Augusta Classic. What a great tournament. It's not the biggest of the year by any means. There's just something about it. The staff really puts in a lot of effort. We love it there. I was REALLY loving it after the first round when I was tied with Kenny for 1st and had an ace... we'll get to that later.

We stayed at our usual parking lot outside the rec center at Riverside DGC. We had our own light pole to plug into and even had a Winni-guest for the weekend. Brian Scheweberger (Shweh-berger) joined us for the weekend and carted us around town in his truck. We hit up our usual haunts like Rick's Costal Cafe for a dinner and dined at Nacho Mama's on another night. I got some sort of stomach flu but felt fine… just had to stay close to a bathroom for about five days.

Anyhow, I played pretty mediocre golf after my blistering 1st round and finished 6th. Larry Leonard had a pretty incredible weekend of golf and beat out Barry Schultz for 1st. Kenny was 3rd. Doctor Rick and Cam passed me up in the final round for 4th and 5th respectively. Avery was 7th and Dave finished 8th. Dave would carry the Shule Monkey into the USDGC. Shweb had a rough weekend. We debated making him carry the monkey but decided to keep it in the family.

From Augusta we headed right over to Rock Hill and scoured the Innova warehouse for whatever hidden gems might still be around. Pickin's were slim. That night we drove over to Billy Crump's house and stayed for two nights while we practiced the course for the upcoming U.S.D.G.C. -- the biggie with lots of cash. Once the tournament started we camped out at the Wingate hotel parking lot and borrowed the shower at Pat Govang's room each night.

Just like you always hear, the staff for the tournament went full boar. Nothing was left out this year. The players area at the clubhouse was outfitted with big fluffy couches, a big screen TV, a Playstation2 on another TV, refreshments, and other amenities. The course had a few new holes and lost a few old ones. It was definitely going to play more difficult with O.B. everywhere and even a new mando-shot hole that took huge bites out of people. Barry shot the course record twice (58). The best I could manage were a pair of 69's on the last two days. Dave was steady in the mid-upper sixties and Avery had an uphill start with a 77 on the first day but shot back with scores in the low-mid-60's for the remaining three rounds. Many very good players had at least one round in the mid-70's.

One odd thing that I noticed was that none of the touring players were able to crack the top10 places. Figures... the ones who needed the money the most. Ah well. You can find USDGC results here. Editor's note: since Todd didn't want to come right out and tell you, he tied for 50th, along with another world class golfer, Juliana Korver.

We split from Rock Hill for Raleigh, NC to hang out with Team Wendell (Mad Dog, Mansfield and Schweberger's house) for a couple days of relaxation. Along the way our alternator went out and we ran the batteries dry. I got a quick jump start and we found a garage that let us plug into an outlet and let the built in battery charger go to work. From there we made it about another 50 miles before having to pull into a gas station and plug in for another 30 minutes so we could make it the rest of the way. The next day I replaced the alternator and belts (the belt was about 500 miles from breaking too) and everything seems to be fine. Right now we're at John Biscoe's house in Spotsylvania, VA getting ready for the Old Dominion Showdown on Saturday. The forecast is for fair skies.... thank god.

More soon. Should be exciting: we have to drive to Tulsa, Oklahoma, gonna be about 1100 miles.... adventure ensues.

-Todd and Crew

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