Wah

This weekend I played in a scramble golf tournament with Slim Whiskey and one of his clients. The golf tournament is sponsored by Macayo's Depot Cantina so you know that the food is going to be really good! The sponsor of the tournament has won the tournament the last 4 years (bad form) and Slim Whiskey decided that this year he was going to stack the deck. Our 4th player was our ringer, Benoit Bessier, a friend of Slim Whiskey's who plays on the Gateway Mini-Tour. "Wah", as he is known, was a golfer on the "Big Break" and is one of the subjects of "The Minors - The Road to the PGA Tour Isn't Always Easy". Although I only spent a few hours with him (it probably felt like weeks to him), the description of Wah in the March 1 post is spot-on.

Our team score was 59 and we left a number of shots out on the course. Not surprisingly, the host won the scramble with a 55. There were no minimum drive rules so we probably used Wah's drive on 14 of the 18 holes. Overall, including any sizable made putts for eagle or birdie, we probably used Wah's shot 70% of the time and the other 3 of us 30% of the time. But if Slim Whiskey or I had not hit our drives straight down the middle, Wah might have played more conservatively (yah, right). The course is really short with a lot of doglegs and Wah could drive most of the par-4 holes (or come awful close) and we had short irons on our second shots into all of the par-5 holes. The greens were so slow and bumpy that Wah was having trouble getting his putts on line and to the hole. I made a couple of 20 footers and Slim Whiskey commented that the bumps knocked my putts on line and into the hole. I was feeling pretty good about my putting until that comment.

Wah was hitting the white TaylorMade R11 driver. He is a former hockey player and his stance is very narrow and his swing is quick like a slap shot. He would tell us his intended line, especially on the doglegs, and his ball flew off his club on that line like it was on a string. He said that TaylorMade wants to get the R11 out in the public so it is basically giving the club away to get players to use it (I think he meant tour players at all levels, but I am going to call and ask anyway!). Interestingly, after playing with the weights on the club, Wah went to the neutral setting because it allows him to shape his shots with either a draw or a fade. He actually said that the new TaylorMade Burner 2.0 is much longer, but it is designed to play a fade and it is impossible to draw the ball.

It was really fun playing with a golfer of Wah's caliber. As golf legend Bobby Jones said when a young Jack Nicklaus won the 1965 Master's, he “was playing a game with which I am not familiar". But not only was he fun to watch, he was personable and friendly and was actually having fun playing golf with a couple of duffers. Wah would be a great addition to the PGA Tour and I will be rooting for him to make it.