Ray Romano between a rock and a hard place.

As the hardy ones who sat out on the patio with cool temperatures and cloudy skies we buttoned our down vests and waited for the next golfers to appear at this year’s AT&T Pro Am Golf Tournament.  First, a golf ball landed in the sand trap in front of us and then a marshal made his way through the rough and placed an orange flag by the ball in the trap.  Uh, oh . . .someone’s in trouble.  Then, making his way towards the trap to check out the location of the ball was Ray Romano.  Ray is slight of build and not nearly as tall as he appears on his TV show.  As he looked at the golf ball he saw it was wedged close to a rock.   I can imagine what he was saying to himself since there was no way he could hit that ball where it was located.  Getting the nod that it was OK to move the rock, he tried, but the stubborn rock would not budge.  He looked around and a fellow hurried over and helped him move the rock.

He took his shot.  Ohhhh . . . into the sand again.  As he diagnosed the situation he realized he needed to walk all around the sand trap in order to enter leaving the least amount of tracks for his caddy to rake over.  As he walked right past us he glanced our way and I gave a silent wave.  He said, “I’ll get out of here eventually.”  Little did he know at the time how challenging it would be.

He wasn’t about to land in the sand again so this next time he swung with determination . . . this time his ball sailed over the green, hit a tree high and his ball fell into a heavy rough.  Sometimes you just have a bad hole!  Luckily Eric Compton, his pro partner, had a better score on the hole.  No need for Ray to go on suffering.  The marshal picked up his ball from the very deep grass and handed it to Ray.  As the group left the hole, we waved to Ray and hoped his next hole would be so much better in the 2013 AT&T Pro Am Golf Tournament.