The Challenge

Let me introduce you to a friend of mine.

Travis is one of our assistant coaches for the LSU women's basketball program.  He is a graduate of tu in Austin, Texas.  For those of you unfamiliar with the institution I refer to as tu, its colors are Burnt Orange and its mascot is a bovine named Bevo.

Travis played basketball at tu.  Actually he didn't just play - he excelled!  He was an All-American in 1990, and was the first player in Southwest Conference history to earn back-to-back Player of the Year honors.

He is the second all-time leading scorer in tu men's basketball history and is the second all-time leading scorer in Southwest Conference history.

He was good - he was REAL good !!

Travis is also an avid golfer.  So am I.

Up until yesterday though, Travis and I have never played golf together.  Over the past few years there has been a lot of trash talking back and forth among us as to who is the better golfer.

We have failed on several attempts to align our schedules so we could settle this dispute.  Yesterday, our schedules finally aligned.

The Challenge was on !!

Carter Plantation, a David Toms golf course in Springfield, Louisiana was the site we chose to settle this long-standing dispute.

Following a quick lunch, Travis and I made our way to the driving range to loosen up and get ready for the match. It was a gorgeous south Louisiana spring day - 80 degrees, low humidity, and a slight breeze blowing out of the south.

An absolutely perfect day for golf !

Now I won't break the entire match down hole-for-hole, but I will tell you that Travis started out double bogey-double bogey-double bogey.

I started out birdie-par-par.

After 3 holes Travis was down 7 shots !

Travis did manage to birdie the par 5 fourth hole, but by the time we made the turn after 9 holes my lead was up to 8.

Unfortunately neither of us played real well on the back side - mainly due to the fact that we found ourselves behind a group of five buffoons - four of whom I believe had never seen a golf course, much less played on one!

It was slow going - we had to wait to hit every single shot on the back nine - sometimes as much as six or seven minutes.  For a golfer, that's frustrating.

REAL frustrating.

Travis spent some of those minutes talking on the phone - to recruits, to his head coach, to his sister.

 
 
 

He might should have spent some of those minutes talking to his swing coach or whomever he relies on to help him with his golf game.

I'm just saying....

In all fairness, Travis is a very good golfer.  And we had a great time on a beautiful day on the golf course!  This time of year there's not much else I'd rather be doing.

When it was all said and done, Travis lost by 8 strokes.

And he knows I won't let him forget it.

EVER!

I'm sure Travis will want a re-match one day soon.  And I'll grant him that.  After all, we had a really good time playing together.

In addition to learning that I enjoyed playing golf with Travis, I learned something very important yesterday.

Travis can't beat me on the golf course.

EVER!

Until next time...

The Easter Weekend

It was a busy Easter weekend at the Wagner Ponderosa.

To begin with, My Better Half and I finally found the time to get our yard in order. It's been a long time coming.

Hurricane Gustav pretty much destoyed our yard 2 summers ago.  The trees that were uprooted and snapped off at the base during the storm made a direct hit on most of our landscaping.

Following the storm we decided it was time to do a complete restoration of our home - a process that essentially took us over a year to complete, a project that was essentially finished just a few months ago.

Once that was done, it was time to start on the landscaping.  So My Better Half and I (along with some help from son-in-law Jimmy) spent the entire Easter weekend working on our yard. 

And I can tell you we don't want to have to do it again!  We ended up spending all day Friday, all day Saturday and about half the day on Sunday trying to get it all in order.  Raking, shoveling, weeding, pulling, hoeing, pushing, spreading, and planting took their toll on both our bodies!

But it's done now and we can move on...

While this was going on our 2 daughters, 2 sons-in-law, and 6 grandkids also spent a good deal of time at the house. It's always great having the enitre family around the house - even if much of our focus was on getting the yard in shape!

                                 

                                           

                   

Son-in-law Jimmy even manged to find time to cook our dinner on Saturday night, grilling chicken and sausage - which definitely hit the spot after a long, long day in the yard!

Now that the landscaping is behind us, it will soon be time for all the kiddos to start enjoying the pool. And the way Mother Nature is cooperating these days, I'm guessing the upcoming weekend will see the pool ready for the onslaught of the grandkids.

I love the spring and summer !

Until next time...