Living Large at the Byron (Year Two)

Once again I had the privilege of impersonating media for the weekend, attending the Byron Nelson PGA event in McKinney, TX. Courtesy of my son MJ and his media company Third Down Thursdays (link HERE), I spent Saturday and Sunday sporting a badge that allowed insider access. If you missed my summary from Year One, here’s a LINK to catch you up.

You can read all about Scottie Scheffler’s runaway win, how he dominated from beginning to end, how special it was to win in his home state, blah blah blah. But you can read all about that on a hundred sites. Here are some observations of the common man.

The Byron Nelson (BN) is technically called the CJ Cup, but nobody uses that term. Historically, it’s the Byron Nelson, named after the Hall of Fame player. There’s all sorts of signage spouting CJ Cup, but it’s the Nelson when you speak to fans and volunteers and locals. Most don’t even know what “CJ” stands for. Also, nobody calls it the Nellie.

The rabble are forced to pay to park or hoof it for a mile or two from remote lots. Not me. I parked at the McKinney Soccer Complex and was shuttled in a long, black luxury limo bus both days. Clean and air-conditioned, the drivers brought me right to the gate, where Security saw my lanyard and ushered me in. Naturally, the limo shuttled me back to my truck when I was done. Yeah, I’m media.

The event is run by a legion of volunteers and I never found one to be unkind, moody, surly or any other negative adjective. Let’s start with Jib, who is NOT American Indian. He holds the rope by the bridge on #10 and keeps fans away from players and caddies and the standard bearer. Oh, you don’t know what a standard bearer is? Every group has one. He’s the dude who carries the sign telling you the players in a group and their current score.

So, Jib makes a comment to MJ and me about how slow the standard bearer is walking on #10. “He’s gonna have a long day,” Jib says. What I heard Jib say, though, was that the guy schlepping the sign was named Standing Bear. That made me wonder what tribe Jib was from, until MJ corrected me. For the rest of the tourney, mostly to annoy MJ, I referred to any guy carrying the scores as Standing Bear.

(A related story I’ve already told. As a young child, friends of my parents asked if I’d be the ring bearer in their daughter’s wedding. I adamantly refused this public humiliation. No way was I wearing a bear suit in front of a church full of people.)

I asked another volunteer, a middle-aged woman, if she ever had to yell at scofflaws who tried to cross her bridge at the wrong time. “Not yet,” she said. Then she smiled. “But I have my mom voice ready, just in case.” Every single volunteer I encountered at the BN, like these two, was simply Texas friendly.

These three were working a small beer tent near the 15th green. I asked if I could circle behind their stand as a shortcut back to the Media Center. We had a five minute conversation (after they said “No”), so lively that I requested a photo. When they lined up, I said, “Looks like a thorn between two roses.” Such a dad line and not very original, but they lapped it up. As I departed, they were still laughing.

Every year it rains the weekend of the BN. Set your watch, mark you calendar, it’s gonna be wet. This year, Friday’s afternoon round was delayed by a torrential gully washer. Lots of muck and mud everywhere when they finally resumed on Saturday. Players who missed the fairway found their ball in deep, wet, ugly rough. PGA golfer Frankie Capan tried to hit over a ravine split by a large stream; it did not go well for him. The ball landed with a thud.

Normally, a guy hits a shot like that, he takes a stroke, drops a new ball, and plays on. Not Frankie (I’m media so I use first names). I’m not sure if that was his lucky ball, his last ball, or maybe he’s just tight with a buck. He sent his caddy into the twenty-five foot deep ravine for search and rescue. Remarkably, the caddy, after slipping and sliding like a mountain goat on ice skates, found Frankie’s ball. He signaled to the player to come on down and hit the shot.

After the fantastic recovery, Frankie still had to climb out of the gorge. His white shoes were covered with mud, so much so that he dipped his feet into the water and ran them through the soaked grass, mostly in vain. He also missed the putt for par.

Journalists get access to the Media Center, a large room (36 tables) which houses media from all over. There are large screen TV’s, enough that you’d never have to leave the room to cover the tournament. The tourney draws a huge Asian contingent of media, primarily Japan and Korea because so many Asian players are on tour now. There is no assigned seating and certainly no animosity or competition. Pick anyone in the room, and you’ll have a ten minute conversation. We’re all part of the media brotherhood.

The tables are littered with small bowls of Hershey’s minis. Remarkably, they never run out, which is some sort of PGA voodoo, I think. There’s also an adjacent room with drinks, snacks and ample food at all times, overseen by staffed by even more volunteers. We media, we like our freebies.

Golf carts abound, like locusts swarming a wheat field. The vehicles ferry the VIP’s and the aged. They carry food, drink, and trash. They also serve as transport for media and their tons of camera equipment, as well as security. You can’t take more than twenty steps without a cart zipping by. Saturday, I counted carts until I got to 1.4 billion and realized there was a cart for every occupant of India, not that India needs golf carts. Where do the carts come from, how are they assigned, and how do they get back to their home base? Those are questions for next year.

The BN also, not surprisingly, contains more police than I’ve ever seen in a single event. I imagine a venue like this would be a prime terror target, so there’s a huge, armed presence. They even stationed snipers on a tall building near the driving range. I considered taking a picture of the snipers, but reconsidered. Do I want to stand there aiming my camera at a rooftop with armed sharpshooters? No, no I don’t.

Let’s be honest, though. At its core, the Byron Nelson is a four-day party. Women dress like they’re strutting the runway, and alcohol flows freely from seven a.m. until dusk with no apparent cutoff time.

True story–I saw folks hoisting beers and margaritas at nine in the morning, and I saw them later, still drinking. There’s no shortage of options to fulfill your alcohol fancies. There’s even a family-friendly nightclub, House of CJ, featuring K-Pop, beer, and thumping dance music.

And, unlike a NFL or NHL game, the fans aren’t belligerent or violent. They’re chill, enjoying the sun and nature and still sober enough to go library-silent when a player is about to hit. MJ remarked on the lack of wisdom of drinking all day under sunny skies, getting dehydrated, all while walking four or five miles. Hey, what do we know? We’re just media.

No big takeaways from the weekend. Just livin’ and learning and enjoying. Thanks to MJ and TDT (aka, Third Down Thursday) for the opportunity, where a retired teacher can spend a few days as a media member. I did mention that right?

Thanks for reading!

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