Mother’s Day 2013

Brunch at SPCC.

With the Joffes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Sixth or So Annual ‘Greenspan Cup’ One-Club Open

JFK Class of 1987: Tim O’Brien, Joel Aro, me and Derek Orozco.

Today I hosted the Sixth or So Annual “Greenspan Cup” One-Club Open at Heron Links Golf Course in Redmond. Me and seventeen of my closest friends (not really) teed it up on the par 3 course at Willows Run with a single club and a putter. My Greenspan Cup teammates Jeff Benezra and Chris White won low gross honors and took home the big money. I won a KP good for $15. This was the sixth or so time I’ve held the event, the first time I’ve done it any time other than the Christmas season. (Click here for the 2010 version.) The change worked out well and I think most everyone who attended had a great time.

Jeff Benezra fired a gross 28 on the second nine.

As fun as the event was, it wasn’t without its disappointments — particularly the turnout. At one point twenty-eight players had committed to play, a solid six more than last year. After a reminder e-mail last week, however, the “committed” players started dropping like flies. The excuses ranged from “I cut my finger” to “something came up” (2) to “I’m playing in another tournament” (2) to — well, you get the idea. As disappointing was the turnout from Greenspan Cup players. Of the twenty-eight players scheduled to play Greenspan XVI, 21 of them live in or near Seattle. Of those, only five — myself, Joel Aro, Tim O’Brien, Chris White and newcomer Derek Orozco — played in the One Club. Hence the reason that Greenspan Cup is in quotation marks above. While a few players and longtime friends of mine can be excused because they were out of town (Mike Waldner, John Harrison), the absence of several others was, after sixteen years, a bit disappointing. Almost as bad — six of the 21 didn’t even bother to send a “thanks but no thanks” reply to several e-mail invitations.

Their loss. After all, the guys who weren’t there didn’t get to see my new bow tie.

I debuted my new bow tie from China by way of Ebay.

My Thoughts on the Boston Bombing Situation

Like most people who read this post, I’ve been asked more than a few times this past week about my take on the Boston Marathon bombing. My feelings, in no particular organization or order:

This should go without saying, but I’m damn glad they caught the guys. I hope they can keep Dzhokar Tsarnaev alive. A quick pre-trial death would be a lucky escape for what I suspect is in store for him.

According to this CNN report, Tsarneav will be represented by a public defender. I don’t envy that guy.

With some notable exceptions explained below, law enforcement greatly distinguished itself in the time from the bombings to the time of arrest. The actual arrest and thereafter — I’m not so sure about. The fact that the arresting officers did not read Mr. Tsarnaev his Miranda rights is quite troubling. I’m no fan of Miranda — the Warren court wrote it into the Constitution out of whole cloth — but it is the law. The public safety exception to the Miranda rule, which allows investigators to question a suspect before apprising him of his rights when they believe there is an imminent public safety threat, simply does not apply. Law enforcement can invoke that exception in cases like the hypothetical ticking time bomb, where police may question suspects as to the location of the bomb lest lives be lost. There was nothing close to that here. Indeed, if I’m not mistaken the Boston Police Department announced that the threat was over. IF the possibility of an imminent threat is enough to invoke the public safety exception, then the Miranda exception eats the rule. If that be the law the Supreme Court of the United States ought to announce it, not the BPD. (This may be the first issue on which I agree with both Alan Dershowitz and the American Civil Liberties Union [more].)

Glad to read this morning that the Justice Department decided not to treat Mr. Tsaerneav as an “enemy combatant,” as many politicians have urged. The enemy combatant designation, which allows prosecutors to take criminal suspects out of the U.S. justice system, was designed to deal with combatants of a known enemy, such as Taliban fighters engaged in combat against American forces. They have to be affiliated with a known enemy. As of this writing, there is zero evidence — zero — that Mr. Tsaerneav is affiliated with an enemy of America. The fact that Mr. Tsaerneav is a theoretical enemy of the American people should not be enough. Indeed, most — if not all — persons who engage in violent crime on our shores are, at some level, enemies of the American people.

I started all this by saying that “law enforcement distinguished itself in the time from the bombings to the time of arrest.” I said that largely on the basis of the result — they caught the guy in four days. But some of its tactics were quite troubling, in particular this door-to-door operation by what I believe is the BPD. The Fourth Amendment simply prohibits invading homes without probable cause, but that appears to be exactly what the BPD is doing here. The fact that the bad guys might have been in the house doesn’t justify these ordering the residents out at gunpoint. It’s called probable cause, not possible cause, for a reason.

My Take on Tiger Woods and Dropgate

As both my readers know, I am no Tiger Woods fan. My considerable Tiger shirt collection notwithstanding, I have called him the anti-role model on this very blog. And just when I thought it was difficult for me to dislike the guy any more, Dropgate happened.

If you’ve been on the moon since then, what happened on Friday afternoon slash Saturday morning is sure to be discussed to death in country club grill rooms for years to come. In brief, Tiger hit a perfect wedge shot to the green at no. 15 during Friday’s second round – so perfect, in fact, that it caromed off the flagstick and into the water hazard. Clearly flustered, Tiger weighed his drop options and, as he would later state in a post-round interview, dropped a ball two yards behind where he’d previously hit from so that he could take the same swing he’d just taken and not hit the flagstick again.

I was watching this on my couch and suspected he’d done something wrong, but I didn’t call in to that invisible guy you call to report rules violations. But someone did, and the Masters rules committee was made aware of the situation as Tiger played the 18th hole. The problem: under the drop rule under which he ostensibly proceeded, Tiger was required by rule to drop his ball as nearly as possible to the spot from where he last hit on pain of a two-stroke penalty. As ESPN’s Gene Wojciechowski detailed (more), the committee decided before Tiger signed his scorecard that he had done nothing wrong. Amazingly, no one bothered to discuss the issue with Tiger after he completed his round or before he signed his scorecard. So Tiger signed his scorecard and gave the aforementioned, televised post-round interview where he admitted to dropping the ball two yards back of where he took his previous shot.

Tiger blew it — in more ways than one.

Woops.

According to Wojciechowski, Masters rules committee chairman Fred Ridley was made aware of what Tiger said in his interview at 10 pm on Friday night. Faced now with what amounted to new evidence – Tiger’s unwitting admission – the committee reconsidered its previous decision and determined that it had gotten it wrong. Tiger’s drop was illegal after all. Tiger should have been assessed a two-stroke penalty — but he wasn’t. Technically, therefore, he signed an incorrect scorecard, a big-time no-no in the world of golf.

So here’s my take. First, Tiger’s drop was clearly illegal. Given the relief option he chose, Tiger was required by rule to take his drop as near as possible to the spot he took his last stroke from. Two yards back from that spot is clearly not that. Tiger, therefore, should have signed for an 8 on his scorecard instead of a 6. On this there is no debate.

Second, given its handling of the situation, the rules committee at least arguably made the correct call by assessing Tiger a two-stroke penalty rather than outright DQing him. Under rule 33-7, the competition committee “may in exceptional cases” waive the disqualification penalty. What made Friday’s case “exceptional” wasn’t the fact that it involved Tiger Woods or that it was The Masters – the rules committee wouldn’t soil the integrity of its much-revered competition with reasoning like that. Nor was it the fact that Tiger didn’t know he took an illegal drop when he took it: there is a specific Rules Decision (33-7/4.5) that says “ignorance of the rules or facts that the player could have discovered prior to signing his scorecard” are not sufficient reasons to waive to the disqualification penalty. What made this case “exceptional” was the rules committee’s botching of it — twice. First, it incorrectly concluded while Tiger was still playing that his drop was fine when it obviously wasn’t. (I wonder if the committee would have exonerated a certain fourteen-year old Chinese amateur with such alacrity.) Second, it didn’t take the very easy step of addressing the situation with Tiger before he signed his scorecard – an inexplicable error if ever there was one. The committee could have prevented Tiger from signing an incorrect scorecard, as the PGA did with Dustin Johnson after he brushed sand in a bunker on the 72nd hole at the 2010 PGA Championship. It just didn’t. The committee concluded, therefore, that it would have been, in Ridley’s words, “grossly unfair” to Tiger to disqualify him based on what he said in his interview when it could have prevented him from signing an incorrect scorecard.

This point is a lot closer than Ridley made it sound. Tiger’s exoneration happened without his knowledge, so effectively retracting that decision through disqualification doesn’t seem terribly unfair. Had Tiger relied on a ruling made by a rules official that turned out to be wrong, then “grossly unfair” would be an appropriate description. But that didn’t happen. The stronger argument is that it would be grossly unfair to use Tiger’s post-round interview against him but, from what I’ve read so far, that is not the argument the committee made.

Third, this situation will not mark the end of the “trial by TV viewer” era, as many players and commentators suggested yesterday. Cases where rules committees and players do not know about alleged rules infractions until after the player signed his scorecard will not be affected by this case, which PGA Tour player Aaron Oberholser curiously likened to “Supreme Court precedent.” Those cases will be unaffected because there will not be an intervening cause – a committee botch job – that would make disqualification “grossly unfair.” Ignorance of the rules or facts that the player could have discovered prior to signing his scorecard” remain an insufficient reason to waive the DQ penalty – by rule. Players will still get disqualified from time to time based on the minutest of infractions caught by guys on their couches with nothing better to do. Now, however, people will complain (wrongly) that there are two sets of rules – Tiger’s and everyone else’s.

Finally and perhaps most importantly, Tiger should have withdrawn. It is incumbent upon players to follow the rules. If a player does not know them, it is incumbent upon him to call in a rules official. In this case, Tiger was dealing with a rule with which most mid-handicappers are familiar – how and where to drop a ball after you’ve drenched one. He just botched it. If he had any uncertainty he could have called for a rules official: he didn’t do that, either. In the end, he never played a ball from where the rules required him to play it – a spot he intentionally avoided lest he hit the flagstick again. Whether he would have hit the flagstick again, or come up short with an incrementally softer swing – neither we nor any of his competitors will ever know. What we do know is that Tiger did not play the 15th hole by the rules of golf like the rest of the field did. And while it arguably would have been unfair to Tiger to be DQ’ed after the committee exonerated him without his knowledge, the flipside is also true: it is unfair to the other players for Tiger to remain in the field just because the committee could have saved him but didn’t. And inasmuch as most of those other players wouldn’t have been on TV, they would not have been entitled to the benefit of the committee blowing a ruling if they had been accused of a wrong drop by, say, an on-course fan. Tiger’s acceptance of the committee’s gesture, therefore, was not the honorable thing to do in this most honorable of games.

Then again, this is a guy who cheated on his wife with every Waffle House waitress from here to Tallahassee, who cusses like a sailor at the slightest mishit, who throws clubs in front of kids and who, as a 22-year old, refused to autograph a golf ball to help his colleagues Brad Faxon and Billy Andrade raise money for charity.

Honor is the furthest thing from this guy’s mind.

The Spring Kickoff at SPCC

Today I braved the elements to play in the 2013 Spring Kickoff at Sand Point Country Club. I detailed the event on SandPointCup.com — the most relevant facts are (1) I chaired the event, and (2) my team didn’t win. I did, however, debut my azalea pink pants:

2013 Masters Script

In 2011 I started a personal tradition of doing a Masters script. For whatever reason I didn’t do one in 2012 — some tradition — but this year, with me counting the seconds ’til Masters Thursday, I decided to do one again:

Two of these four combos will see a golf course.

Like the ones I did in ’11 (yes, that’s “ones,” plural), this script wasn’t without thought. The Thursday pants haven’t gotten the call since George W. Bush was president: if they didn’t get the nod for a pro-am on Masters Thursday I’d have to put them in the donation pile — and I sure can’t do that.

Friday’s shirt is from Bo van Pelt’s Alial Fital script. If I could design an AF shirt this would be it. (Buy now.)

Saturday’s hot pink pants are a new purchase from Bonobos. Seemed a smart call for Saturday’s Spring Kickoff at Sand Point CC, although it is supposed to rain.

Sunday’s green pants — well, ya gotta wear green on Masters Sunday, and those are the only green pants I own. (This particular combo looks a bit like Luke Donald’s Friday garb.)

As it turns out I’m not the only guy in the world not playing in The Masters who nevertheless does a script for it. Tim “Lumpy” Herron just released his — couch potato chic.

Good stuff. But I like mine better.

UPDATE: Golf Magazine voted Bo Van Pelt the best dressed player at the 2013 Masters. (More.) The shirt he was wearing in their favorite shirt? The blue one with the contrasting green color shown above.

Reese and Finn’s First T-Ball Game

Today Reese and Finn played their first-ever t-ball game. Their team: the Metropolitan Market Mets. The site: View Ridge Playfield. Their coach: Steve Kelley, dad of Reese’s classmates Carson & Quin (as well as Tanner and Olivia). Their biggest fan: me.

My favorite Mets!

The game lasted two innings. No score kept — for that, I think I’m glad. The other team had a few players who had to have been walking when Finn was born.

Reese (standing on first base) had her first-ever base hit in the first inning.

Their next game is on Saturday. Can’t wait.

Reese played pitcher in the first inning.