Field Trip: AT&T National

At&t National returns this week to the nations capitol for the second year in a row. The Tiger Woods hosted event is played at Congressional Country Club. Tiger and AT&T did their best to give back to the citizens of the DC area by giving tickets to all of the servicemen stationed in the area free of charge. My father is a Lieutenant Commander and has served proudly for 29 plus years in the United States Coast Guard. My father was the recipient of two of these free passes for today's Earl Woods Memorial Pro-Am Tournament, he was unable to attend due to work related issues. So I got the free tickets and gladly paid $20 bucks to park in some guys yard in Bethesda(There was no parking at the course, far cry from the Booz Allen days at Avenel). When we (me and the Lawn Chair Girl) arrived we decided we were starving , we ate at the Michelob Ultra Lounge where we paid an inordinate amount of money to eat a bad brat and terrible turkey and cheddar. As we were there we conversed with a coastie who used to live in the same neighborhood as I did in Hawaii. We learned from her we missed the ceremonial first tee shot. They had 3 paratroopers drop down delivering the golf balls from 3 parts of the world, where we are currently in battle (Afghanistan, Baghdad, and I can't remember the third). Fred Couples and two children of Active Military Personnel hit the tee shots, Boom Boom and Cal Ripken Jr. also gave speeches.

Since we had missed the early morning tee-times, we decided to try and find my favorite of the afternoon tee-times Davis Love 3. We were lucky enough to track him down pretty early and Ms LCG got some great photos of DL3. We then happened upon Steve Elkington, who bombed one down the middle and made a couple jokes with the croud(He also had on these money leather red white and blue spikes). He ended up being the most crowd friendly of the day from our standpoint. We also got to see some of the celebrities in the tournament. Hunter Mahans group had the biggest names, or the friends of Tiger that accepted, including Ty Willingham (the shot we saw him hit he chunked about 45 yards), Stuart Scott (he hit a nice approach but left it short in the bunker where he struggled mightily). We did not have any luck finding Michael Wilbon, but we found the range where Ms. LCG got plenty of great shots. We were lucky enough to find Trevor Immelman, Jesper Parnevik, Brandt Snedeker, Lee Janzen, Brian Gay, Camilo Villegas, and Sean O'Hair all practicing at the same time. After the range we decided we had enough of this tournament and made the trip back home. All-in-all Tiger put on a great show for the troops, even letting some of them caddy for the day, and I cannot wait until next year where he will be healthy enough to play.