Never enough golf (or enough short game)

After a three-day weekend of grading and other work, I'm rewarding myself this week with a lot of golf time while the pros (and my family) are in town. Yesterday I played 18 with the family in the AM and hiked out to Muirfield Village for the tail end of the last practice round. This morning I was able to watch some of the early groups play their front 9. The highlights included (1) making a closing birdie to card a season-best 74 (and beat my dad by 4 strokes) when my home course was playing pretty tough, (2) talking with Corey Pavin about the loud cicadas as he played a late afternoon practice round, and (3) watching Ernie Els this morning make eagle look relatively easy on the 560-yard 7th hole.

I've drawn two broad insights from the last 36 hours: (1) I never tire of either playing or watching golf, and (2) you can never have too much short game. Though the pros are amazing ball strikers and hit it much longer than I could ever dream, I think it is their ability to sink putts and get up-and-down which separates them most from us mortals.

Also, the green at Muirfield Village are really slick and will be lightning fast if we do not get any real rain this week.