Hanging at the LA Open

The HB had the day off on Thursday (and Friday, and Monday...). He goes to a private school (yes, one of these days I'll rant about the LA public schools) and when there's a "regular" 3-day weekend they tend to extend it. For those with tons of money, I'm sure it allows them a great skiing jaunt (although there's hardly shit to ski on in CA right now). For us working folks it requires a bit of a balancing act. Fortunately, both my wife and I have flexible enough schedules to make it work.

Earlier this week, tickets to the LA Open golf tournament magically appeared in my mailbox. I'm thinking that this occurred for one or more of 3 reasons:

1) I've bought tickets in the past (but not the last couple of years).
2) When Northwest Airlines sponsored the tourney I was a frequent flyer with them and they gave me tix.
3) Tiger Woods isn't playing and they don't want the place to look empty.

Whatever the case, my wife watched the HB in the am and I asked him if he wanted to go (rather than asking a client) in the afternoon.

Now, there something you really need to know about the HB. He's a great kid, does well in school and I love him to death. He's also the kind of kid who has NO interest in sports--he tends to live between his ears. The great irony here is that I LOVE sports. We expose him to everything (art, sports, outdoor stuff, etc.). I can tell you that he has the reading/writing gene, but not the sports one. So, he decided to humor me and come along.

Strange as it sounds, professional golf can be a very cool spectator sport. The tickets for this kind of event are reasonable ($25) and you can watch from sun up to sundown. You can get much closer to the players than you can at any other sporting event, particularly if you go during the early rounds. Plus, you can manage your own schedule--follow a group, check out on hole, whatever works for you.

He doesn't know any of the players, so we didn't really need to follow anybody. This meant I could show him some cool stuff on the course. I made sure that I took him to two holes in particular: the first and the sixth. I figure he'd dig the first because almost all the players hit driver so he would really see some guys kill the ball. I picked the sixth because he talked about wanting to see players in the sand (how sick is that) and this hole is unique in that it has a sand trap in the middle of the green. He was marginally impressed with both.

We hung out for a few hours then headed on back. As I suspected, there's still no need for me to buy him clubs and lessons. But, we had a great sunny afternoon walking around and chatting. Not bad for a pair of free tickets.