Dean & DeLuca Invitational 5.25.17
Day I and the race begins. Up semi-early and most anxious. Tee time is later however I really want to get over to the course and walk around a bit, see some action and not be concerned at all about being late.
One of the high points of this visit and annual adventure to Fort Worth is the local newspaper, the Star-Telegram. The stories have a distinct FW flavor. Interesting stories, usually amusing, quirky, shorter articles, easy to read and quick.
For some macabre reason, I always read the obituaries.
The obituaries are fun to read for a couple of reasons and I have stellar classic some examples.
First, there would be absolutely NO ONE that I know. Whenever I go back to Happy Valley and pick up one of the local rags, it seems that the obits always have at least one name of someone I knew, worked with or heard of at some point in my life. Once it was someone I worked closely with years ago. One time it was the dentist I used while living & working in the Triple Cities. Things like that.
Here, Jed Romero was ‘a jack of all trades and master of none’. Chad Jennings ‘favorite ice cream was strawberry.’
I mean you don’t get these kind of details & facts anywhere else I am aware of anyway. And I cannot, could not nor would not make something like this up.
Anyway.
There is or are ads for interesting things to check out. I always tell myself it would be a good day trip to drive over and browse at the concrete statuary warehouse or the exotic plant nursery. Daydreaming I think this is referred to as.
According to the FW Startle O’Gram, my group today is Jhonattan Vegas and no this is how HE spells it. Going forward to be referred to & known a JVegas, a young very long hitting lad from Venezuela. Adam Hadwin from Canada for the second time and Aaron Baddeley from Oz also for the second time. The scorer is Courtney, a young lady and a millenial thru & thru.
We start with the introductions and when it is my turn to answer a question, it is ‘awesome.’ I didn’t really think so but OK.
She is an education director at a church. Before I can finish the answer to her next question, that also is ‘awesome’ as well. Now I am slightly unnerved, marginally annoyed and am uncertain if this is a true social media diva or a one-word vocabularian.
We kind of drift apart at the first opportunity on the first hole which is fine and when Badds finished the hole & putts out, she looks at me and finger-shots me his score. This is awesome.
Sorry. She has ME doing it.
And so it went after each player completed each & every hole, she would make eye contact and give me the scores with fingers. I am truly grateful that no one in the group had a hole-in-one this day for patrons certainly would have gotten the WRONG idea. So wrong.
This behavior suddenly erased the ‘awesome’ irritability and I carefully structured and asked all questions going forward so that they would require an answer, response or reply other that the ‘a’ word.
Anyway, back to golf.
When the dust settled the slightly built Hadwin had the best round of the day for the group at +1. Badds finished +4 and played just OK. I mean good for anywhere else but here today in an event like this, he was in danger of not making the cut.
Which leads us to poor JVegas. The golf gods did not smile on the golfing gorilla this day. For even though he could crush the ball, luck did not translate well. We started on hole 10 so we finished on #9 and he was +9 for the day. After dropping his second shot in the drink, I took his score off of the sign without asking permission as a show respect. A score of +12 for a professional would draw chuckles & snickers from ignorant or drunken patrons. This is significant because the next morning we were told to ask the players caddie first if the player would like or prefer the score greater than +10 on the sign. I did so independently and received no warnings or reprimands.
After the round and the scorecards were all signed and checked, each player gave Courtney & I a signed ball and 30 seconds of their time thanking us for helping out today.
Not terribly rewarding and certainly not a reason to spend five (5) hours walking around but it does make it worth every minute.

Today's image is from the grandstand overlooking the 9th green with the view back towards the tee.
The volunteer center is the building at the left.
I can't wait until tomorrow. Hopefully the group will play a little better and we get to see some good shots.