For
me watching it unfold on television way down here in Florida there was an added
attraction. This year's Open was played at the Merion Golf Club which sits
right in the middle of my old neighborhood on Philadelphia's Main Line.
Which
by the way is not so much what it used to be, as portrayed most famously in the
motion picture The Philadelphia Story starring Katherine Hepburn and
Cary Grant, as for what it is today. These little communities that tie together
what William Penn fondly called his Greene Countrie Townes are populated
nowadays by mostly ordinary folk who are scrambling 24/7 to make a living
knowing full well that Wall Street or Washington can take it all away in a
heartbeat. Yes snobbery and using terms like “old sport” or speaking with an
under-bite still exists but mostly they are gone with the wind. After all how
long can you sit by a swimming pool reviewing your portfolio and talking
exclusively to your cousins?
Starting
with the Overbrook station at the border of the City of Philadelphia the
primary (main) line of railroad tracks wend their way northwest into leafy
suburbia and stations like Merion, Ardmore, Haverford, Bryn Mawr, Villanova.
Many of the communities surrounding these stations include colleges and
universities of national renown. All in all the Main Line is an area of rich
cultural blessing. And, if military history happens to be your thing, you just
can't have it any better than visiting the grounds of conflict where our
country won its freedom.
Play
at the 2013 U.S Open Golf tournament was more than a nostalgia trip down Memory
Lane and Revolutionary War battle sites for me as well as the countless others
who followed Open play on the tube. It
was an exceptional outing on a truly exceptional golf course.
But
right now it's Happy Hour here in The Land of Eternal Sunshine. Time for me to
ask my golfer spouse to explain the meaning of Birdie, Bogey, Eagle, let alone Triple Bogey and Shank.
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