Allie White, second-year member on the Epson Tour, will be sharing her adventures throughout the 2014 season. If you, the fans, have a question or topic you'd like Allie to cover just e-mail us at Epson Tour. Be sure to take a look back at her blogs from her 2013 Rookie season.
An Extract from “Thoughts Upon Driving Back from Kansas”
Well, I’m still in Kansas. I’m writing my Kansas blog to you from the passenger seat of my Batmobile while Lindy helpfully drives the rest of the way to Kansas City (in Missouri... obviously). I figure I will have plenty of quality drive time getting down to Daytona Beach with my Mom so I can handle a little shotty. For those of you wondering how long that drive is… it’s a mere hop, skip, and a jump across a few states. In eighth grade I took a two hour long career builder test and truck driver was my number one best match. Good thing.
For those of you who have made the Mayetta to Kansas City trek before… it’s pretty flat and beautiful with great windmills and a few rolling hills... so hopefully I won’t get carsick here because I have lots of great things to say about Kansas.
Let’s talk weather first. The first morning I woke up in Mayetta, I heard the news report that a tornado had landed a few towns over. Okay… glad I didn’t wake up for that. But Mayetta with it’s spitting rain, cool mornings, and sweeping gusts of wind was nothing compared to Garden City. Holy crap does the wind blow out there. Fields and fields of crop and pasture don’t stop anything. And when it’s averaging 45 degrees for two rounds, then you are going to notice a windchill.
All you could really do was laugh. Just listening to the reactions of my fellow professional golfers watch their ball start out straight and then hook a rook straight into a patch a fescue was hysterical. It was a lot of “Oh no!… bleep. Really? bleep! bleep”. Eventually, you got used to the ball going all sorts of strange places so you stopped swearing and just got to stepping.
Warming up to hit balls on Friday being the third tee time was also an adventure. There was no sun up at 6.45 when we started but the light at the range illuminated a nice misting rain coming down on a bunch of golfers who all looked like the same little black blobs. I mean with all of the clothes we hustled to buy from WalMart and Dick’s (the Garden City clothing economy was digging us) we all looked about 40 pounds heavier. The locals kept telling us that the average temperature was usually 90 this time of year… ?
When I saw Catherine warming up in the afternoon I teased her that she looked like a snow resort granola chick. I could just see her snowboarding over to Lindsey Vaughn and saying, “Yo, Linds let’s hit the slopes!”
Anyway, you get the picture. I don’t want you to be completely distracted by the weather. There is so much more to Kansas than that. The people could not be kinder or happier to show you the best of Kansas. For example, my cart driver form Mayetta, Boyd, took the time to mail me a Kansas Jayhawks hat and golf shirt over to Garden City so I could have some Kansas gear to sport. Everyone I met in Kansas was really nice like that. I wore my hat over to the local Garden City Buffalos high school football game where the team had us come help with the coin toss. Football lovers Rachel Rohanna and myself were part of the crew that really loved getting over there (we didn’t mind the free Buffalo t-shirt either… I’m all about free t-shirts).
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Speaking of cool stuff. The folks at Garden City really spoiled us. After giving us a really nice Garden City gift bag, they hooked us up with the most bedazzled, big buckled, true country belt I’ve ever seen (we all looked like something else rocking them at the welcome party). I had actually spent a good part of my pre-round routine in Mayetta looking for a belt… I had no luck until my super helpful caddy Adam took his off and gave it to me. Oh caddies :). After that, I bought a belt, and found the one I thought I had, and got my bedazzled belt... so I ended up with four belts. I should have no sag issues in Daytona.
But back to my thoughts on Kansas… thus even with some of the worst weather going, Kansas was as warm hearted as it comes. I mean when my host family mom Dixie busts out steak and chicken noodle after a cold day then you know you are in good hands.
Ohioan Caroline Powers and I both enjoyed great Kansas hosts. While we were practicing on the range at Buffalo Dunes, Caroline reminded me of a time she had shared her umbrella with me for the last 6 holes of the Ohio Junior Girls Championship. Well, the Kansas hospitality was kinda awesome like that. And of course, things haven’t changed much and I had to borrow an umbrella. Thank you Kansas!!
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