Ryan on Birmingham
- or -
When's Talladega?
[Editor's note: While Ryan's intuitive grasp of rhyme scheme is, indeed, staggering, I feel compelled to point out that the main reason I [Doug] didn't go to Birmingham was that I was otherwise occupied drinking beer and eating roast pork with the rest of the rugby team all weekend]
Sing that to the chorus of "Don't Bring Your Guns To Town" by Johnny Cash.
"Don't go to Birmingham" were the words right out of Doug's mouth on Wed. night at Wills park, I think I need to listen to him more. Doug has an uncanny ability to predict when a tournament is going to go wrong, for instance, he told me not to go to Nashville before "the incident" (I'm not going to go over what happened there, but I am part of the Nashville 8). I wanted to go to Birmingham for two reasons; they had a new course I had high hopes for, and touring pros were coming. Hell yeah, I can catch up with Cam, Lesli, and Mike (Worm), and see hopefully get to hang out with them as well. So…
I played the temp course called Cooper Green and found it relatively boring (keep in mind that I was in one of my moods, it really isn't), the front nine was very easy and I shot six down. The back nine was much better and I shot one down with a four on the 1400' 14th hole (which is pretty cool). It was very dry, so I didn't have any problems with the very uneven tee pads. Next, I headed to the other course to check in and see who was going to show up. I ran into the Flying Eye Crew and they asked me where I was staying, I asked if they were looking for a place to crash (I hoped that they would say yes), and they said that they were (hell yeah!) so, I traded space in my hotel room for two nights for a Flying Eye mini. It was a fair trade if you ask me. Doubles at George Ward was cool as hell, I teamed up with Mike T. (Tuna) from Nashville, and we played with Ed B. and I want to say the other guy's name was Shane. We had a great time and shot -13, which was good enough to tie for second place and $35 for each of us ($15 more and I can get headers!!!).
For the first round, I was in a group with Kevin M., and Dean Tannock, great, I'm nervous already. I have never met Dean, but I have heard of his skills, and that he was bad ass. For those of you who haven't met or played with him, he is, don't let anyone tell you any different, plus, he is a really nice person as well. He had shot well, when he missed, it was by very little-you could tell the talent was there. Anywho, I shot -10 which was good, I guess, I was tied for second with Wayne-o B., with Worm ahead of us with -11. Cam shot -8, Lesli +2, Todd B., and Ron shot -9. Doug Williams from Miss. slipped on the landscaping frame of tee pad #4, and fractured his ankle and leg on his second hole. It was said that the tee pad was brought up as a concern before the tournament started, why wasn't anything done about this? They let us tee from the side on hole #5, but why not #4? During the second round, I was having some problems, I was -1 for the first eight holes (Worm convinced me that it wasn't Augusta all over again). On hole #4, I saw where Worm landed, and I thought to myself "that is were I want to be", so I threw my shot only to have it hit Worms disc and skip all the way over to the tee pad of #5. Beautiful. I ended up on a tear and shot -9. Not bad for a third round crash during the second round!
Ron tied the course record with a -14, Worm and Wayne-o shot -8, Cam -12, and Lesli shot -2. The Ice Cream man came to the parking lot and made everyone happy with his magical array of Choco Tacos, and Chocolate Malts and whatnot. Mmmm, goooood. After we went to the hotel and showered up (not together), Cam, Worm, Lesli, Forrest and I went on the search for some real food, poppers to be exact. We all piled in the Flying Eye van (which is quite possibly the pimpest ride I have ever seen [Ed: "Pimpest" is in microsoft word's spell-check dictionary], complete with a futon, TV, VCR, and a Playstation. I looks much better in person as well, I had only seen one picture of it before this weekend), and started driving around. We ended up at a Lone Stars and spent a good deal of money there ( about $125 with tip I believe), I forgot to ask, Worm, how was the Bubba Burger? We went back to the hotel to play Mini golf which turned into mini guts until someone got hit in the eye, then we had to stop. We only got yelled at once, because we were in the hotel's restaurant playing a hole when it was closed. They said we could play on the first floor anywhere else. Strange that they didn't want to play with us. Forrest hit the ceiling with a putt, …..damn.
The third round was horrible for me, the rain made me nervous on the tees, and I couldn't get a groove on. Well, at least not a good one. I shot a 56, which included me throwing backwards on the 1400 foot hole. When you are playing a hole that is 1400' long, you should never go backwards. Worm shot -5, Todd B. shot -6, Wayne-o shot +2, Cam shot -1(I think), well I'm not sure about everyone's scores, we were all in a daze. Oh, Lesli, …Subway is closed! --she will get that. The second round was better than the first, but we (Wayne-o and I) lost Worm, we got Larry B. instead. That was cool because everyone likes Larry. He is a very fun person to golf with, and with him joining our group, I was able to go through the whole weekend with good people, no tension. Shvee. Ahh, no rain is good for golf, but not always your score. I shot -2, Larry -1, Worm -5 (again) and I have no Idea what everyone else shot, but this is how it ended up:
[Ed: Ryan has here a stirring example of american folk-scorekeeping that we, the mega-corporate-devils, have removed and replaced with a link to the complete results. Enjoy.]
I was going to go into great detail about the final nine for the top four players, but it was very uninteresting. No one won any of the skins, that's right, they carried all the way. Actually, the only interesting part was on the first hole when Ron hit a long put to carry the skin. This next point isn't really interesting, it is just plain impressive: On the 1400' hole, Worm went down the left hand fairway and got a four. I had heard time and again that the left side couldn't be foured. I guess they never met Worm, he is 70% animal, and 30% human. Nicely done indeed. The four ended up splitting the money when the skins carried on the easiest of the final nine holes, #18. In my opinion, they could have made it interesting if the tee was moved back by #17s basket, maybe then someone would have had a chance to win the skins. When you have a wide open 250' hole, and four of the best players in the world playing it, well, no one is going to get any skins there.
We had some payout problems last year in the open division, but they seemed to be all fixed and this year the open payout was fine. That said, there were some problems with the Pro Women's payout. Lesli won the 3 woman field and got $100 (not even twice her entry fee). The payout was trying to pay the womens field deep (don't get much deeper than 100%), which is great. In encourages tournament participation by women, something we're sorely lacking. That said, I think there needs to be an effort to reward the winner for winning. With such a small division it doesn't take that much added cash to make the payout very nice, add in $150 or so and weight it heavily towards the winner. Turns into $200 which, while not staggering, is nice enough for a 3 person division.
Anyway, I had a good time in Birmingham and really like a lot of the people, Bob, Randy, Kimberly, the TD and staff were awfully nice to me. But the tee pads were a real problem that needs to be solved and I hope next year they make more of an effort to reward the women's winner. After all, while it's nice to reward participation, it is the Pro division and at some point you have to remind yourself that it's a competition and the winner should be entitled to some reward.
