Ace!

So I saw an Ace yesterday, and no I’m not talking about cards. Twoin got tix to the PGA golf championship at Baltusrol. Actually his wife got em via work, but she wasn’t interested so I got to go instead. The main thing about yesterday was it was hot, and I mean blazing hot. About 102 degrees and humid. Surprisingly I only saw a couple of people requiring medical attention, but I’m sure a lot of people must have passed out from dehydration. Thankfully we had Wannamaker passes which were different than Grounds-only passes in that we were granted access to a big food court kind of tent. Still had to pay for food and drink ($18 for a cheeseburger, fries and 2 lemonades!), but the air conditioning in the tent was all that really mattered. Since Tiger had barely made the cut this weekend, he had an early tee time so we were able to at least catch a glimpse of him on a few holes. Had it been the afternoon when Vijay, Lefty, and the rest of the leaders were on the course, the mobs of people would have made it impossible to see anything. On one hole that we saw, Tiger had driven the ball left into a fairway bunker. We were standing next to the green and when he went to play his ball, we could only see his head above the lip of the bunker, so it must have been deep. He was probably about 140 yds out. He took what looked like an easy swing, I lost sight of the ball, then a few seconds later, plop, his ball arrives about 5 feet right of the pin and sticks. Amazing.

So I got to see Tiger, Sergio, Couples, Cink, Bjorn, Furyk, and a few others I’m sure I’m forgetting. Then we decided to take up a spot at the 4th tee since Daly was on the 2nd hole and would be coming thru shortly. We had only gotten to see him on the putting green and walking to the 1st tee, but it was so crowded we could only hear, not see his opening drive. Since nobody good had been thru the 4th in a while, we got prime spots on the back right corner of the teebox. The first person we got to see tee off was Charles Howell III. He’s even skinnier looking in real life than on TV. The 4th hole was playing 194 yards. Howell teed up the ball low and pretty much in the middle of the teeing area. He stepped up and striped the ball, started it on a line about 5 yards right of the pin with a soft draw. By the time the ball hit its apex, all the right to left action was done and the ball looked to be right on line with the pin. It hit the green, bounced once, and landed smack into the cup for a hole in one!! The fans in the stands benhind the green went nuts and so did all of us at the teeing ground as Howell threw his hands up in the air and cheered. We couldn’t believe what we just saw.

That was the highlight of the afternoon, but we stayed and watched a few more guys hit. KJ Choi was in Howell’s group, and he managed to follow that ace with a great shot of his own, landing pin high maybe 9 feet right of the pin, and also converted the putt for birdie. We also saw Langer and Daly, both hitting the green, but nothing special. The one thing that I did observe was that every pro had the exact same ball flight, starting low but with so much spin that it then zipped way up high, with about a 5 yd draw. The sound at impact is so crisp and that also sounded the same from every player. I also noticed that from the fairway on shots under 120 yds or so, they tend to hit low darts at the green which check up with spin rather than the high trajectory shots I’ve always seen played by everyone I’ve ever golfed with. I don’t think I can generate the clubhead speed to hit the kind of full iron trajectories that the pros were hitting, but I think I should be able to add that low approach shot to my game. Makes me want to get out there and play!

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