Summer of Sean: St. Andrews

The golf and sports world is focused on St. Andrews, Scotland today for The Open just like it was 15 years ago during the Summer of Sean (as I'm calling it now). In 2000, some friends and I spent the weekend in Edinburgh, Scotland, a very cool city that I may write about in a future post, but on Sunday morning, I left the group to visit St. Andrews on the North Sea. To describe St. Andrews as a small town is unfair to small towns. I'm not exactly sure what I mean by this, but for some perspective, St. Andrews' population of 16,680 (according to Wikipedia) is only a few hundred more than Indiana, Pennsylvania.

Anyway, while I'm not a huge golf fan, I understood that St. Andrews was the birthplace of golf and the home of arguably the most famous golf course in the world. Since I was only an hour and a half bus ride away, I figured that I should make the pilgrimage. With The Open taking place less than two weeks after my visit, the course was closed for play, but you could walk all around. This actually worked out fantastically.

My first reaction on seeing the course was that there were a ton of bunkers.

Very deep bunkers which would be difficult even for the best players to hit out cleanly. It was also windy with the course being right on the water. Amazingly, Tiger Woods managed to avoid the bunkers completely (I believe) during his 2000 title.

So to celebrate the Summer of Sean, here are some pictures from St. Andrews and the St. Andrews scorecard.

You know how I mentioned the deep bunkers? I'm 7 feet tall, and look how high that wall is!

Click here for all of you Summer of Sean posts.

Tiger Woods & Eric Wedge: Separated at Birth

In reading yesterday's Express, I noticed this small note about the Seattle Mariners hiring Eric Wedge to be their next manager. I'll be honest in that I had no idea what the former Cleveland Indians manager looked like, but I was surprised that he looks remarkably like Tiger Woods.



Am I being unfair to Express? I genuinely enjoy reading the paper on the Metro each morning. I just don't understand how any paper can make noticeable mistakes so often.

Oh, here's a picture of Eric Wedge from his introduction as the new Mariners manager.

Weekend Thoughts

* I’d like to call out Christine Brennan of USA Today. On Good Morning America this morning, she said that the Tiger Woods accident story would have gone away at this point if it wasn’t for the internet and the blogosphere. That’s an interesting point since the Tiger Woods story is on the front page of today’s USA Today (A1) and was also the second item on GMA behind only the incident where four Washington police officers were killed. Yes, this is definitely a story because of bloggers.

* I thought that Dennis Dixon played well in his first NFL start. The loss is definitely not on him. While I certainly understand that the coaches wanted to put him in as little risk for injury as possible, I really would have liked to have seen a play call or two in OT where Dixon could have run the ball himself.

* By the way, I liked the old Pittsburgh Pirates hat Dennis Dixon’s father wore at the game.

* Shopping at Kohl’s recently, I noticed that they are selling perfumes from the following celebrities: Elizabeth Taylor, Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, Jessica Simpson, Halle Barry and Usher. I hope that Miley Cyrus and Beyonce are looking for new agents!

* Since the Penguins scored eight goals at home against the New York Rangers on Saturday night, does that mean that everyone with a ticket stub received free chili from Wendy’s? This promotion that occurred when the Pens scored seven or more goals has probably been over for about 20 years now.

* Congratulations to the Woodland Hills High School football team for winning the WPIAL AAAA football title against the Gateway Gators on Friday night. For folks not familiar with Woodland Hills, famous graduates include current NFL players Jason Taylor (Dolphins), Ryan Mundy (Steelers), Shawntae Spencer (49ers), Steve Breaston (Cardinals) and Lousaka Polite (Dolphins) as well as “famous blogger” Sean (Sean’s Ramblings).

Today could be the last day of the mustache. More on this tomorrow, but you can donate to the Movember Foundation by clicking here.