Thursday, March 29, 2007

A Glorious Case of the Mondays

Sometimes my job sucks. Sometimes I think to myself that I should have stayed in music or worked at a bank or something. But days like Monday make up for about thirty of those days that suck. The fine folks from the Wachovia Championship along with the members of the Quail Hollow Club hosted Media Day which basically turns media covering the Wachovia Championship next month into members for a day. Keep in mind Quail Hollow is so exclusive they don't have a website. I don't think you can even join without them coming to you. The place is amazing. It's so nice to have people that understand media. If you treat us well, you'll get nothing but top notch coverage from us(much like the folks at Lowe's Motor Speedway.) The folks at the Wachovia Championship treat us better than our mothers treat us. Media Day is just the beginning.
Scott Griffis(who took all of these pictures,) Solarte, Tim Baier and myself made up our foursome. We didn't suck. The day started at 9:30 with a press conference, coffee and breakfast snacks. Shortly after ten we all hit the putting green and range to prepare for the 10:30 tee off for a captains choice tournament. Oh, we also got a gourmet box lunch to take with us on the course. One of the best chicken salad sandwiches I've ever had. After golf, we went back to the clubhouse for awards and cocktails. All of this free of charge. They even gave us a 15 dollar sleeve of golf balls and a hat. It's almost stupid how well they treat us, and in return I put every ounce of my working ability into making their tournament look good. Not that it needs my help.
Here's Scott G and I cruising up to the 16th green. You'll notice I'm adjusting the score, but only because I forgot to write down the eagle on 15 Scott put us in position to score with a sweet 5 iron up the hill. With absolutely zero pencil whipping, we finished in second place.
Here's Solarte congratulating me on the 4th after hitting one of my better drives of the day. Tim proceeded to get up and absolutely murder his tee shot a good 30 yards past mine. That last birdie on this hole got us to eight under par.
Here's a view from the 18th tee box. The last three holes at Quail were voted the three toughest finishing holes on the PGA Tour last year earning the nickname, "The Green Mile." Tim Baier was covering the Tarholes in New Jersey and couldn't get a flight in early enough to make the entire tournament. Wachovia staff made sure he could hit the course after the tourney to finish his round. I was lucky enough to head back out with him and we had the course to ourselves. It was amazing. The royalty treatment didn't stop. We decided to play "The Green Mile" from the tips(where the pros play.) It was terribly difficult and our scores reflected it. Back to the 16th where Solarte stoneybrooked a five iron to about eight feet. Scott G drained the birdie putt and started doing the appropriate birdie dance. Scott carried us on the back nine.

With our handicaps figured into the final score we ended up with a 58, just a few strokes behind the winning team. Hopefully Don Griffin doesn't go Action 9 on our asses.

Monday was quite possibly the best Monday I've ever had. I'm glad I don't actually work at a bank.

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