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Sedgefield, Sergio and Sunday Sloshing
August 23, 2012
I didn't get to see Sergio Garcia win the Wyndham Championship on Monday, August 20, because like a lot of other folks I had to get back to work. The fact that the Wyndham attracted 6,000 people to the course on Monday for the rain delayed final round is a credit to just how well the tournament is being run these days.
I didn't get to see Sergio in that final round, but I was rooting for him because I remember watching him play in the Nike at Sedgefield Country Club when he was a shy 18-year-old who had an interpreter to help him with the interviews after his round. Once the golf writers found out how good his English was they cajoled him into answering some questions on his own and promised not to embarrass him with any mistakes he made.
So congratulations to Sergio. He almost won that tournament 14 years ago, so it's fitting that he came back and won this one.
My favorite days at the Wyndham are Thursday and Friday. The galleries are lighter, making it easier to get around the course, and everyone, including the golfers, are generally more relaxed. Of course, the golfers who are right on the borderline of making the cut are not relaxed, but most folks are. It's a much better time to watch golf because you don't have to fight the crowds, but by the same token the people watching is much better on the weekends.
But this year, because of my schedule I didn't get out to the tournament until Saturday. I knew the greens were all new, but I figured they were still green grass. So since I was covering my 20th Greensboro PGA tournament, under different names and in two locations, I didn't expect any big surprises.
However, when the shuttle pulled into the media pick-up and drop-off area I was shocked because I didn't know the media had a new home. The old building was a one-story, white cinderblock structure that was a vast improvement over the tent at Forest Oaks Country Club, but was nothing fancy. This year the media area was in a brand new building that architecturally matches the famous and much photographed Sedgefield clubhouse. The main media room is an exercise room 51 weeks of the year, but you can tell it was built with the idea that it would be the media room for one important week every year.
This was not a shocker but something I have noticed since the tournament moved to Sedgefield. The tournament workers are much nicer to us media folks than they used to be. In the past I was told that after I got my media parking pass I had to take the shuttle back out to the parking area and put it on my car or it would be towed. I didn't do it because I figured the guys from CBS weren't going to do it and the tournament wasn't going to tow their cars. Since the tournament has moved to Sedgefield there has been a noticeable difference in the way the media is treated. The food has always been good and the folks in the media area have always gone out of their way to take care of the media, but once you left that enclave, sometimes you were treated like someone who sneaked on to the course with a camera.
There was another big change in the media area, but I was prepared for it. Guilford County Sheriff's Department Deputy Tim Mabe, who had been the officer in charge of the media area for over 20 years, retired after last year's tournament. His replacement was Guilford County Sheriff's Department Deputy Matt Suits, who fit right into the job of letting in the right folks and nicely steering others in a different direction.
Years ago when Pat Yack was the editor of the News & Record, I went in and found a News & Record reporter he needed to talk to because without a pass Yack wasn't allowed in the media tent. At least five or six people who worked for him were in the tent, but he wasn't allowed in the door, which we both found pretty entertaining. I think I offered him my media pass, but since it said John Hammer/The Rhino Times on it, he was hesitant to wear it even for a few minutes. And besides, Deputy Mabe, who was standing right there, said he was pretty sure he knew what John Hammer looked like.
It may have been an all new location but I felt instantly at home in the media area because when I walked in I saw Jim Schlosser hunched over a laptop typing away. Schlosser is retired from the News & Record after being a reporter and a columnist for over 40 years, and he proves the old adage that writers don't stop writing when they retire, they just write for different publications. Schlosser was covering the tournament for the Southern Pines Pilot and O.Henry magazine. Whether he is writing for the News & Record, blogging or writing for some out-of-town newspaper, Schlosser is one of the hardest working writers at the tournament. And he's a great source because he always has more story ideas than he can use and he shares them at no charge. He noted that this was his 39th tournament, making me feel young having only covered 20.
I ran into tournament General Chairman Mike Barber twice during the weekend, once on Saturday when he looked spiffy in his blue blazer and was announcing golfers as they approached the ninth green. We talked briefly about how the issues before the City Council were the same as they were when he left three years ago, and how he could slip into a council seat during a break and take up right where he left off.
Barber said the crowd estimate on Saturday of people actually out on the course, not the tickets sold, was 20,000. The Wyndham is starting to look like the old GGO, when everybody in Greensboro was out on the course. Greensboro has grown so everybody doesn't need to be out there these days, but the galleries are larger and the tournament is doing a better job of taking care of regular folks out on the course.
I also saw Barber late Sunday afternoon and I don't know where he was when the rain started, but he must not have been close to shelter because he looked like a drowned rat. This was during the time when the officials kept saying play was going to resume in about an hour. Barber told me I might as well go home because play was not going to resume and they were getting ready to make the announcement.
Saturday John Dinan, who is a political science professor at Wake Forest University, and I spent some time following Bill Haas and Tommy "Two Gloves" Gainey around the course. Dinan had taught Haas and swore that he didn't give him high grades just because he was an athlete. Actually you don't hear much about golfers getting special consideration at schools.
I write quite a bit about politics every week but Dinan spends his time reading, writing, studying and teaching politics, so in an election year to get to talk to someone with that level of expertise in politics was a real treat. It also made me wonder why I didn't finish my masters and teach because he is just getting ready to go back to teaching after having most of the summer off and I haven't even gotten to the beach this summer. (Although I did spend a few days taking care of chickens at my sister's bed and breakfast near Hanging Rock. But I'm not sure chicken sitting counts as a vacation.)
So I watched golf and got some insight into the fall election, which is going to be historic no matter who wins.
Golf writers are a funny group because they spend a great deal of their time in the media area watching the tournament on television. They go out on the course and follow a golfer around for a few holes and go out and follow the leaders if they can, but out on the course you can only follow one group at a time. You can only be on one tee or one green. With the magic of television you can be transported all over the course.
When people ask me if I watch City Council meetings on television I tell them you only see about 10 percent of what is happening watching it on television, but really it's probably more like 50 percent. Whatever the percentage you miss so much by not being in the room. With golf it is the opposite: You see a lot more of the tournament on television than you could ever see out on the course.
I was watching Webb Simpson on Sunday when he was on the ninth green and something happened that required an official to come over and make a ruling. It appeared he was penalized a stroke, but I wasn't sure until I ran into his brother Sam Simpson a few minutes later. Sam explained that Webb's ball had moved after he had addressed it. To me "addressed it" sounds like hit it, but it is what you do just before you smack it. So while Webb was standing over the ball getting ready to hit it, the ball moved and he was penalized a stroke. If I hadn't seen Sam, I would have had to go back to the media area and ask one of the experts what happened even though I was right there. The officials don't have signals like they do in football or basketball to tell you what the infraction was in golf.
I had read about how much harder the new greens were supposed to be, but I had also seen the really low scores the first two days, so I was surprised on Saturday when the golfers I watched seemed to be having real trouble making a putt of any length. Evidently something happened Friday night and on Saturday the greens played the way they were supposed to, giving the golfers a taste of what the course will be like next year when the greens have had another year to get established and will be harder.
The tournament continues to get bigger and better. The folks that are running it make improvements every year to make the whole event even more enjoyable and they're doing a great job.
I have to wonder what I'll find all new and different next year.