{"id":290,"date":"2010-08-06T13:31:49","date_gmt":"2010-08-06T18:31:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnstrawn.com\/?p=290"},"modified":"2010-08-06T15:32:38","modified_gmt":"2010-08-06T20:32:38","slug":"happiest-man-returns-to-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/golf\/personalities\/290\/happiest-man-returns-to-earth","title":{"rendered":"Happiest Man Returns to Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"

So Lee, the happiest man in America, hits the ground in Pittsburgh on Thursday afternoon, too late for a practice round but eager for the start of competition Friday morning at the 2010 Kiltie Invitational at Oakmont Country Club.\u00a0 Golf Digest<\/em> editor Jerry Tarde ranked the Kiltie as the second best member-guest event in the country, behind Cypress Point\u2019s and ahead of Congressional\u2019s, Colonial\u2019s and Crystal Downs\u2019 (and the only one at a club whose name doesn\u2019t start with \u201cc\u2019).\u00a0 The players are organized into flights named for famous country clubs, and by a wonderful coincidence Lee and David, his son-in-law and the Oakmont member, were in the Cypress Point flight.\u00a0 There are 12 flights\u2014Winged Foot, Seminole, Pine Valley and so on\u2014with six teams of two players in each flight.\u00a0 Every team in each flight plays a 9 hole match against the other five teams in its flight\u2014three matches on Friday, two on Saturday.\u00a0 Scoring is simple: \u00bd point for tying a hole, a full point for winning a hole.<\/p>\n

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Oakmont CC<\/p><\/div>OK, so the only reason anyone should ever have to listen to the narrative horrors of a round would be as an act of penance for some really awful transgression, so not having sinned I declined to listen to Lee\u2019s blow-by-blow. However, I did ask for the high and low-lights, which he eagerly shared. \u00a0First hole, first round: smashed drive down the middle, iron on the green, two putt par for net\u00a0birdie.\u00a0 Ideal start.\u00a0 Second hole: another good drive, but the second shot semi-shanked into a bunker: lo, the horror descends.\u00a0 Match 1: lost 6 to 3; match 2: lost 5.5 to 3.5; match 3: lost 5.5 to 3.5.\u00a0 Low point: hitting his ball sideways on 17 with a practice swing.\u00a0 Solution: go back to David\u2019s house, have a glass of wine and play with the grandkids, who could care less.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Day Two: The Turnaround.\u00a0 Completely opposite result from Day One, but it was Too Late.\u00a0 Team David and Lee won 6 to 3 and 6 to 3, allowing them to finish cumulative fourth in their flight, only one and a half points out of shared first.\u00a0 The real highlight was that Lee made natural birdies on the last two holes he played, 17 and 18, an especially satisfying vindication on 17 after the mortifying accidental lateral the day before.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Kiltie also has a bunch of skill events\u2014long drives, closest to the pin, longest putts.\u00a0 There are separate competitions for handicaps from 0-13 and above 14, which was Lee\u2019s category.\u00a0 He got to write his name on the long drive board once but it didn\u2019t hold up.\u00a0 The most impressive skill victor was an Oakmont member in Lee\u2019s flight, Bernie Marcus, who won KP on both days on the the long 16th<\/sup> in the over 14 handicap group, hitting it to 20\u20192\u201d on Friday and making a hole-in-one on Saturday.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On Sunday, Lee learned the true reason for the invitation when David asked him to get the ladder out of the garage so he could repair and replace the outside lights. As I said before, Lee\u2019s handy around the house.<\/p>\n

For the original post, go to http:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/golf\/golf\/personalities\/268\/america-s-happiest-man<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So Lee, the happiest man in America, hits the ground in Pittsburgh on Thursday afternoon, too late for a practice… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":295,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,18,17,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-golf","category-lifestyle","category-courses-and-travel","category-personalities"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2010\/08\/Oakmont91.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=290"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":294,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290\/revisions\/294"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}