"The starter put them with another couple who just started playing golf five months ago."

Doug Ferguson with a fun note on Henrik Stenson booking a U.S. Open tune-up round at Torrey Pines recently:

When he arrived in California for the Target World Challenge, he made a detour to San Diego and booked a twosome on the golf course. The starter put them with another couple who just started playing golf five months ago.

Turns out the woman's name was Pamela Anderson - no, not that one - and Stenson's remembers her boyfriend's name only as Jesse.

"Let's just say it was an interesting round," Stenson said. "She told me, 'The next time you're south of L.A., give me a call.' And I told her, 'Which Pamela Anderson am I going to look up?"'

It was an awakening of sorts for Stenson, who won last year in Dubai and the Accenture Match Play Championship. Outside of a round in Spain last year, he said it had been 10 years since he paid a greens fee. The good news is he received the San Diego County residents rate.

And he bought a bucket of balls for the range, the first time in a while he hit balls with a black stripe around them.

"They were limited-flight balls," he said. "It was cool in the morning, and the ball was going nowhere. But it took a couple of swings to realize this is not down to me. Some of it was the balls."

Comments

[Four-putt]

"Green fee, not greens fee!" he yelled, over the obnoxious sound of fingernails screeching on a blackboard.

4p

[Pickworth]

"There'll be wigs on the green if people keep abusing the language."

[Rudy G.]

Launch an investigation as to how he got the resident rate.

[Chuck]

Someone call the USGA and tell them that Pamela and Jesse each broke 100, and that they are looking forward to playing with the President of Lexus and the Chairman of Federal Express, along with either Alice Cooper, John Elway, Justin Timberlake or the Gatlin Brothers in June '08.

[Smolmania]

How much credit does Stenson get for not running off with his head up his ass because they were making him pay? Seems to me that the average PGA Tour player's going to raise such a stink that they waive the greens (just kidding PK, I did that on purpose!) fee just to shut him up. . .

[Tighthead]

Smol- he certainly comes off as a good guy for taking this in stride. I think that more than the money issue, most guys would whine about being paired up with regular folk.

Chuck - Houston to Denver was an underappreciated album.

[Hawkeye]

Smols, he is a great guy who hasn't let the success get to his head. Maybe that's one of the reasons he has rsigned his membership on the PGA Tour, where it seems you have to be either a bible basher or a complete jerk (or both) in order to fit in.

[Tony Richardson]

Hawkeye,

Don't you think that Stenson's plans to play more in Europe are due to wanting to be closer to home?

I'm not defending the bible-thumpers or complete jerks (or Tim Finchem) but it seems like you are stretching for Stenson's motive.

[JSS]

I applaud the guy. You would have thought he would call the head pro and make his tee time but he's European and they do things different.

What did he think of the course?

[Hawkeye]

Tony, he has two homes - one in Dubai where they play but three events in the area, and a newbuilt home in Orlando. So technically, more time in Europe does not equal being closer to home. I am a bit puzzled about his move to quit the PGA Tour, to be honest, so I guess that I'm if not stretching so at least trying to figure out his main motive for playing less in the States. He has said in Swedish papers that it was a bit of a grind to fill in the required number of events with a newborn at home, but now that he has a home in the US that wouldn't be a problem.

As for his practise round at Torrey, growing up in Sweden in the 80's and 90's there wasn't a single course in the country that you could get onto any other way (there was none that you couldn't get onto either). Be it an uppity club in Stockholm or a goat track in the bush, you just went to the club, paid the green fee and played. This just shows that he is still very much in touch with his roots. I believe he even swears in Swedish still.

[JC]

I watched Geoff Ogilvy being charged £500 for a foursome at the starter's hut of the Old Course - no favours there either.

[Tighthead]

Arnie didn't seem too pleased about getting charged at Bandon.

[GeoffreyC]

Props to Stenson for the way he went about playing Torrey Pines. Too many touring pros would not have hung around for that experience though it might be good practice for the 5 1/2 hr US Open rounds..

I think Stenson's experience also points out that just about any elite world class pro can show up at a public golf venue and get through a round and his day without much fanfare. Thinking about this I have some new found respect for Tiger and just what he might have been faced with given the same circumstances. I'm reminded of the time a retired Bobby Jones showed up at The Old Course at St Andrews for a casual round of golf. By the time they got out to the Eden hole there were 5000 town folks following the game.