My friend Steve and I took a golf trip over Labor Day weekend. We went to Scottsdale, AZ. Yes, Arizona in August isn’t prime golfing weather, but because of the heat, the courses are at their cheapest. We made tee times at three excellent courses. We played Kierland Golf Club when we were fresh off the plane. This course is next to the time share Steve has and it is a really good course. Sunday we played the Stadium Course at TPC Scottsdale. This course hosts the FBR Open, so it was cool to play the same place the pros play. That night we caught the Dodgers-Diamondbacks game, which was very fun. Chase Field is an excellent ballpark. Monday we managed to get into two rounds before our flight at the Monument and Pinnacle Courses at Troon North. This was the most attractive of the courses and the hardest too.

I managed to break 100 on three of the four rounds, which is better than I expected. The weather cooperated quite well. I think the highest temperature was 93.

It was a great weekend and I can’t wait to go back.

Teeing off at TPC Scottsdale

Acacia Course, Kierland Golf Club

Monument Course, Troon North

The LPGA announced a controversial policy yesterday that requires Korean players to pass an English competency test to stay on the Tour. The players will have two years to get their English ability up to the level required by the tour or face losing their tour card.

This is a lose-lose situation for the LPGA. There are a large number of Korean players on tour and looking at the leaderboard on any given weekend shows they are successful. It is a rare weekend that doesn’t have two or three Kims or Parks in the top ten. This is a marketing problem for the LPGA because most of the Korean players are somewhat anonymous. They do little press due to their lack of English skills. So if a player wins and no one knows anything about them other than they are Korean, it doesn’t help the tour. The LPGA uses many of the young stars to make the tour more visible, but you rarely see anything about the Koreans because no one knows them.

So the LPGA figured that if the Koreans learn English, they can promote them and the tour better.

The trouble is the policy smacks of racism. The Koreans are singled out on spite of many non Americans on tour. Though it does seem to be more of an issue for the Koreans. Lorenna Ochoa is the biggest star today and she isn’t a native English speaker.

I doubt this policy will stand as is. I can smell a lawsuit brewing.

One thing I’ve never understood are people who back into parking spaces. It always seemed to me that they spend more time lining up their car to pull it into the space in reverse than it takes to back out of the space when they leave. And if the spaces are angled it seems especially stupid as they pull out going the wrong way.

Sunday I discovered something about this type of person. We went to the mall and a couple of spaces down someone parked backwards. It was a family and as they got out of the car the son asked why the dad parked that way. The dad proudly responded that it saves gas. I wanted to ask him about the gas he used getting the car in backwards, but I held my tongue. So there you go. These people are morons.

Call me paranoid, but after reading about about the deals to have a roll call vote I wouldn’t be surprised to see a convention shocker. Maybe Hilary will twist enough arms among the superdelegates to hijack the convention and thus destroy the Democratic Party.

BTW, I like Biden. I even worked on his campaign when I was in school in 88. Hard to believe now, but back then I was active in student government.

Many people have been complaining about problems with the new iPhone 3g and the biggest complaint has been unreliable connections to the 3g network. I still have an original iPhone, but I have explanation for the problems. When people say they are having problems connecting to the 3g network, look at where they are. Usually it is a city like San Francisco. Think for a minute how 3g and regular cell service works. You connect to a cell tower that everyone within a certain radius of the cell tower is also connected. The more people there are connecting within that radius, the less reliable the connection will be. I have two examples of this. First, I used to work at Sprint world headquarters. The cell service on the campus was terrible. You know why? Because there were over 10,000 Sprint phones using the same tower all at once. Second, try making a call right at 9pm, when prime time ends and the calls don’t count towards you plan. You will probably find a lot of dropped calls and poor connections. Why? Because everyone was waiting until after 9pm to call.

Don’t blame Apple for this. It isn’t a technical issue with the phone. The cell towers can’t handle the amount of use generated by the new phones. I have enough problems with the iPhone 2.0 software, but that isn’t one of them.

For those of you who think that outsourcing is a good thing, or can’t affect you, read this. No job is safe. Firing Americans always helps the bottom line.

Monday I had my best round of golf ever. I played Countryside and on no.6, a short par 5, I managed to chip in for my first ever eagle. Sweet. I beat my best score by 7 strokes with an 83. My goal for the summer was to beat 85. I guess I can stop playing now. Ha!