Brennan's Blog - Byron Nelson Championship

This week the tour stops right here in Dallas which is a great week for me because its home. In this business it's not often that you get to work and sleep in your own bed!

One of the best stories from the caddy world happened last week in San Antonio. Lance Ten Broek is a lifetime PGA Tour member having made 150 cuts in his career. He use to play on tour for a long time, but for the past ten years he has caddied for Jesper Parnevik. He caddied last Thursday morning for Jesper, then while having lunch he was informed that David Berganio had pulled out and that there were no more alternates on site. With an hour and 10 minutes until his tee time Lance got a shuttle to a local store to grab a pair of pants as he caddied the morning round in shorts. He got back to the course and rounded up a golf bag from the shop that was used for rental clubs. Richard Johnson lent him some irons, he found a Driver and putter from other people, a glove from Lee Janzen, shoes from David Duval, and used golf balls from Jespers bag that he had already played with that morning. 

He then played Thursday afternoon and played quite well. On Friday morning Richard needed his clubs back so he used a backup set Richard had with him along with the same Driver and putter from the day before. He played with only 13 clubs instead of 14 on Friday and ended up shooting even par and missing the cut by only two strokes! He also beat Jesper whom he caddied for on Friday after he finished playing his round. A first in all my time out here and a great story!

Getting to stay at home is great as Mike is staying at the house this week so it makes for a fun week as we get to watch a little hockey at night. I know he will be very interested with the wings playing every other night! I think both these series are going to be over rather quickly, one going five and one going six games. I just don't think that Chicago can keep up with Detroit and I think that the Pens are due for some good things this year; like a Stanley Cup.

We also had our annual caddy tournament this week on Monday at some course in Fort Worth, Texas which was great fun. Unfortunately my golf game was quite bad so it wasn't as fun as it should have been. There is something about this game that when you don't play well the fun seems to be removed from the round!

I also participated in a Pro-Am on Sunday afternoon at the TPC Las Colinas where the HP Byron Nelson Classic is being held. Our PGA section has a Pro-Am on the Sunday which is great fun because we get to play the real golf course in tournament condition. I shot a 75 with an 8 on the par 4 third hole. Overall, I had a much better day than the score indicated.

The golf course this week was completely redone for the 2008 event and after a year of maturing it is a much better course. They have added some length to the course and have made the greens a little bit more difficult. DA Weibring was responsible for the redo and overall I think everyone is pretty happy with the job.

The Salesmanship Club that runs this event is a great contributor to the community here. They give back about 6 to 7 million a year to the local charities with all of the money they make. It is usually between the FBR Open and this event that fight it out to see who raises the most money for charity.

I always look forward to this week and next week as well as we move across town to Fort Worth for the Colonial. This will be the first time in a while that Mike will get to play three weeks in a row, which I think is going to be a positive. Playing every other week is difficult to really get in a rhythm so I think this will be helpful and will allow Mike to really get on a roll!

As always, thanks for the support
Brennan