Colonel's Considerations Day 4 - Dream On

"Dream On" is the song that is played during the credits in the movie Miracle. Naming blog posts after songs just seemed like a really cool idea. So I did - it doesn't have any particularly deep meaning (unless you want it to...)

So today was the first round of the tournament - there was a pretty stiff, semi-frigid breeze blowing when we (the men's team) got to the course at around 11:30 am, and it stuck around pretty much throughout the round, though thankfully it warmed up when we started playing. The women went out at 9:30 am, so I don't know how it was for them.

We were paired up with Trinity (San Antonio, TX) and Washington and Lee (somewhere in VA), and it turned out to be a pretty quick round considering it was tournament play (some of our tournaments get to be well over 6 hours - today we played in just over four and a half). I can't really speak for more than my own personal round since I didn't get to see any of my teammates at all during the round, and I don't really want to go into too much detail about my round, so either you can just imagine what happened or ask one of the other players.

OK, I won't be that harsh, I'll give you some highlights. Dan had three birdies in the first 7 holes, and Matt Butler (never referred to as Matt, always Matt Butler) was one of four players in the tournamnet to birdie #13. I personally managed to have a pretty flat round, mostly just a mix of bogeys and pars. On #18, for the second day in a row I hit my second shot right by the edge of the woods. Those happen to be the very same woods where we saw the 10 foot gator on the first day... needless to say I was pretty cautious when approaching my ball. I'm gonna make sure I don't hit it there again. Oh, and in the spirit of the world baseball classic, I honored one Seiichi Uchikawa today (I put the Japanese character uchi, "内", on my ball). I played the whole round with the 内 ball, I almost lost it in the woods on #18, but luckily still have it in my possession... hopefully that'll mean good luck for Japan in their semi-final against the USA (the USA beating Japan would be an upset of "Miracle" proportions - I think they can dream on. If it looks to you that I'm a U.S. citizen cheering against the U.S., you'd be right...).

So scores: Ben 80, Nick 83, Dan 84, Colonel 86, Matt Butler 88. On the women's side, Jordan 82, Ellen 90. I haven't asked anyone permission to post their scores, I might ask them before I post the scores tomorrow... It wasn't the greatest first day, but the goal is to get the scores lower each of the next two days, I feel pretty confident that we will.

So not much else to report. We went to a dinner with all the other teams at the Chamber of Commerce... nothing much went on. We sat at a table with a checkerboard tablecloth (the garbage cans had a checkerboard pullover covering too, it was a little weird), and we sat at our table and had a spaghetti buffet with a variety of mystery desserts... and VERY sweet VERY southern sweet tea... I don't quite know what the meaning of the dinner was, if the teams were supposed to interact or anything, but I'm pretty confident none of the teams talked to any others. Yeah, was pretty strange overall.

We're teeing off pretty early tomorrow (men starting at 8:30 am, women starting at 9:30 am), so I think we're all checking out pretty early tonight. The men are playing with Trinity and Washington and Lee again, I'm pretty sure.

Before I forget AGAIN, the photos on the first two installments of "Colonel's Considerations" were taken by Coach Angie - sorry for not acknowledging that until now.

Be excellent to each other (and party on).

- Colonel