Practice Round @ Quicken Loans, some thoughts
So I went to my first ever PGA event, my parents live a few minutes from Congressional in Maryland and I happened to be visiting.
It was really awesome, first of all, it was almost totally empty and for $15, I got to follow some of the best players in the world around and see how they played. I could hear everything the caddies were saying, and generally was the only one watching. I shouted "light the candle" as a joke when one of the pros called me the gallery..I was literally the only person watching which was actually super cool.
I arrived late in the day, so I missed the biggest stars, but I still got to follow Smiley Kaufman around for 16 holes. As a new golfer, I was really interested in seeing how they approached the practice round, how they set up, how they planned to attack the course and generally what a ball flight from a pro would look like. It turned out to be a pro/am event, so amateurs were playing alongside the pros for the low price of $7,500 each. Pretty wild.
A few takeaways:
Holy shit, just watching the pros hit is an experience. If you are a golf addict, you owe it to yourself to watch them strike a ball. It sounds different, and they are insanely accurate. I watched a single spot on a two tiered fairway for a few holes. The fairway runs out into some nasty rough, and I watched one by one 4 PGA pros hit (literally) inch perfect 300 yard 3 woods into the same spot, just 10 or so inches from the rough. Incredible.
The Pros really stand out. You are never wondering which of the group of 4 players is the pro. They are all big and strong. I'd say that pretty much every single pro I saw was at least 6'1 and well built, that doesn't come across that well on TV but it was clear that size is a factor for these guys.
The pros are super cool and dont put on airs. They all were friendly, talked to everyone, gave lots of tips to the amateurs they were playing with, took lots of pictures and were very down to earth. No divas at all, they gave out free stuff to kids and Smiley in particular was a gent. That was great to see.
Interesting how quiet/ slow everything is. The game is way way slower than a normal weekend round with your friends, they take their time, they walk slowly. The pros say very few words with their caddies, which I didn't expect, and they all seemed to know where to hit it and what the best lay-up positions were.
After putting out, the pros always would take a bunch of practice putts on the green or from the rough, or a bunker shot. To warm up, I saw Smiley chipping balls to his caddy off the Tee before hitting his drive.
Lots of people setting up with the ball forward in the stance when they were hitting approach shots. This was interesting to me because I thought you want to hit out of the back of your stance to create spin/lower ball flight. Would be Interesting to know where to place your ball for each situation.
Being surrounded by golf nerds is awesome. Almost everyone working was a volunteer who was just super into golf and very cool. I got a free ticket to the actual event from a guy who I talked to when I was leaving. I got some free ball markers from some other people, and free drinks from a couple pros. Everyone was super cool to me, which was not something I was expecting.
It didn't have the air of a snooty event at all, it was more like golf nerd burning man.
Gonna bring the girlfriend to watch Saturday morning, should be awesome.