(Yet another) final wrap-up post …
I just thought I'd add a few more stats that came to light from the tourney. Somewhat surprisingly, there were only 2 eagles only 4 eagles in the whole tournament, three at the 9th at St. Andrews, from Tom (seemorehair) with the acknowledged help of a 31 mph tailwind to aid a drive to 3 ft, and from James (jimbean346) and Jure (Puholino) playing together. The other was my own holed wedge approach to #17 at Oakmont.
Not at all surprisingly, our winner Hans was the only player in the tournament to avoid even one double-bogey. Several players, Corwyn, Mizzy, and Cerino, all got through with just one.
And the honors for longest putt holed with the dreaded starter putter go to Russ (ColumbusStorm), whose 58.1ft putt at #15 at Oakmont in the first round held up as the longest throughout. Mike (MBaggese) came a close second with a 52.1 footer at St. Andrews. Herbert (Wassernixe) holed the longest putt at Olympic, while Mac's (Macduff10) 35 footer was the longest holed at RSG.
AND NOW, THE TROPHIES…
As I intimated earlier, it was a bit of a struggle getting them from the engraver. It turned out he was one of those 'artist' types, forever tinkering, adding elements, and insisting on getting it 'just so.' He modeled the base trophy on some 'modernist' glass-type design, so be warned they look a little different from the standard WGT-type trophies (but I guess that's appropriate given that this is anything but a standard tourney!). Also, he was determined to have the trophy reflect the uneven lies, so appears to have added a moving element… ! And, most bizarre of all, it seems that he was stalking us all around the 4 courses, as he somehow got hold of what look like sepia-tinted pics (no doubt to indicate the old hickories we were using) of each of the prize-winners as they played their shots. I'm not sure how he got so close without us noticing, but apparently he did… even catching Ben's ninja-drive at #12 at St. Andrews in mid-downswing (luckily without distracting Ben).
He does apologize for being incredibly slow, but in his defense, he was expecting to fit the commission in a week or two ago when he had more time, and with the delayed finish to the tourney, it ran into his family vacation time. He also mumbled something about photographs vanishing, and others that were "too blurry, too blurry" … but that sounded just like an excuse.
Here then are the trophies… and congratulations again to all our prize-winners, and to everyone that took part. Hope to see you all again for Tough-It-Out III (and to see some of you very soon, in Shiner's March Madness):
1st place: Hanswurst72
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2nd place: Corwyn
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3rd place: CerinoDevoti
