Morning Miscellany, Powder Day Edition

We're at 18" 21" and counting and the snow is supposed to continue at least through Monday, so we're going to quickly throw an odd little smorgasbord of items together.  As an aside, if Friday was an epic day of skiing, Saturday was epic cubed, with stashes of powder up to my waist.  

FNBF Bob shredding the Pines on Saturday (top), and waiting for the flatlander along a ridge line (bottom).  It was deep, and this was our last run on rubbery legs (at least for me).

 Let me now interrupt this regularly-scheduled ski blogging for some, you know, golf:

• David Owen's latest post is one of his delightfully meandering pieces.  The title of which, Gaining Spousal Approval for Golf Trips, Plus the Night My Wife Ate Dogfood on the Tonight Show, gives a flavor of the trip ahead.  His table setter:

The wife of one of my regular golf buddies not only encourages him to take golf trips but actually makes his plane reservations and packs his bags. Quite obviously, she’s having an extramarital affair and wants him out of the way—so his golf trips are win-win at their house. For the rest of us, though, the issue of spouse-free golf travel is usually more contentious.

I'll try not to spoil too much of the fun, but it turns out that his wife is Ann Hodgman, a well known writer and humorist, who at the time of her Tonight Show appearance was writing for the wonderful Spy Magazine.  Strangely enough, the post title ignores the hockey detour, but do give it a read and the videos with a very young Jay Leno are worth viewing.

Yesterday's linkage to Golf Digest's Local Knowledge blog induced me to do some scrolling, as I had missed some good stuff.  In no particular order:

• With pitchers and catchers reporting in a week, this is a timely Alex Myers post on Babe Ruth's love of golf, complete with great pictures and video.

Ruth determining first tee honor with Ty Cobb, with whom he played many exhibitions.

Babes all around.  Ruth shows off his putting stroke in February 1948 to that other Babe, Zaharias.  While he looks robust in this photo, he would pass way that summer from cancer.

• Today's weird item of the day, man hitting golf ball through a gallon of milk, courtesy of Luke Kerr-Dineen.  Some things just never get old.  

 I was most interested to see if I could embed the GIF.  Mission Accomplished!

• The annals of unlikely golf winners are dominated by the ghosts of Frances Ouimet and Jack Fleck.  When you focus on the Alter Kocker division, the discussion begins and ends with Jack's legendary 1986 Masters win.  But John Strege reminds us that it's the 20th anniversary (cue Sgt. Pepper's in background) of a win that in my estimation was more unlikely than Jack's (though admittedly less significant because it wasn't, you know, A Tradition Unlike No Other), Johnny Miller's come-from-the-announcing-booth win at the 1994 AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am.  As Johnny himself assessed it:

"This is a time warp," Miller said afterward. "I do not play more than 25 rounds of golf a year, and that's stretching it. I do not practice. I'm an announcer. This wasn't right. I wasn't supposed to win this. It's a fluke."

Johnny was 46, coincidentally the same age as Jack, and was seven years removed from his previous win.  What made it so improbable is that Johnny was driven to the booth by a horrible case of the yips, so he couldn't possibly hold up under tournament pressure.  Yet it was Tom Watson who opened the door for Miller with an untimely three-putt bogey on No. 17.

 My clearest memory of that day was that Miller used a Callaway Tuttle putter....can anyone but me remember it?

The Tuttle, still available on E-Bay for anyone interested.  It made a brief appearance in my bag in the day.

• It sometimes seems to me that Tiger was more interesting, or at least less guarded, in his younger years.  Here's another John Strege item, this time about The Striped One's Stanford days, including this accounting from teammate Jake Poe of an amazing improvisational shot:

"He was looking at me and I punched a 4-iron shot at him and got it rolling toward his feet," Poe said. "He's still walking and in mid-stride he grabs his driver with his other hand. He's got it in both hands now and the ball's rolling at a good pace, and in mid-stride, still walking, he takes a full swing and hits the ball at least 290 yards, a slap shot, perfectly straight. Probably the most impressive shot I've ever seen. Everything in full motion -- him, the ball, everything. Incredible."

•  Since we can post GIF's, how about this one courtesy of Luke Kerr-Dineen of two generations of Walruses (Walri?):

Acorn (left), tree (right).

Reminds me of an amusing Bruce Lietzke story from the way-back machine.  Lietzke had one shot, a soft left-to-right fade and was notoriously incapable of drawing the ball.  At some event, his son was next to him on the range, hitting rope-hook after rope-hook.  A fellow pro walking by concludes, "Must have been the Milkman."

• Another John Strege post suggests Spyglass Hill as a possible major venue, an idea I've thrown out in my occasional wide ranging conversations with work colleague and golf buddy Mark W.  Strege speculates that it would likely have to be a PGA Championship, and the testy relations between the USGA and PGA of America might preclude such consideration with Pebble firmly in the U.S. Open rota.  But Spyglass is a wonderful track, which doesn't get its due during the Crosby Clambake AT&T.  Strege starts his piece with this anecdote:

The first time Jack Nicklaus played Spyglass Hill Golf Course, in 1967, Bing Crosby bet him $5 that he wouldn't break par. Nicklaus shot a one-under par 71. "I've got a nice five-dollar bill at home, signed by Bing," Nicklaus said.

He does, however, omit Jack's most famous quip on the subject at hand, to wit:

Pebble Beach and Cypress Point make you want to play. Spyglass Hill - that's
different; that makes you want to go fishing.