Golf

Finding the good in plenty of bad

Over the past month (approximately) everything that could have gone wrong in the world of athletics has, according to me.

Let’s review: NBA Lockout, Jerry Sandusky, Bernie Fine, MAC Championship (I know, most people don’t care), Brandon Roy, Virginia Tech (not quite sports related), David Stern and Stephen A. Smith. I shouldn’t forget to mention Albert Pujols.

If I’m going to open up the book about ESPN personalities, I might as well add Urban Meyer and Matthew Barnaby to the list too.

I have been most captivated by the Jerry Sandusky and Bernie Fine stories, as I have written before.

To be completely honest, I don’t enjoy the NBA. However, its storylines have been very interesting over the past month or so.

Chris Paul being blocked from the LA city limits (figuratively), Brandon Roy retiring, teammate Greg Oden continuing his career* and my personal favorite Stephen A. ranting over the airwaves about whatever he sees fit has been enough to get me to pay attention for a while.

*If his time since he left the friendly confines of Columbus can be considered a career, posing a sick reality that the oft-injured center is staying in the league longer than his teammate, Roy, who has developed into one of the NBA’s best. Oden has made a ton of money, so in all technicalities it is an occupation. Bench sitting, that is.

Tiger Woods makes the list because he won again. Really, I shouldn’t say “again” like it is something that he has been doing. It’s only been a couple of years, car windows and lost sponsors since he claimed the top of the leaderboard at Sunday’s end.

For the record, Rory McIlroy won a real tournament that weekend. So did Greame McDowell.

The Mid-American Conference Championship between Ohio and Northern Illinois annoyed me for obvious reasons. A 20-point first half lead couldn’t stand up to the Huskies’ late comeback. It was enough to make any Bobcat fan cringe.

Being on the sidelines you could feel the momentum being sucked slowly from the Ohio side of the field over to the Huskies’. Demoralizing for anyone green and white.

ESPN has shown flashes of greatness over the last couple of weeks, but has shot itself in the foot — kind of. If on-air talent is representative of the organization, which I consider them to be — then it has taken a bit of a self-inflicted blow.

From a lead football analyst stealing the spotlight for moving away from the network, to a hockey guy getting pulled over for driving on his tireless rim, drunk at night… Yeah, not the greatest of months.

Plus, the network is getting a lot of flack (and praise, albeit) for its coverage of the Bernie Fine scandal.

It has also signed on Pulitzer Price winner Don Van Natta Jr. to it’s investigative team, which is relatively new and should pull together some really great stuff once it gets the ball rolling, which presumably the previous members already have.

Albert Pujols, baseball’s number one personality, arguably, is reportedly going to sign for $250 million over 10 years with the LA Angels. The organization was worth $184 million when the current owner purchased it in 2003.

I know how much revenue a player can bring to a team. However, the fact that one individual can be worth more than a franchise is grossly outrageous.

It should be depressing to flip on the TV, scroll down Twitter or read the news. Really, though, I’m more enthused by all of the negative junk going on right now than I am with the regular programming and sports news. This is because it’s something different. Even though I consider myself a true sports fan, I don’t care who wins the Heisman this season. It happens every year. At least this year’s voting is contested.

There’s real breaking news, actual reporting and true digging going on. This has spurred good competition between large and small markets in the breaking of huge stories, i.e. the Daily Collegiate during the Virginia Tech shooting and local sources outdueling the “experts” on free agency issues.

Mostly, it gives me hope.

This is because I want to be one of the people breaking this stuff down, finding the scoop and throwing it out there on a major level.

When I come across a byline that I don’t know, I try to find a quick bio. Most of the time it’s linked out from the same page. In doing this, I realize that most of the guys who are doing what I want to do have been bred out of hard work, not fantastic smarts or an overwhelmingly awesome education. In other words, they are in the position they’re in because they’ve put in their due diligence.

I have always assumed that the top reporters come from the top schools where they were the top students and so on and so forth. The more I know, the more I’m wrong.

And as backwards and odd as that sounds, I kind of like it that way.

 

2011 Michigan Cup Slideshow

I made the trip to Harbor Springs Wednesday to cover the Michigan Cup, a Ryder Cup-style tournament between the Boyne Academy and Otsego Club’s Jason Guss Academy. Guss’ kids came out on top by a seemingly wide margin, but I was more than impressed with the level of play across the board from all of the participants. It was great to see so many kids from across the state competing at such a high level and enjoying the competition.

This is a comprehensive slideshow of my pictures from the day. They are unedited and uncropped. I hope you enjoy!

My contact information is listed on my ‘About Me’ page.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

How I feel about things

Over the weekend, I came to the conclusion that I had nothing to write about this week. Yes, I learned how to fly fish Friday, but I already wrote a column about that (for the Petoskey News-Review and Herald Times.) Really though, I write about those types of things often — I don’t need to wear them out. Sitting on my back porch watching a fisherman twirl around the lake, it hit me. I need to write about what I’m leaving behind when I move out to Athens in a week and a half.

For one, I’m leaving behind my family. That’s tough enough as it is, being the first kid to leave the house and all. It’s going to be weird not coming home to the same people every night.

Aside from that, I can pretty much encompass what I am going to miss by describing my day.

For starters, I woke up around seven in order to make it to work on time. There’s nothing like walking upstairs to a good sunrise, knowing that it’s going to be a nice, enjoyable day.

Like always, I learned a thing or two at work (a more efficient way to make a horizontal rule in InDesign, for example.) This week I am putting out the sports section myself, for our editor is gone for a couple of days. That in itself is a learning experience. It’s funny how I have been with the Herald Times for almost four years now and I still pick up on little things each day I’m at the office. It just goes to show that I am getting into a field that I truly have a passion for.

After work, I met a friend down at the driving range to get in a couple hours of brutal swing reconstruction, thanks to Jason Guss. I have to say though, I’m getting there. It’s going to be different, granted a good different, but different nonetheless, to walk away from the guys I have grown up with. None of my ‘bros’ will be within a couple hundred miles come September.

Coming home to dinner with my family is one of the things I have taken for granted all my life… I feel like that is about to change, however. After a couple of months of cafeteria food I will be more than ready for a heaping plate of mom’s spaghetti.

After dinner, it was back to the golf course, this time with my dad and brother. It’s a great feeling being able to call five minutes ahead and waltz right on to one of the top courses in the state, if not the country. Regardless of the state of my game or the people I’m playing with, I will always appreciate the scenery and sheer beauty that this area has to offer. On the same note, I didn’t really take either of those things to heart until recently, for whatever reason.

Now I’m back to square one, typing on the back deck looking out over a pitch black lake with only a couple of lights reflecting across the water. I know regardless of what I do in life or where I call home in the future, I will always have a huge place in my heart for the place I am sitting right now.

Once I hit ‘publish’ on this story, I’ll probably head inside and twiddle my thumbs, texting my girlfriend before heading off to bed. She leaves for her college in Kentucky in less than two days. To think that I am following in her footsteps in a couple weeks is just crazy. As much as we have been waiting and waiting for these days to come, it seems like the summer has flown by at the same time.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t going to miss things the way they are. I love my life and the things that it encompasses. In saying that, I’m off to find new things that will make it even more special.

I think I found plenty to write about.

I could get used to this

Over the past couple of weeks I have partaken in some of the best opportunities that the Herald Times has to offer. In the past, I have been able to sit press row at a Detroit Pistons game, take my opinion to the airwaves and cover more exciting games than I can count, but I have to say that my workload — if you can call it that — has been at its best lately.

Two weeks back my editor was invited to attend a media day at Garland Resort in Lewiston. Naturally, with the time commitment it takes to print a newspaper, he was unable to attend but threw the invite my way nonetheless.

I was all over it.

A media day is to a young journalist as candy is to a kindergarten class. The opportunity to meet established professionals in my intended field was too much to pass up. Sure enough, after a response from Garland’s management, I found myself making the near 40 minute trip to the 3,000-plus acre resort in Lewiston.

To be honest, I was pretty nervous on the drive out. It’s not often that an 18-year old journalist gets to link up and network with some of the profession’s best.

Oh yeah, we were playing 36 holes on some of the area’s most demanding terrain too.

They say practice makes perfect. However, if it only made respectable I would be more than happy. I’ll get to that aspect of things later. Don’t get me wrong, I was content with my 89 on Swampfire to start things off, but my slice reappeared later in the afternoon on Fountains, setting me up with a less-than-impressive 97.

In between the rounds I really got a feel for what the event was all about. Having lunch with some of the writers and managers of the property kicked in several great story ideas, two of which I plan on following through with before I leave for college on the first of the month.

The longer I hung around the group of guys and gals, the more I began to learn. People were more than willing to reach out to me. Whether it was due to me looking hideously out-of-place or not, the treatment I received from everyone was nothing less than top-notch. Pondering this further, the service for everyone was top-notch. The resort truly pulled out its best to accommodate the dozen or so media members.

This got me to thinking: I could get used to this.

At every major media event I have attended, yes the number is small (four to be exact), I have been catered to like none other. It works for both parties — treated nicely, journalists write nice stories. In turn, both sides walk away totally satisfied, as I was following my experience at Garland.

The following Monday, I had a similar invitation from the Jason Guss Academy at Otsego Club. Within the media’s itinerary was a free lunch (apparently the media day standard), a three-hour lesson and a round of golf on Otsego Club’s crown jewel, the Tribute.

To my surprise, only a handful of media members made the trip, one of which I had already befriended the previous week. That didn’t bother me — I figured that it gave me more time with one of Golf Digest’s Top Teachers Under 40, Jason Guss.

After warming up and shooting some quick video of our golf swings, I prepared to swallow my pride — the video analysis portion of the lesson was on its way. Surprisingly, my swing was very correctable — the only major flaw being the verticality of my backswing.

Easy thing to fix, right?

This is where the practice comes in. Jason had me turned inside out, swinging in the most unnatural way I could think of. The majority of my seven irons were trickling out to about the first practice pin on the driving range.

We won’t even talk about the round of golf. I had to revert back to my old swing after the trail of triple-bogeys on the first four holes got on my nerves.

In my last media event of the exciting two-week stretch, I set out to sit down exclusively with the world’s top golf instructor, Butch Harmon. This probably took the cake as the number one, for lack of a better word,
coolest opportunity of the summer — even though it didn’t include any free golf. It’s not often that the number one anything  comes to Gaylord, let alone a personality I am interested in.

Butch was great to sit down with, plain and simple. He answered all of my locally based questions and seemed genuinely interested in where I came from and what I was doing. He was more than happy to entertain my personal questions on his past and some of the players he has worked with, as well. He probably does two or three of those interviews a week due to his extensive travel and popularity, but hey, it comes with the territory.

The number one thing I learned when it was all said and done is that people genuinely appreciate a journalist’s service. The stories I write deliver their product to an interested clientele, those who read the sports section of a local paper. Moving forward in this profession, I am going to keep this in mind. It never hurts to go the extra mile, make some contacts and produce a great story when it’s all said and done.

The past two weeks were the highlights of my summer. The good news: I have a full life ahead of me. If I do it right, it can look a lot like those past two weeks.