Greetings From LA: Quiet Tuesday Edition

Riviera took another rain beating overnight and seemed pretty saturated this morning, but by midday was drying out. I even spotted some of Matt Morton's dedicated crew out mowing fairways, an encouraging sign that things are too water logged.

I walked with a few players and listened in on some driving range chatter, all the while noticing that Vijay Singh was constantly on his cell phone. I'm going to guess those weren't fun calls. 

My best attempt at a Borat thumbs up needs work (click to enlarge)Fun for me was getting my photo taken next to the Titleist truck, something I did just for my vast Fairhaven readership, which looks a little thin these days based on Google Analytics.

I also forgot how boring it can be listening to golf pros talk about shafts, lofts, lies and other minutae. At least they're passionate about something! We certainly know it's not golf architecture.

Anyone not have a camera in Ryo's gallery? (click to enlarge)Fans were in such short supply that teen sensation Ryo Ishikawa's gallery was dominated by photographers and television crews (see lousy iphone image, left). After briefly catching a glimpse of the young lad who sported banana yellow slacks he picked up at a Tom Weiskopf garage sale, I was thrilled to hear he joined up for back nine play with two giants of the game. He covered this in his afternoon press conference:

Q. I believe you played a practice round today with Chris DiMarco and J.J. Henry. How did that come about, and did they give you any advice or words of wisdom?

RYO ISHIKAWA: Both players are so kind to give advice like, you know, the pin positions last year or something like that. So every single hole, those two players gave me some advice.

I wanted to play the PGA TOUR since I was young, and it's kind of like a dream playing with those superstar players. So, it's like a dream.

I think that's the first time superstar has been used to describe J.J. Henry, but you have to love the respect he's paying his elders.

Speaking of respecting elders, John Strege filed this enjoyable summary of Ryo's news conference