Day 1: The Arrival.

After arriving in Akron on Monday night, this morning gave me the first opportunity to visit the famous Firestone layout and meet with my fellow Rules Committee members for the week.

As in previous years I met up with European Tour Chief Referee, John Paramor for a quick breakfast before driving out to Firestone. The place looks very familiar with much of the infrastructure in it’s usual position including Jason Day’s mobile home parked up close to the Rules trailer.I look forward
to catching up with Jason during the week as we have tended to bump into each other prior to the round commencing each morning.

The Rules team for the week is made up off our PGA TOUR Rules staff, Tournament Director Slugger White, John Lillvis, Brad Fabel and Mark Dusbabek. Representing the International Tours are John Paramor, Ludwick Manyama from the Sunshine Tour and myself. JL has been the advance official for this event
and has been on site since early last week. The advance official assumes responsibility for marking the golf course and checking the positioning of on course infrastructure such as TV towers,grandstands etc and prepares all the necessary paperwork for the week.

Having met with our colleagues the first task for myself and JP was to go and secure our accreditation for the week. There is a special trailer set up for this and so the task was made significantly easier given that we have both been to Firestone before. Our lanyards and badges were waiting for us
and it was simply a case of collecting them from the office.

After this it was a chance for us to drive the course and check out any changes from previous years. All discussions that we had engaged in during the morning suggested that the course is playing firmer and faster than it has in recent years. No significant rain has fallen of late and so the ball will
be running on the fairways and the greens will be less receptive.

There was nothing really different in the course infrastructure from recent years and so we really just checked out the proximity of temporary immovable obstruction (TIO’s) to the greens and slight repair work that the course staff had made to a couple of fairways.

After our trip around the course it was lunch and a quick catch up with the other Rules staff. I was keen to see if any of our players were on the range as I hadn’t seen any of them out on the course,and so I headed down to the range.

First up I met with Steven Bowditch who was heading home for the day and then I found Marc Leishman smashing balls on the range. Leish is in good spirits after his performance at St Andrews and could go well this week.

As the afternoon came to a close the travel started to take its toll and we decided to make a retreat to the hotel. I have a couple of commitments on Wednesday along with a Rules meeting at 11.00am and so it will be an early morning start.

The course looks absolutely incredible and so it looks like a great week of golf. If you can’t score well on this surface then something has to be wrong.

Kind regards

Scotty

Related Links

19th Blog / Scotty on Tour: Bridgestone Invitational Day 1
19th Blog / Scotty on Tour: Bridgestone Invitational Day 2
19th Blog / Scotty on Tour: Bridgestone Invitational Round 1
19th Blog / Scotty on Tour: Bridgestone Invitational Round 2
19th Blog / Scotty on Tour: Bridgestone Invitational Round 3
19th Blog / Scotty on Tour: Bridgestone Invitational Round 4