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Bar Chat

08/25/2014

The Emerald Isle

Note: Posted Sunday PM

Another Irish Golf Adventure

I came back home from a whirlwind trip to Ireland and thus this is an abbreviated Bar Chat. 

I first started going to Ireland for golf in 1989 and this was my 21st time there. I joined Lahinch Golf Club in 1995 as a lifetime overseas member and a few years after they held their first overseas member/guest event, which I was fortunate to get into. I’ve been to each one since, which is held every two years.

Oh, it’s a blast. Three rounds, three days of pubbing. The weather is always iffy but for the two main rounds of the tournament, Friday and Saturday, it was spectacular. [We had some rain for the practice round, Thursday, but no biggie.]

Every time I make a few new friends in Lahinch, as well as renew old acquaintances, and first and foremost I must thank Martin Barrett, who has run the tournament since inception and now is turning over the reins to Paddy Keane. They do a phenomenal job, and Lahinch Golf Club continues to make some subtle, and not so subtle changes that ensures its standing among the great golf destinations in the world.

I also want to thank our local playing partner, Dennis, who is a class act and a fun guy to have a pint (or four) with. And major thanks to Dennis and his wife Angela for bringing my overseas guest, Pete, and I into their home one evening.

I also have to thank new friends Barry and Jeff, who we played a practice round with. Terrific golfers and just great people.

Now, as for my golf, I have never said I’m good. Not even close to it. But six years ago I shocked the local Lahinch members in finishing fourth out of 48-50 teams, thanks in no small part to guest, Dave, and our local. But I contributed and took home some crystal.

Well this year we finished next to last! I swear, had I putted halfway decent we would have been near the middle. But I didn’t make one...not one...putt over six feet for the entire three rounds. Good lord. I mean I’ve only played the course like 60 times.

Finally, this particular tournament was truly made special by the presence of Matt Venturi, son of the late Hall of Famer, Ken Venturi.

Ken was actually the first overseas member of Lahinch and the club decided to name the overseas member/guest trophy after him. Matt played and gave a terrific speech at the awards dinner. I was honored to meet him.

I’m just going to clear the table of a few items from the world of sports and entertainment.

--The Giants beat the Jets 35-24 in their annual exhibition game this weekend. But the Giants continue to struggle with their new offense under first-year OC Ben McAdoo. As for the Jets, second-year starter Geno Smith has looked just fine, but so has Michael Vick. Coach Rex Ryan needs a good season to keep his job and most fans are guessing Geno has a very short leash.

--Broncos wide receiver Wes Welker suffered his third concussion in ten months in Saturday’s 18-17 loss to the Texans. The thing is, Houston safety D.J. Swearinger gave Welker a hit to the helmet after Welker caught a pass from Peyton Manning. Manning later confronted Swearinger, saying “F--- you.” Manning was flagged for taunting, apparently the first such penalty in his career.

--Michael Sam sacked Johnny Manziel twice in St. Louis’ exhibition win over Cleveland, though Manziel had a solid game, 10-of-15 for 85 yards and a 7-yard touchdown run.

Sam, the first openly gay player in the NFL, is still on the bubble in terms of making the team.

--St. Louis quarterback Sam Bradford is out for the season after suffering a left knee injury; the same knee he had surgery on for an ACL last season in Week 7. So much for his career. 

Ball Bits

--Since the Tigers and A’s traded for David Price and Jon Lester, the Tigers have gone 10-12, the A’s 10-11, through Saturday. Zero offense.

--The Yankees retired Joe Torre’s No. 6 on Thursday, the 17th in franchise history. Following the retirement of Derek Jeter’s No. 2, the Yankees will have no single-digit numbers available.

--Not that anyone is going to sign him, but Bill Madden reports Adam Dunn could easily retire after the season rather than become a free agent again.

--Mike Trout is having a great power year, 28 HR 90 RBI, .553 SLG, entering Sunday night’s contest, but he has also fanned 143 times, already a career high. [I did just see his bomb in the A’s-Angels game...home run No. 29.]

--The Mets’ David Wright, he of the $20 million contract, left Sunday’s game against the Dodgers with a neck injury, but not before he extended his homerless streak to 142 at-bats. Since the All-Star break, he has 137 ABs with just two doubles.

Alas, first baseman Lucas Duda hit home run Nos. 25 and 26 against L.A. in an 11-3 win for Bartolo Colon, who the Mets are desperate to move to avoid paying him $10 million next season.

--Hunter Mahan won The Barclays, the first leg in the FedEx Cup playoffs and Mahan’s sixth career title. He is now back in the conversation for a Ryder Cup berth.

--Joey Logano won his third Sprint Cup race of the season at Bristol Motor Speedway on Saturday night, thus tripling his career total in one year. The 24-year-old will obviously be a force in the playoffs.

--The U.S. Open Tennis Championship kicks off this week and Roger Federer sure has a great shot to get one last major. But I saw this comment by Mike Lupica in the New York Daily News about another tennis player, Noah Rubin, the American who won the Wimbledon junior title this year. Rubin played a charity match against Novak Djokovic on Thursday night, and Lupica “saw with my own eyes how much game the kid has, and how much fun he is to watch.”

--Speaking of the Deacs, I met a gentleman, Al J., at Lahinch, we were talking golf and Wake Forest, and he said “wait ‘til you see William Zalatoris,” the U.S. Junior Amateur champion. Zalatoris is a freshman at Wake Forest this fall on an Arnold Palmer scholarship. 

--A star soccer player died after he was hit in the head by an object thrown from the stands during a game in Algeria’s top league. 24-year-old striker Albert Ebosse of Cameroon was killed when he was probably hit by a rock at the end of the game in which Ebosse had scored. He was the leading scorer in the Algerian league last season.

--So you know how I wrote about the BrightSource Energy solar power plant in the Mojave Desert last time? And how it was responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of birds?

Well the Wall Street Journal ran an editorial over the weekend on this very topic.

“The problem with this $2.2 billion feat of engineering is that birds that fly into the 800 degrees Fahrenheit rays sometimes singe or catch fire in midair....

“(The) U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s forensics laboratory calls the apparatus a ‘mega-trap’ for insects, swallows, road runners, hawks and even monarch butterflies, ‘creating an entire food chain vulnerable to injury and death.’

“The Biological Diversity folks are suing to force solar farms to install lights or noise alert warnings to encourage wildlife to adopt a different flight path.”

The Journal, citing a lobbyist who represents BrightSource, said, “The company notes that as many as 3.7 billion birds each year are killed by cats and 980 million by crashing into walls.”

“This green-on-green showdown exquisitely captures the reason that the America that built the Hoover Dam in five years now has so much trouble building those ‘infrastructure’ projects everybody in Washington and Sacramento claim to favor. Environmental review and permitting are often dragged out a decade or longer across a slew of lawsuits and federal and state agencies. Ivanpah [Ed. the formal name of the BrightSource plant] was required to spend $34 million on a ‘Head Start’ nursery for desert tortoises. Really.”

“Sitting is more dangerous than smoking, kills more people than HIV and is more treacherous than parachuting.”

--Usain Bolt has called it quits for the track season. He competed in only three races in 2014 due to injuries. Bolt won a 100 race in Warsaw, Poland, Saturday, in 9.98, the first time this year he ran a 100 in under 10 seconds, and he decided to take the rest of the year off; a huge blow to European track meet organizers who were counting on Bolt’s presence to boost attendance.

--As I’m major league jet-lagged, I won’t be staying up for the MTV Video Music Awards, but once again Chris Brown was the center of controversy, even if he had nothing to do with the shooting of rap mogul Suge Knight, who was hit six times at a pre-VMA party hosted by Brown in West Hollywood. Knight’s injuries were not life-threatening.

Some are reporting that the intended targets were Brown and Justin Bieber. Others say it was about Knight’s ties to the Compton Bloods, some of whose members were in attendance at the party. The suspect remains at large.

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