Photo from Google Images
Last year, on Father’s Day, I convinced my twin brother to meet me in Omaha Nebraska to watch my alumni, Coastal Carolina University, play in their first College World Series game. We attended a pre-game tailgate where all the TV’s were on the U.S. Open and we were cheering for fellow Chanticleer, Dustin Johnson. Game seven of the NBA finals was also going on that night. It was a huge day for Coastal athletics and NBA fans and Omaha was a great place to be.
As the CWS game started, we had one phone following the U.S. Open and saved the other phone battery to watch the NBA finals. When DJ finally won his first Major, Chanticleer Nation knew this was the truly the year of the Chanticleer. Coastal went on to beat Florida to win their first CWS game. Twelve days later, CCU won the University’s first National Championship!
This year, Father’s Day is a little different in the wide world of sports. The Golden State Warriors celebrated their re-match win over the Cavs on Thursday due to their “quickie” in the finals. Dustin Johnson missed the cut for Saturday’s round at the U.S. Open and Coastal was left out of the bracket to play their way to Omaha. I couldn’t go to Omaha, so I went home to hang out with my dad.
ESPN made the horrible decision to drop the Best Ball Major from their fantasy play list. For the St.Clair family golf bet, we just pick one golfer to win it all. It’s a known tradition that I always have DJ as my golfer. We went to college together so I’m always rooting for my buddy. But this year, someone in my family decided we would each draw four names from the top 20 golfers. I got in town on Friday and realized that I didn’t get DJ. My dad had him. In natural retaliation I hid my dads favorite snack from him as a ransom to work out a trade deal and get DJ back. He didn’t even notice his snacks were gone. By Sunday I was the only one who still had three golfers playing on Sunday.
With a tradition of being known as the Major that challenges the best golfers, it’s the Major where golfers are fighting to play one under par. In the past, the U.S. Open had mostly been played on courses where the fairways are slim and trees are abundant. Erin Hills is a course where the fairways are wide, wide open and the trees are only slightly visible in the background of one side of the course. No one saw eight of the top 12 golfers in the world rankings missing the cut after two rounds.
Sunday’s round started with the top five golfers on the leaderboard all being at least 10 under par. Even with all the wind, Sunday ended with Brooks Koepka 16 under par and becoming the seventh straight first-time winner of a major championship. This makes three straight years that Americans have won and the second straight St.Clair bet my dad has won.
As TCU and Florida are currently playing in the CWS, I’ll never forget how nice TCU fans were last year. Even LSU fans (Coastal swept the Tigers last year in the Super Regionals and their fans still went Omaha) were also incredibly nice to those of us in teal. It makes it easy to root for the teams in purple. Happy Father’s Day!