Fun at the Stanford St. Jude Classic

...or "the tournament formerly known as the FedEx St. Jude Classic." Actually, this is the last year of the FedEx sponsorship, as their name will now be lent to the season-long points race. But it is funny hearing the new name.

My friend Russell asked me a few weeks back if I would be interested in going to the Pro-Am on Wednesday. He is off on Wednesdays and apparently that was his only feasible option to go (aside from Sunday--championship day). His dad works for some division of FedEx (something to do with Singapore) in Mobile, AL and had gotten tickets as well as passes to a hospitality area. So we headed out to the Stanford Pro Am on Wednesday morning. We immediately noted something with the pairings--the more notable golfers were teeing off early (7A-9A), while the more notable celebrities were teeing off late (12P and after). Early golfers included Chris Dimarco, John Daly, and Justin Leonard. The players for the most part seemed very gracious and relaxed, signing autographs for little kiddies (who where skipping school, by the way) on the green-to-tee walks and even for the plethora of volunteers at each hole who had parephenalia in hand and would ask after the tee shot. One notable occurrence--a guy standing with us asked Chris Dimarco to sign a golf ball, and the reply was something to the effect of, "I don't sign golf balls--do you have anything else?" The guess is that they feel like stuff like that might be sold on eBay or something (unless they just realize how utterly awkward and difficult it is to sign a small, round, dimpled sphere). This guy said that he collects them and has a rack of them at his house. But apparently it IS a common thing for players to NOT sign golf balls. Interesting.

Of the "celebrities", I saw Mike Miller (wish I would've had something Grizzly for him to sign), Shane Battier (already have his autograph on a jersey), Penny Hardaway, and Tommy Tuberville (I wonder if he would've signed an Ole Miss hat?). Probably solely because I was with Russell (a HUGE Alabama fan), I met Deshea Townsend of the Pittsburgh Steelers (an alumni of Alabama). I don't mean that I had special access or anything....It just wasn't somebody that I would've set out to find. But I must hand it to the guy--he was very well prepared, and had an assistant of some sort handing out colored 2-sided publicity cards for him to autograph (kinda like an oversized baseball card). Russell got his Alabama visor personally autographed (To Russell......Deshea Townsend....Roll Tide!), and I just go a regular old vanilla signature, but being that I have absolutely no loyalty to the kid or to Alabama and certainly not to the Steelers, I gave it to my friend Mike, who is a Steelers fan. Of course, if Townsend goes and does a lot of stuff and his autograph's value skyrockets, then I'll selfishly demand payment or the card, one of the two.

Then one of those annoying "isolated" showers started. No big deal at first. But then it got harder and apparently there was lightning and stuff in the area. So out come the courtesy vans to pick up the players, and it became a waiting game. I think the tee times were pushed back an hour, so we missed an opportunity to see the likes of Chris Berman of ESPN fame. Oh well. By about 2:00 or so, we were tired and hot (humidity, anyone?!), so we headed for the car.