Van Sickle: "Same guy, two entirely different shots. That's the aggravating mystery of golf."

SI's Gary Van Sickle qualified for the U.S. Senior Amateur and besides not looking like a senior, has proven that at least one golf writer can play this silly game. He wrote some random observations from his appearance at Virginia's Kinloch.

• Some guys age really well. Bill Millsaps, the long-time golf writer from the Richmond paper and a local legend, is retired but still funny. He was the guest speaker at the Friday night Senior Amateur players' dinner. His list of 10 things he knew about golf included, "The ball in the rough you can see sitting up from 50 yards away is never yours… Bad shots come in threes. If you hit a fourth consecutive bad shot, it's actually the start of another set of three… If you say a shot was the worst one you've ever hit in your life, just wait. You'll hit a worse one."

He also told a story, which he credited to the late-great writer Peter Dobereiner, about Nick Faldo being asked for an autograph as he walked from a green to the next tee during an American tournament. Faldo went ballistic and berated the man until the disgusted fan decked Faldo with a punch. It was the first case in recorded history, Millsaps said, of "the fan hitting the s--t."