Woke up this morning at 6:30 and hustled downstairs for breakfast. I had few croissants, some Argentinian strawberry yogurt, a bit of scrambled eggs, and some fruit. I also used one of Mom’s favorite tricks and took a few pastries and croissants and wrapped them up in a napkin for later. Oh, I also had a few glasses of OJ, but was a tad disappointed that it was Minute Maid from concentrate and not fresh squeezed. Of course, fresh squeezed OJ is a hugely popular hotel breakfast item, and also a profit center. I think our FSOJ at the hotel in PBG in Florida was something like 5 bucks a pop. Imagine how much $ of FSOJ 700 Jewish athletes would go through in two weeks of breakfasts. Remember, no expense was spared in the maintaining our security, but they did skimp a bit on the breakfast amenities if you ask me…(very minor complaint).
We boarded the bus and drove the 45 minutes back to Hebraica, sans police and helicopter escort this time. Inside the compound/country club we drove a little deeper and saw some of the minor roads and houses which sort of reminded me of Scarsdale without the hills. The houses are all very nice and you can nearly taste how close knit the community is. Even the stray dogs are friendly and well mannered.
The course was a bit cow pasturesque with narrow fairways and without much undulation or character. Today I played with Raffi from California, Mike from Chicago, and a very nice lefty doctor from Boca Raton (the name will come back to me)We headed up to the 10th tee without hitting any balls and set off. The secretary/starter told us (at least I remember his telling us as do Raffi and Mike, and the good doctor) that all yardages were in meters, meaning you multiply distances by 1.0973 or so give or take to get the true distance.
Anyway, perfect drive down the middle on the 10th hole par 5 and I was 195 supposed meters away, or 215 yards or so, with a stiff tailwind. Out comes the 4 iron, which usually flies 195 or so, but launched in the air with this wind should go about 21. Boy did I pure that 4 iron, and I was tracking towards the green, towards the pin, and well kept rising. The ball came to rest about 30 yards over the green and somehow I made par. I rationalized this anomaly by saying uh yeah well you know the ball travels farther in the summer. Two holes later, a similar thing happened where my eight iron from 135 “units” flew the green by 25 yards. Later in the day we learned all distances were in yards, lol. The course was pretty unmemorable overall and we actually only played 10 holes because we were leaving to go to the estancia at noon and I wanted to practice a bit more on the chipping and putting green.
I was still having issues with the distances on my chips so I decided to annoy Mike (+3 handicap out of Muirfield Village) and pepper him with a few questions about what he thinks about over the ball…do you look at your target landing spot or the hole? Etc. A few minutes later, Dave Merkow (if you remember the bagel spread reference from a few days ago) came up to me and basically showed me what was up…what I was doing wrong, and what was the right thing to do.
In most simple terms I think, I was hooding my 56 ̊(de-lofting the club by moving my hands way forward to keep the ball closer to the ground) which caused a much steeper angle of attack towards the ground. To avoid chunking the ball I was not allowing my wrists to break after the swing. This kept me from chunking lots of chips, but also made it really difficult to control the distance. Dave came over and showed me what I was doing and also the fix. Twenty minutes later, I was satisfied that my chipping woes were for the most part over. Usually you’d have to pay hundreds for this kind of lesson.
We re-boarded the bus and headed towards the estancia where the USA team would spend the afternoon. Let me tell you, what a unique and amazing time we had. First, we went to an area between the horse um oval? and a covered performance/music area where they served us pre-appetigres. There was so much food, you’ll realize why these were pre-appetigres. For us, they had out some nice cheese cubes, olives, and some other light snack items, as well as a soft drink booth. I did try this Argentinian soda that tasted exactly like thin cough medicine.
I walked over to the horse area where the gauchos were giving us a cool show. They played this game where two gauchos would each ride his horse a.f.a.p. towards this frame of a soccer goal off of the top of which hung a string with a silver dollar sized hollow ring dangling. The object was to sort of spear the ring with a sword looking thing while riding side by side at full speed. They were successful most of the time. Then it was time to do a version of cowboy water skiing. The gaucho hooked up a cowskin toboggan behind the horse and then took off dragging the brave one behind. Yes, I did try this, and yes Dad took video.
Next we were driven in tractor drawn carriage (most had horse drawn carriages) towards the eating area. Wow what a spread there was there. These were the real appetizers. I had some beets, a hard-boiled egg, marinated mushrooms, this interesting eggplant and sun-dried tomato sandwich, corn, and lots of other stuff. After the second round of appetizers, some men came around with different kinds of beef hanging off of swords which was fantiggitytastic. My favorite was the classic roasted beef which was pretty indescribably delicious. There was also “pasillo” which was an interesting skirt like cut, sweetbreads, chicken, and other cuts, most of which I did not try because I was so full at this point…I didn’t even have dessert. I’ll also mention the roast beef came with skin…mmm good.
After the meal, the group of golfers went outside and chatted amongst ourselves and with a soccer playing Lindsay Lohan-ish look-alike. Billy G, 33, on the open team, and owner of jmerica.com and jcards.com, was in absolutely top form making everyone laugh again and again, and again. I was honestly taking mental notes at how to absolutely control a group. Impressive Billy, impressive. Anyway, after this we boarded the bus to go back to the hotel.
This blog is so long because I’m writing it in my room where I’m not connected to the internet. I’m going to run downstairs in 20 minutes and hop on the intarweb and post this as well as some pictures and hopefully a video. Gotta budget time smartly with only 30 minutes of web time per day. Tonight, we are bypassing the Maccabiah group and going out as a team to a steakhouse (methinks) and a bar. (me at a bar?) Can stranger things happen? Stay tuned for tomorrow’s update. Thanks for reading (although if you didn’t read every word, I don’t blame you one bit)
DS
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