Now this was an elevated tee.
It sat Monday on the roof of the Omni San Diego Hotel, 34 floors – 340 feet or thereabouts – above L Street, 268 yards to a flag stabbed into Petco Park’s right field turf and surrounded by a large bull’s-eye. Tough hole, but maybe the most picturesque in the history of golf. Little wind, but always a threat of tricky gusts. No trees. Possible nosebleed. The only rough was the shot itself. Not since Alan Shepard sliced a few on the moon had we seen anything like it. A David Letterman stunt, perhaps. “Cinderella boy, Briny Baird. I think he’s going to use about a 9-iron. It’s – it’s in the bull’s-eye, about six feet from the hole – close enough for everyone in America to get a free P.F. Chang’s signature chicken lettuce wrap!” Not that the 9-iron was Baird’s first choice (he needed advice from an amateur golfer/Petco expert, but we’ll get to that in a moment after we attempt to explain this.) Safe to say, the Padres had the day off, not that there would have been a danger of hitting a base runner or anything. First of all, with a nickname like Briny, one would have expected the PGA Tour golfer to take out his big club and try to launch one into the harbor. But Michael Jancey Baird, son of Butch, who once went 15 years between Tour wins (two more than his offspring currently has earned), was in town for charity work – of a rather unusual nature. Well, Baird hit into the center circle twice and scored on eight of his 10 shots, meaning he earned $17,500 for charity. The restaurant chain upped it to $25,000. Practicing with Baird before the real thing was Padres General Manager Kevin Towers, who put a couple of shots real close. Maybe because he was using the right club. Baird started with a 5-iron, but the GM set him straight.
“I told him, ‘5-iron Dude, you hit a 5, you’re going to put it into the condos,’†Towers confirmed. “I didn’t know golfers were more coachable than baseball players.â€