles that left a lot of tracks in them.  Still, it was amazing that the only wet spot we encountered was on a tee to fairway walking path and out of play.

After that came the long wait.  I rested for a while in the bowling alley, then came out and sat on a picnic table for a while talking to another scorer there who had been moved from having an assigned group to being an alternate and wasn't happy.  We talked a long time about tournaments and things we had both done, and as we did eventually she got a text that asked if she could do 3:11, so she got a group off the 12th tee with an earlier time than mine.  It was one of the good ones too, Julie Inkster and Helen Alfredsen as I recall.  I checked out my afternoon group, which would be: Barbara Moxness, Susie Redmond, and Cindy Rarick.  Moxness started at even par, while Redmond and Rarick were +6 and +8.  That meant all could make the likely cut with decent play, but we would see.

The place actually got crowded with fans mid day which meant a long wait for the food trucks to get lunch, so I opted for Pizza which was a shorter line than hot dogs (I always preferred pizza to most other fast food anyway, and this stuff was pretty good, baked on site in an oven in a converted fire engine).

Finally I collected my gear and headed up to stand around the first tee while the two previous groups came through.  Another scorer walked by and said his group was coming up and he looked a bit unready so I asked if he had done it before.  The answer was no, and when he realized I was a pro at this wanted some tips.  I asked when his group was and just from the time I knew he had Annika and Laura Davies.  I hope that was just a random draw and that group wasn't rigged to go to a local person who had no experience, because the star groups are often hard to handle because of the fans and media, and because of the interest scoring mistakes really matter.  I did the best I could to give him some tips, but I felt bad for Pam in scoring who would no doubt be making some corrections for him.

When my players showed up they all were dressed distinctively and easy to tell apart.  Moxness seemed older than the others and unphased by the competition, while Redmond and Rarick both looked new to "Senior" golf.  Redmond looked more like a senior "beach volleyball" player, tall, thin, and deeply tanned.) I wondered what might happen when Moxness hit a pull hook way left of the hole off the first tee, but she dug it out well and after that all 3 were basically playing solidly.  Moxness hovered around even most of the round, leaking a few shots at the end, while Redmond and Rarick both lost strokes early and righted the ship, finishing 3 over for the round.

The big issues were the wind and the race against darkness.  I was tracking progress and sunset and realized they were probably going to make it barring a lot of waiting somewhere, but knew there were tee times an hour later and the round wouldn't finish.  Somewhere on the front 9 they were joined by an older man from the spectators and I caught only part of the conversations, but I thought I heard that the guy was 82, had played in the Masters more than a few times, and was an inspiration to Redmond.  I wish I had recognized him but was too busy to ask anyone.

The big excitement on our round was 10, a short par 3 where Rarick hit a tee shot that her caddie kept telling to go in in the air.  It very nearly did, but unfortunately hit the stick near the bottom, kicked back off the green into an impossible lie and stance in the rough on the side of a steep sided bunker.  She got it out well but missed the putt -- a near miss ace which becomes a bogie. (And those 3 shots were the difference between making the cut and not).  One of the others (Moxness, I think) hit another good one there and birdied.

11, a long par 5, had a lot of marking on the green slowing things down and as we left the tee on 12 I saw the dreaded rules cart pull over to park near where the players enter the fairway.  That means only one thing -- you are being warned for time and put on the clock.  Of course the caddies started running a bit and we picked up the pace.  At least this group was good enough I wasn't worried about getting the shots in.

They didn't play 12 well from there because of the time warning, but caught up quickly.

All the while, the radio was very active.  I almost turned the thing off at one point because it was just too distracting listening to all the disasters and retelling of scores and stroke trails.  2 or 3 scorers were constantly having problems, some with the technology and mostly just screwing up.  Someone described some situation involving a sculled bunker to bunker shot that was picked up and re-dropped in the first bunker, which caused Pam in scoring to try to figure out what the score effect of such rules violations must be, when the scorer corrected himself and in fact nothing odd happened.  (Everyone remembers the situation where Mickleson hit a moving ball in a recent US Open and the scorer didn't know how to handle it, so it's become an example in training.  When that happened live I realized that somewhere one of 3 people I knew was on the radio trying to tell the scorer what to do as the TV announcers were joking about the score being wrong and was glad it wasn't me).  Another scorer kept arguing over why the score didn't match his recorded strokes becuase he wasn't counting the tee shot in what he thought the score should be.  After a minute or two of monopolizing the radio to debate it, Ross stepped in on the radio and sent a scoring supervisor to help the guy.  Some groups kept having trouble with their scoring devices, either lack of radio coverage, odd screens nobody ever saw before, or just that they died.  The only time I ever noticed mine lose coverage was when I ducked into a green latrine behind the 9th tee.  (This group always teed off in order and always hit driver except on par 3's so I could record the tee shots just based on hearing the sound of the clubs hitting the balls, something you learn to do on a long round).  I did notice in practice that the scoring app seems touchy.  If you try to carry the clipboard vertically with your hand holding the bottom and bump the screen at all it's easy to have the thing record that as screen touches and wind up in some weird place in the app, but as a result of my group of trainees doing all that I thought I had seen all the likely places it would go and never saw anything like some of the problem screens described.

I was careful not to hold the thing in any way it would get bumped and just kept being careful putting in the strokes and we kept moving. I wound up talking a lot to Moxness's caddie, who might have been her husband, because I kept either picking up things he dropped or helping him untangle the bag from the ropes when he ducked under them.  Maybe he didn't do this often. Redmond's caddie checked with me to verify a few scores since he was helping her with the scorecard for Rarick, and I checked a couple where I was surprised by something that came up in the system, but that just turned out to be not knowing the course well enough to remember which of the holes that could have been long 4's were in fact short 5's.

The lowering sun was a problem for Moxness, who chunked a chip hitting into it on 16 after hitting a spectacular recovery out of the woods from a bad drive and took a late bogie there.  Rarick was too far over by then to make the cut, but Redmond was sitting on it and I really hoped she would make it. She kept leaving herself very long first putts though and on 16 missed the second one to go to +9, and while she came close to sinking another long bomb on 18 didn't.  She had me double check the scores twice even though the player keeping hers agreed with mine, no doubt just in case, which I was happy to do.  No problems in scoring for me though so I almost ran down to the bowling alley to turn in the gear, then back to the bus, where by chance I sat across from the scorer for the group in front of my group and we both noted that neither of us had been on the radio (a good thing).  Another silent scorer sat in the row behind, and we all talked about the troubles today.

Because not everyone finished yesterday there will be more play this morning from round 2, then the cut to 50 and ties, and round 3 will be played off both tees in groups of 3.  That disrupts the scoring schedule (something I kept telling all the new scorers who were either happy or unhappy about their weekend schedule).  I've been told to report at 11:15, which means I'll probably get a group to score today and probably a later time, though it might be someone at the back of the pack rather than a lead group.

One thing I'll note for anyone reading this after the fact is that as this tournament was taking place, the country was waking up to the threat posed by the Delta variant of the Corona Virus.  Because Connecticut is an area with high vaccination rates and little virus spread before the variant there was little concern here, and players, fans, and volunteers mingled freely.  I did wonder a bit about the wisdom of this given that many competitors and their supporters come from areas that had already seen surges related to the variant, but being vaccinated and not anticipating any contact with vulnerable friends or relatives in the near future it wasn't a personal concern.  I hope that in hindsight this event didn't help spread the virus to areas where it wasn't, but I suspect the impact of an event like this is small compared to the millions of families traveling this summer and mixing with others in areas where the virus was much more common.

Not much to be done about any of that now except to finish the tournament and hope nobody gets sick.

A near perfect day (Saturday)

Today we had perfect weather here.  I showed up nice and early for my 11:15 reporting time and checked what group I had and was shocked to learn it was Laura Davies, Helen Alfredsson and Laura Coble (a good amateur from Augusta GA).  It was a little bittersweet, since Laura Davies was a big favorite of Carlas and one she would have loved to have had the chance to walk with.  (She did get her autograph in one Solheim cup)_.

I watched a couple of groups tee off including some of the players I scored for earlier in the week before collecting my equipment.  This time the battery was good, but the screen was dirty and the result was it wasn't responding well for me, but I didn't notice that until I got to the tee.

Laura Davies didn't disappoint in anything.  I spotted her and Alfredsson on the putting green to get an early start on entering their clothing, and the pink quilted vest she wore was classic.  On the tee she stepped right up and introduced herself, even though the others didn't immediately, and when it was time to tee off hacked into the tee box with an iron to pull up a bit of turf to for a tee.  She did that on every driver and even some iron shots off the tee.  She always teed up right next to the tee marker and always  seemed to get a consistent height with the "sod" tee.  Then she'd bomb it close to 300 yards on most holes. True to her reputation, she played very fast, so whenever others were first to hit (which was always the case after the drives) I had to note her location and be ready to get her shot in just as soon as the others had hit and sometimes before, when one of them was taking time to work out some problem.

Davies overpowered much of the front 9, blasting onto the 1st green in 2 for an opening birdie and following that with birdies on 3 and 6, both short par 4's.  On 6 she hit an amazing shot, from a drive lost to the right behind trees over a towering tree to about 5 feet from the pin.  I don't think Mickelson could have hit it that high.

The first hole was interesting with Coble hitting it near a cart path on the right and needing a ruling, while Davies and Alfredsson both played on leaving me to track the shots.  On hole 3 it was Davies who wanted the ruling.  She had hit it a mile up the right side just short of the green and into an area she thought was a bit wet, but got no relief.  Oh well, she just nearly holed the little pitch shot.

They sent out a scoring supervisor with me for this group -- common practice with named players, but this one had only done 3 tournaments, and I was basically training him more than he was training me.  Still it was good to have someone else tracking scores to confirm with so we had no errors.

I was really expecting something on the par 5 7th, a long downhill hole with a creek that stops most players from going in 2.  She hit a mighty drive but a bit off line to the right, but I knew what was up when she waited for the green to clear.  (Laura doesn't wait for much.)  She hit a fairway wood out of the rough from about 260, and while it was good, it didn't look like it was good enough, though her caddie said he saw it bounce.  Mainly at that point I was worried about the other two who had already gone to the layup area over the hill and that they would hit before I could get far enough up the hole to see where they were.  I made that sprint just in time to see them in the fairway.   Davies  and her caddie went over the bridge and started to look in the long crap near the creek, and amazingly enough they found it.  (She played yellow Calaways with red white and blue stripes, which were easy to spot).  She hacked it out of that to near the green and got up and down for par.  On 8 she was on in two with a short eagle putt but missed it, and she birdied again on 9.  That was all though.  For some reason she stopped hitting the approaches close and made par on many holes by scrambling.

12 was again interesting.  Coble missed the fairway left and flubbed a fairway club out of the rough, going over a hill and into a "natural" area.  It was marked a red penalty area so she started to work out a drop behind it, but someone had seen the ball bounce a couple of times in there and again someone found it.  She hacked out and saved bogie.  (It occurs to me only now she never went back and retrieved whatever she used to mark the spot it crossed the hazard line before moving on down the hill to look for the ball.

Alfredsson started well, but never really caught fire alternating birdies and bogies to finish just about even, while Coble played well, always from well behind the others in the fairway, and only lost a shot or two.  By the 7th hole we had TV cameras and a microphone man with us, so I'm guessing some of the back 9 wound up in the coverage.

I had one bad moment on 16 when I went to record a disappointing hole for Coble, where she hit a good shot to the green that rolled out and wound up on the fringe above the hole, then just tapped it to roll 25 feet past and make a bogie.  Had the ball not lodged on the fringe I suspect it would have rolled in close to the pin.  When I put the last putt in the hole though it told me it was a double bogie, not what I expected.  After some futzing I just decided to go back and put the 5th shot in the hole and worry about it later.  You can call in a correction, but these women played really fast and I didn't want to get behind just correcting the stroke trail as long as the scores were correct.

Every one of my players made great recoveries out of bad situations.  On 18 Alfredsson hit it left nearly behind the golf channel truck but still got on and two putted, while Coble hit into a narrow deep greenside bunker and got it up and down for par.  Davies bombed a drive but overshot her approach and two putted from long range down hill to complete a 3 par finish.

All the scores were right and Davies thanked me for doing my job.  I fixed the stroke trail problems in scoring, and it became clear what had happened.  Apparently I gave Laura Davies fairway shot to Laura Coble by accident -- easy to do when you can't see the screen clearly because of the direct sun on it and your screen is having trouble recording touches and the player names are similar like that, and somehow fixed her score with an extra putt.  (I didn't do that one on purpose but I do remember that the first time I tried to record her tap in it was asking me to confirm it was a birdie, which it wasn't, so I backed off and tried again, thinking in the glare I had checked "in the hole" rather than "tapped in" after her first putt, and the second time it went in just fine.  I'm guessing that when I aborted out of the tap in it kept the first putt in the system so when I put in another missed putt and tap in it recorded 3 putts, rather than two,

I watched the last few groups finish.  Annika is still in the lead but Neuman is close behind and it wouldn't take much for the two in the next group -- Davies and Catriona Matthew to get into contention.

A lot of the experienced scorers I knew sat out today because they went in 3's.  I figured I might have to sit out tomorrow, but was surprised to see I'm scheduled for the 11:50 tee time.  At first I thought yikes, that might be the leaders, but then realized they are going off in two somes and play faster so there's an hour more of tee times after me.  If I read it right I've got Helen Alfredsson and Kimberly WIlliams again, both players I scored for in this tournament.  They are both good players and long hitters, and I don't think I did anything to annoy them in their rounds, so I expect a good round tomorrow.   It will be interesting to walk with Alfredsson's caddie again.  He's an older man and slow getting up the hills and on some holes I tried to deliberately block the fans to give him a chance to get through a narrow path without getting tangled up with them.  At least Williams doesn't play as fast as Davies does and two player rounds are always a lot less rushed.

It was of course a little bittersweet.  Carla really liked Laura Davies and would have loved to score for her.  I almost asked he to sign something with a dedication to Carla as a souvenir, but didn't think I could do it without breaking up, so I just said I was happy to do the scoring for her when she thanked me and she moved on.  Tomorrows weather forecast is again good and staying over till Monday I'll have a chance to see the finish.

A fine finish

The day didn't start well for me -- two fire alarms in the hotel in the middle of the night.  The first time I wasn't even sure it was the fire alarm since I barely heard it over the traffic on I95.  (Damn unmuffled motorcycles anyway).  I started to throw some clothes on to leave but it shut off before that.  The second time I just said screw it.

I got in in time to watch a few groups tee off, and help another scorer identify his players (both ones I had scored for), then geared up.  I had already seen both players on the putting green and gotten all the preliminaries out of the way. (They want you to put in the players clothing colors, and media and others who need to identify players have the information.

Both players recognized me immediately, and we started what was a "chattier" round than most as a result.  Kim was amazed I walked the course 4 days, including 27 holes on the day I scored for her first.  I spent a bunch of time talking to Alfredssons caddie about walking golf courses.  They are based in Florida at Bay Hill which he says is a lot more walkable.  Both players played number 1 well and it looked like a good start.

The long par 3 second didn't go as well though and today the tees were back on 3 so not much there.  Four brought an interesting challenge. Kimberly Williams hit it so far right that she was on the adjacent fairway.  That's supposed to be recorded as "other", but when I tried to mark the position of course the phone app thought she was in a fairway, and didn't offer "other" as an option, so I changed it to second cut of rough and continued.  After the hole I called in to have Pam change it.

On the 5th Tee I briefly considered telling my players that someone 3 groups ahead of us had a hole in one there, something you hear on the scoring radio channel.  I decided not to do it though, and good thing. As soon as Alfredsson hit hers she was telling it not to go OB (left), and it didn't, but fell in a deep bunker.  Williams lined up carefully to avoid that, then hit into the same bunker 10 yards shorter, neither got up and down.  Ugly.

They picked up the shots eventually though and things were pretty good after the short par 4 8th.  Going down 9 Kim said again she was amazed I did the long day on Friday, and I told her that I had a longer day at the women's open at the Broadmoor.  She was there too, but added she was younger then.  I hoped I didn't distract her, but she had a dodgy lie in the first cut of rough around a bunker, and chunked it a bit, yelling at it to stop short of the creek -- it didn't.  A fan thought it had landed in grass on the other side, but that "grass" turned out to be long crap in a creek bed that had been tangled and matted by the flood unleashed on Thursday.  her caddie, I, and some others looked for a while. Alfredsson even climbed down in the creek bed, but no luck.  I could see at least half a dozen balls near the far bank, but none she would want to play so she asked for a rules official and I called, getting two to help her work out the drop.  She kept the damage to one shot though, which was good.

On 11, as we struggled up the hill Kim Williams told me that while he probably hadn't told me, ALfredsson's caddie is in the Hockey hall of fame.  He said he played mostly for the Calgary Flames back then.  I haven't been able to connect all that, but that certainly explains his obvious tolerance for struggle and the joint issues that were causing this to be hard for him.  Mainly though he was just an easy going senior to talk with about tournament life.

12 was again interesting.  They moved the tees way up so it played 280 downhill with nothing in front of the green.  Both bombed dries to within 10 yards of the green.  Williams made a mediocre chip and two putted, while Alfredsson chunked hers only reaching the front of the green and leaving a putt that my device said was 86 feet.  When she 3 putted it unleashed a torrent of Sweedish that I suspect got Censored there.  After that she played better and got back the shot, eventually finishing at even.

One thing the day didn't have was a lot of radio traffic.  One scorer had technology problems, but I never heard from any of them in the last 10 groups.  That probably means the USGA had a hand in assigning them to people who don't in general screw up.  The last two groups went to the two women from Toronto as I expected, and I've got no problem with that.  They do the job well and went to a great deal of effort to be here.  I told them at one point I'd probably see them next year at Pine Needles (the women's open), which they want to do but all depends on COVID these days.  Connecticut is a low infection state, they said they probably wouldn't have gone to Alabama or some other state having more trouble.

It was a day for goodbyes and thanks in general.  Ross called out to me from a cart to thank me for doing this, which was nice.  Since Carla and I were both on the list of people who don't screw up, I think he was glad that he didn't lose both of us.

Williams was 3 over for the day coming to the 16th tee and up until that point hadn't displayed a real talent with the putter, but amazingly she birdied the last 3 sinking putts that must have totalled over 100 feet.  17 was particularly amazing when she putted first from over 50 feet and sunk it, then Alfredsson sunk a par putt of over 20 feet after chunking out of a fairway bunker and getting to the green in 3.  On the last 3 holes Williams and her caddie were thanking all the volunteers as they came in.  Maybe the birdies were karma for that gesture, but I thought it was very nice.  After we finished I even noticed the monster board putting up her score, as she finished tied 7th along with Alfredsson.  I tried to take a picture of that board with 3 of the players I scored for in the top 10 (Laura Davies finished 3rd), but my crappy phone doesn't seem to focus anything that's zoomed.  Oh for a real camera that actually works.

We cleared scoring with no problems as expected, and even the "other" showed properly in the stroke trail, so I watched Annika win and get a champagne shower from her husband and kids, and headed out.  Tomorrow as I told my players I'm glad all I have to do is keep my right foot on the gas all day as I head back to Illinois.  It's been a great week here and one I hope to be able to do again.

Warren Montgomery