Catching Up With Steve

By JOHN P. WISE
One Great Season

ATLANTA -- I got a great text message from my boy Steve back in New York on Saturday before I left my hotel for Tiger Stadium to cover the Florida-LSU game.

"YO BRO -- Got a buncha people over and Bruce is cooking chili (even brought the Wise secret ingredient: el queso de goat) and we're thinkin bout ya!"

Anyway, Steve reminded me about a recent golf trip he took with some of his old buds, and there's a college football angle that I asked him to summarize in a few short paragraphs.

All four of us are Buckeyes fans, so when we plan our golf trip almost every autumn, we carve out half a Saturday to watch the Bucks and then resume the competition. This year, our Saturday round was at Washington National, "Home of the Huskies," and naturally we all were wearing Bucks stuff. (Brutus headcovers and Mitch's Woody hat are annual staples as well.)

We watched at their clubhouse, and the people there were so cool — and extremely appreciative of OSU's injuring of USC's Matt Barkley, which arguably allowed the Huskies to pull off the upset the previous Saturday. Greatly discounted beers and big-time pats on the back were all around in the clubhouse. That's what makes college football so great.

Only two years removed from OSU's crushing of UW in their house, and here we are, four Buckeyes fans, enjoying a red carpet rolled out for us by perfect strangers at a college golf course. Amazing track, by the way. A little different from the Gray course, let's just say.

Anyway, Seattle was gorgeous. Weather perfect, and all six courses we played were interesting and tough as hell. Doesn't help that we play the tips at every single course, no matter what. Finished the 90-hole competition the final Sunday at Chambers Bay, site of the 2015 U.S. Open. A links course (massive shift for the Open to select such an untraditional layout like a links course) with fescue greens (another huge departure).