Thursday, November 22, 2007

Welcome to my Blog!

Hello everyone ... especially Friends of Stanford Men's Golf!

Welcome to the new Stanford Men's Golf Website. I am excited to be part of this
great project and I think it will serve a vital need for the golf community and provide a way for all of us to come together and celebrate the richness of our world renowned program.

In this blog I look forward to giving you a few insights on what the team is up
to and how everyone is playing. I will also be reminding you of some of
our upcoming team and community events. This website will be the place
where you can come to get all the information you are looking for!

It is hard to believe that the fall season is behind us. Looking back, I
think there are numerous things that went really well and a few things
we need to continue to work on as we move towards the NCAA's in June at
Purdue. The team competed five times this fall with a few close calls to
victory. There were numerous highlights and here are a few for you to enjoy...

1) Dinner with Tiger ... Playing at Tiger's home course in the Isleworth
Intercollegiate was a treat. Tiger was around for three full days and
hosted the team at his place for dinner after the first round. What a
great set up he has there ... his house is right off the tee box of the driving
range, the golf course is an awesome test, and he is treated like a
king! The hospitality carried over to us for our short time there and
the guys enjoyed getting to know Tiger better and hearing and seeing
why he is so successful. His thoughts on the importance of shotgame, playing strategy, and putting were very enlightening for both players and coach. I was especially impressed with how passionate he is about Stanford and his desire to win. I told him that he missed his calling in coaching and mentioned that anytime he wanted to be our volunteer assistant he would be welcome! The team struggled a bit on
the bermuda greens but even though it was the lowest finsh of the fall I feel like it may have been the most meaningful week. Freshman Sihwan Kim's quote after chunking
his driver off the tee with Tiger watching was hilarious ..." Coach ...
when Tiger was there my body wouldn't move!!!" A life changing week for
all of us!

2) Tokyo here we come.... The team competed in the Topy Cup in at Tanagura
Country Club just outside Tokyo this fall. This was the first event of
the year and the first time Stanford has been invited to play since
1994. I was actually on the team back then and got to take Tiger's spot
after he qualified for the Walker Cup. It hasn't changed much over
there and the event is still very special. Seeing the kids enjoy the
local customs, food, and golf was priceless and we had a real chance to
win until the final round where westruggleed a bit coming in. The team
that won is Japan's top university team and interestingly enough there
are no amateurism rules, scholarship limitations, or squad limits so it
truly was the best of the best.

3) The Siebel Varsity Traing Complex... On the home front on our new practice facilty is really taking shape. We are close to finishing the grassing portion of the project with almost 30 acres of sod being laid. With six green complex's
over 30 acres I am hard pressed to find anything else like it in the
country. The team will benefit in so many ways not to mention what it
means for recruiting. Please feel free to contact me if you want a tour
or check out the facilities tab on the new website for photos and layout.

There are a ton of great memeoris as you can tell and much to be thankful for but we are really looking forward to what lies ahead. I feel like this team has just as good of chance to win as did last year's. Experience and finding out which five guys will be our starters is what we need to work through as we move forward. We
are very deep, very talented, and of common purpose. Now it is just a
matter of having the confidence and work ethic needed to get there. It
has been over 20 years since a team has won back to back titles and I
think we can do it this year.

Thanks for reading through my blog and I look forward to adding to it as we go along. We appreciate all of your support and interest!

No comments:

Post a Comment