Live at the US Open - Congressional - Thursday June 16, 2011

The 2011 US Open has begun and I must take a moment to lament the absence of Tiger Woods. Love him or hate him he brings an excitement to a tournament, the majors in particular that cannot be matched even by Phil Mickelson. The electricity that surrounds him whether he is shooting 65 or 78 is missing this year. I believe his fellow pros, if honest, wish he were here. The only people not missing him are the logistics and security folks. It is one less giant headache for them to deal with. The USGA and the PGA are counting the minutes until he returns. Golf needs him. He needs golf. End of story.

So on to Day 1…once again the golf gods shine upon us and we do not have to spent 6 hours doing something beyond boring – and of course below our expectations  We spent the day making sure Bubba Watson, Adam Scott and Robert Karlsson did not get run over by overly aggressive fans. As last year, we were the advance team with two other marshals. Our basic responsibility was to make sure they could get from green to tee without having to stop or be harassed in any way. Sometimes they did not have to negotiate a fan area but most times they did. Today wasn’t too bad for our group. Mostly because all of Phil’s fans and probably 80% of Tiger’s were waiting for Phil to tee off. Unfortunately, they were pretty much disappointed unless they switched allegiance to Rory.

While working our threesome we leap-frogged our counterparts so we were able to watch Lee Westwood, Luke Donald and Martin Kaymer half the time. These three have been #1 in the world the better part of this year. Not one of them lived up to that ranking today. Not by a long shot. They were not happy campers.

Tomorrow we will be out at 7:55 with Phil, Rory and Dustin. Not bad duty once again. Okay, we are really excited to be in our position. We apparently are the only returning marshal advance team from last year so we are the “experienced team.” (No applause necessary thank you). How cool to be with Rory and his group…and how funny is it to say that? At the moment anyway the leader of the pack is Rory and not Phil. The times they are a-changing.

The leader board is pretty interesting – three of the four current major winners are in the top 10. Davis Love III is up there as is Stewart Cink. Anything can happen and probably will. The weather could play a part – it rained a bit this morning and hard late afternoon. Scattered thunderstorms predicted all weekend but hopefully they will be in the evening when all is said and done and I am off the golf course. Not big on thunderstorms and being on a golf course at the same time.

Pretty tired this evening and it will be an early morning and a long day tomorrow so that is all for now…hope everyone has a chance to watch some of the excitement this weekend. You never know – you just might see my smiling face .

And one final thought - Happy Birthday to Phil!