Friday

I drove in but everyone else flew in on Friday afternoon to meet in LA.  We had a meeting at 5:30 p.m. to meet everybody and get to know everybody.  It was cool meet the people I didn't know and get to meet the people that I already knew from college golf and amateur golf.  Then we went out to PF Chang's and went and walked around in Santa Monica for a little bit.  We ordered a bunch of food.   Jeff Overton eats like a horse.  We kept passing all of our scraps down to him.  It was funny.  That guy can eat.  I think that he was stocking up because he was a little scared of the food that we were going to eat  in Japan.  We went to bed early because we had a long flight ahead of us the next day.

Saturday & Sunday - Travel

Saturday we got on the flight.  It took a long time to go through customs.  I got stuck in the row on the plane with the girls, the giggle group.  These girls are going to be laughing it up the whole trip.  Anna, Kailin and Brooke, when they get together they just start cracking up.  It's pretty funny.  It should be an interesting trip with those girls together.  I didn't get much sleep.  I played Mike Tyson Punchout and Mario Brothers on the trip and watched a couple of movies.  It wasn't as bad as I was expecting.  It was a really long flight but it wasn't so bad.  It was really interesting changing money, trying to figure out much yen there is  in a dollar.  We had a tough time getting calling cards and no one’s calling cards are working.  It's pretty interesting trying to figure out what we're going to do in the trip and where we are going to eat.  It's pretty crazy.  When we got to Japan we were really tired and had to take an hour and a half drive on the bus to our hotel.  We got in at, well, gosh we were kind of lost as to what time it was.  We went into the hotel and they had some food for us.  It looked like they tried to make some American food for us and just put some random stuff together.  A couple of us tried to order some cream sodas.  They were pretty good.  It was a pretty good meal and we went to bed kind of early.

Monday - Practice

First practice round we got here and hit balls.  This is a really nice golf course, with really nice greens.  The course looks like it's in great shape.  We went out and hit a couple of balls.  It's kind of a scrappy little range.  We kept knocking balls over the trees and over the fence.  It's a small range with not very much land.  I played my practice round today with (Jeff) Overton, JJ (Jakovac) and Michael Putnam.  We had a little match going but Overton was feeling a little sick and quit after nine.  It was a good practice round.  The course is really good and I think that we're going to like it.  After the first practice round we hung out and hit a couple of balls.  Then we went and cruised around with our translator Hiko.   He's been taking us around town so we took a little walk over to an electronics store.  They have all of this fancy stuff that's not even out in America yet.  It's pretty cool.  Then we went over to get some dinner.   We split up and a couple of guys went to a small Japanese place and the girls, Putnam, Justin Smith and I went to a different place to eat.  It was pretty funny out here because everyone makes fun of the way you eat.  It's pretty tough trying to speak Japanese to these guys because we only know hello, goodbye, and thank you.  So, we just sat there and ate our food and tried to learn the customs.  Then we walked back and got some ice cream - we found a Baskin Robbin’s on the way.  We also stopped at a 7-Eleven.  They have a couple of Americanized food chains. They have a Denny's down the street but I don't think that they serve the Grand Slam Breakfast.  It's pretty interesting seeing all of the different places that popped up.

Tuesday - Practice/Opening Ceremony/Junior Clinic

We woke up pretty early again on Tuesday for the second practice round.  They gave us sand bags to fill in our divots because you can't replace them.  We have to carry around sand bags as we play the course.  I'm playing with Trent Erb, Nolan Martin and Justin Smith the second practice round.  We're having a good time out there.  Our translator is following us around with four Japanese guys and they were making fun of the way that I was filling in my divots.  They were calling me the gardener so Nolan's kind of taken that up and nicknamed me the Gardener- Sabishi.  So he's starting calling me that.  It's pretty funny.  It is kind of funny, the Japanese people making fun of you.   We went and had lunch and I guess that I wasn't slurping up my noodles the right way and I was sitting across from the Japanese girls' team and they were pointing at me and laughing as I was eating my noodles with my chopsticks.   Then they started laughing at how tall Michael Putnam is.  We have a really tall team - a bunch of guys over 6'3'', 6'4'' - and they're getting a kick out of it.  They're just in awe of these guys.  Hopefully that will play to our advantage some time this week and hopefully those guys can intimidate them. 

Wednesday - Round 1