Grooming 101

     Who doesn't like to step under a hot shower when you've been working all day? The need to take a shower to feel clean and hygienic is something the American lifestyle has drilled into all of our heads. Not showering every day is frowned upon by most people in society. One is considered dirty and can't take care of themselves. Well here is the truth. It is bad to shower every day!
     Peer pressure sets in, and we shower on a daily basis. There are actually only a few reasons however, for people to shower that often. One being if you work with chemicals in a chemical based plant or factory every day. The other being, if you workout everyday.
      In reality, if you do neither of these, then getting under that scolding water does more damage than good. Dr. Casey Carlos, professor of dermatology at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine says that your skin has natural ways of cleaning itself and your body needs that bacteria to keep your skin healthy. It is good bacteria that fights off the bad bacteria and harmful toxins from beauty products.
     Scrubbing up your body removes all of its natural oils that keep your skin vibrant and healthy. These oils leave moisture in your skin, leaving it supple and youthful. Otherwise your skin will be left dry, flaky, and in some cases may even lead to peeling. If you feel the need to scrub down in the shower, only hit the hot spot areas every day: your arm pits, butt, groin, and major sweaty areas unique to your body.
     According to Bliss Kiss, your nails absorb water in hot showers. This will cause them to dry out which leads to chipping, cracks, and breaking. A hard coated-clear nail strengthener will help with these matters.
     You should also only be washing your hair twice a week for this exact reason. It will wash out all natural oils leaving your hair dry, frizzy, and lacking of color. At an extreme, only use conditioner on your hair if you wash up every day. This will clean some, while still adding moisture to the strands without extracting too many oils.
     So do you really want to be putting your body through this much danger just to live up to societal expectations? I don't.

Bio Glimpse: Ashley Salmonson

Every issue we will bring you an average person, and let them have a turn in the spotlight, because after all...everyone is special!

Where were you born and raised?

I was born in Fridley, Minnesota and raised in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin.

Upon graduating high school, you went on to college where?

After graduating high school, I attended the University of Wisconsin—Eau Claire, which I graduated from in December 2012 with a Bachelor of Science in Communication Sciences and Disorders and a Bachelor of Science in Spanish. I attended The College of Saint Rose in Albany, New York, where I graduated with my Masters of Science in Education in Communication Sciences and Disorders with an Advanced Bilingual Education Certificate.

Did you study abroad?

I did not study abroad. I participated in the National Student Exchange Program at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, NM from January 2010 to May 2010 and La Universidad Interamericana de Puert o Rico, Recinto en San German in San German, PR from January 2011 to May 2011. I stayed in San Juan, PR until August 2011 to work.

***Ashley lives and works as a Speech Language Pathologist in New York. She is a black belt in Karate which she also instructs. She has played the clarinet for years and enjoys traveling the country and world, ice skating, and spending time with family and friends who are all very important to her.

Wisconsin Pride

        On January 1^st, 1994, UW-Madison’s football team performed the once thought impossible act by winning the school’s first ever Rose Bowl, giving the school’s athletic program hope again after more than a few unsuccessful years. Also in the 1993-1994 season, the men’s basketball team was experiencing success for the first time in forty-seven years, by making it to the NCAA basketball tournament in March, being just the cure the fans needed to escalate our spirits higher than ever.

 This was much needed after the school’s athletic program financial woes. In 1991 the school even cut the baseball team after being a part of the school for over a century. Football basically paid the way for the other sports in the department, minus hockey, which held its own.

The football team was never a powerhouse like other schools in our conference, but they played decent football with Dave McClain as their head coach, who lead them to a few post-season bowl games. If they lost it was still okay for the athletic department as long as the roughly 80,000-seat Camp Randall Stadium stayed close to capacity. The fans were always allowed to drink and have a good time, because that meant that there was a cash flow to the box office. Attendance rose and fell slightly depending on how the team’s season went, but it never dropped below 70,000. If the team didn’t make a go of the season, the good-hearted Wisconsin fans would just look forward to the following season’s hopes. The fans never booed, and always cheered their team, even starting a “Fifth Quarter” tradition where after the game was completed, the fans would sing and dance led by the cheerleaders and the UW band.

UW-Madison was typically known for their academics instead of their athletics for the better part of the twentieth century. Being that most Wisconsinites believe in the value of hard work, dedication, determination, and a strong educational front, it was only natural that the Froke Guide to Colleges gave the University of Wisconsin-Madison the highest academic ranking at the number one spot in the country in 1993.

In the past few decades, Madison has turned into a great fan based college as well. Sports Illustrated on Campus magazine called Madison the nation’s number one best college sports town. Many people who are frustrated with their monotonous tasks in life, look to sports for some stress-free entertainment. Although there are the overzealous fans who get stressed out with sports and their favorite teams…some more so than not in our lovely Badger state. However, proving what a wonderful state we are, we rarely ever discourage our team. Many players love playing for a Wisconsin team for this exact reason. We love our teams, win or lose. The Bucks are a prime example of this. Upshot says, “Badger football fans are the most consistently loyal fans in America.” No matter where you go, even across the world, you will always find a fellow Badgers fan in a pub, bar, or restaurant watching the game as well. 87% of Wisconsin residents support the Badgers.

Some of our biggest fans have started some of our best traditions. Started by one of UW-Madison’s biggest men’s basketball fans, was the famous Butch’s Bologna Bash, where ten thousand plus athletes and fans would join together for a special night of cheese and meat eating while drinking beer to their heart’s content and singing “If You Want to Be a Badger.”

The start of the sport of basketball happened on March 1^st, 1892 in Springfield, Massachusetts. Just six years later, the child in all of us got excited when it came to UW. It would take another seventy-seven years before it officially became a sport at the school for women however.

In 1981, was when the Big Ten and NCAA finally recognized women’s athletics with conference and national championships. In the 1995-1996 season, the UW women made it into the top ten in the Associated Press rankings for the first time. Jane Albright-Dieterle was the UW women’s head coach from 1994-2003, winning the NIT tournament in 2000. During her time, the team was extremely successful and popularly known nation-wide as “BadgerBall.” On January 20^th, 2002, the Kohl Center sold out with over 17,000 attending the women’s basketball game verses U of M, setting a Big Ten record. Consistently ranking in the top spots for attendance in the nation is not only the men’s basketball games, but  women’s as well. Women’s basketball ranks in the top 15 for college attendance in the nation since 1995 and has turned into a fan favorite with UW students for the past decade. A great UW athlete was Jolene Anderson, who is the fastest Badger’s player ever, man or woman, to score 1,000 points.

Wisconsin is kind of credited for the modern play of the game in basketball, called “the Wisconsin system” where instead of physical contact that was previously used in games, they started using quick passes to the other players and pivots to turn the ball, a finesse that wasn’t seen previously. They changed the way that game was played.

Christian Steinmetz, whose personal record of 462 points in 18 games earned him the recognition of being inducted into the UW-Madison athletic and the National Basketball Hall of Fames, is known as the “father of Wisconsin basketball.”

The Badgers have only had three venues to call home court; the Red Gym from 1892-1929, UW Field House from 1930-1998, and the Kohl Center from 1998-present. The Red Gym held a little over 2,000 seats. January 14^th, 1998 was the last basketball game played at the Field House, which could only accommodate 11,500 fans. The new Kohl Center would seat roughly 17,000. The first game at the Kohl Center, attended by Senator Herb Kohl, who donated a good majority of the money to the construction of the new building, was a crowd of 16,697 fans. The largest crowd before the 2015 season to watch the Badger’s basketball was on April 1^st, 2000 to a group of 43,116 in the NCAA Final Four game against Michigan State. 

Grateful Red is the student section at the Kohl Center. They are so prominent that a local brewery in Madison named a beer after them, the Grateful Red IPA by Capital Brewing. The Detroit News ranked the section the number one college basketball student section in February, 2007. The section alone holds 2,100 students and extends floor to roof with a span of three decks. It is always full.

The men’s basketball team has an overall record of 1551-1173 (.569). They have been the conference regular season champions eighteen times and the conference tournament champions three times. They have made NCAA tournament appearances twenty-two times, consecutively since 1999. They have made it to the sweet sixteen nine times, the elite eight six times, the final four four times, lost a heart-breaking championship game in 2015, and won the championship in 1941.

Harold “Bud” Foster lead the 1940-1941 team to the NCAA tournament. After the 1941 championship game, it would be another fifty-nine years until the Badgers made it to the final four in the NCAA tournament. In 2000, at Camp Randall Stadium, over 20,000 fans honored the men’s basketball team for making it to the final four conquering four teams before losing to Michigan State 41-53. When the 2002 team won the conference title, the fans poured onto the court to see coach Bo Ryan cut down the net. The Badgers held a thirty-eight game home winning streak until beaten by number one ranked Illinois in the 2004-2005 season.

In 2015, they received their first ever number one seed in the NCAA tournament bracket, where they were ranked number three overall in the nation. They took that record to the championship game where they lost to Duke 63-68. This past March Madness, they were defeated by Notre Dame in the sweet sixteen 56-61. The single season points scored record is held by Frank Kaminsky with 732 in the 2014-2015 season. He also holds the single game points scored with 43 on November 19^th, 2013 and was named National College Player of the year in 2015.

The Badgers have had thirty-eight players enter into the NBA draft, starting with Glen Selbo in 1947 to Sam Dekker in 2015. Bo Ryan who announced his immediate retirement in December of 2015, coached for fourteen years with UW-Madison, coming to the school from UW-Platteville and prior to that Milwaukee. With a record of 364-130, he was named the Big Ten Coach of the Year in 2002, 2003, 2013, and 2015.

Basketball is not the only sport that Wisconsin residents enjoy watching. The Field House is now home to Volleyball, which leads the Big Ten in attendance. The cheer from the crowd, “Point, Wisconsin” is heard every time they score. Rowing is UW’s oldest college sport, where Madison is known as the rowing capital of the Midwest. Many Wisconsin athletes are on the Olympic rowing team every four years. There has rarely been an Olympics without one. People bring a picnic basket and bottle of wine and watch the Badger Rowing team at leisure. The Nielson Tennis Stadium, was ranked by the US Tennis Association as one of the finest year round facilities in the nation.

        Hockey is another big UW-Madison sport. The Kohl Center is considered one of, if not the best hockey facility in the nation. Hockey has led the nation in college game attendance more than any other team with over forty leads in attendance since the 1969-1970 season. Women’s hockey was officially a sport at UW in 1998. Sports announcers have said if there is ever to be a dynasty in Women’s hockey, it will be with UW-Madison. One of the school’s most memorable hockey moments was on March 26^th, 2006: Badger fans ran upon the ice at Mariucci Arena to help carry the NCAA championship trophy out of the state of Minnesota for the first time in school history.

        UW track and field has been around since 1893 and had many Olympians compete. The men’s team, has ruled the indoor and outdoor track in the Big Ten. And the women have more championships than any other Big Ten school.

        Men and Women’s cross-country are one of the most successful in the country with numerous championships, All-Americans, and appearances. UW golfers play on University Ridge Golf Course, a par-72, 18-hole course that opened in 1991; it was ranked in the top 10 best university courses in the nation by Golf Week Magazine.

Among the oldest sport to include both men and women is the swimming and diving teams. Many athletes are in the Hall of Fame at school with around thirty Big Ten Championships, numerous All-Americans, and US National team members. UW Men’s soccer already has an NCAA championship from 1995 with a win against Duke. Wrestling has been a sport at Madison since 1911.

Boxing was the highest watched/sought after/popular sport at UW from 1933-1960. On the same night Joe Louis defended his crown in 1940 in Madison Square Garden to a crowd of 11,000…there were 15,000 fans packed into the Field House to watch UW Boxing. Typically, crowds gathered of 10,000-11,000 plus some for the NCAA tournament fights. The boxers were the biggest sport heroes. Boxing ended at UW and every other college in 1960 when Badger’s best and most popular boxer, Charlie Mohr, died after a tournament bout.

After a $2.1 million budget shortfall, the school cut baseball, along with men and women’s fencing, and men and women’s gymnastics in 1991. To this day, UW is the only school in the Big Ten Conference without a baseball team. Barry Alvarez, as now acting athletic director, reevaluated the decision to add a men’s baseball team back into the school’s program back in April of 2015, according to http:www.host.madison.com. Jim Frueh, was a fencer who was almost killed after his lung got punctured during the sport just two weeks before his sport got cut. He was one of Madison’s best and was watched by many devoted fans.

2005-2006 was the first time in school history that four Badger teams won national championships in one academic year: men’s cross-country, men and women’s ice hockey, and women’s light-weight rowing. While all of those accomplishments are amazing for Badger sports fans all over the world, we don’t get quite as excited as we do when we watch the Badgers football team play in a bowl game.

The Badgers football team has played in twenty-seven bowl games to date from 1952 until now, with a sixty plus year history with the games. Our record is 13/27. The Badgers played the first bowl game on January 1^st, 1953 (the 1952 season) in Pasadena under the direction of Ivy Williams against the USC Trojans. The Badgers lost that Rose Bowl 0-7. They won their first bowl game on December 11^th, 1982 against Kansas State Wildcats under Dave McClain. The 14-3 Independence Bowl win held 49,503 in attendance. In all of their years playing in bowl games, the Badgers have only had seven coaches, with the surge of Barry Alvarez at the helm, turning things around for the better. He is known as the winningest coach in Badger football history with a record of 9/13 in bowl games. Playing Auburn, UCLA, and USC each in three separate bowl games, the Badgers have played only fifteen other teams in their bowl game history. The team was established in 1889 and plays in the NCAA Division 1 Big Ten Conference and has appeared nine times in the Rose Bowl and five Bowl Championship Series (BCS). The Badgers are the only Big Ten team to win back to back Rose Bowls.

Barry Alvarez coached as a defensive coach at Notre Dame before coming to Wisconsin. He was named Big Ten Coach of the Year twice, in 1993 and in 1998. In 1993 he was named Coach of the Year by the American Football Coaches Association.

Camp Randall Stadium is the oldest and fifth largest stadium in the Big Ten Conference. It is the forty-first largest stadium in the world with a capacity of over 80,000. The largest crowd ever was 83,184 on November 12^th, 2005 verse Iowa.

College football became such an American past-time that people couldn’t get enough of it, and to show a little Wisconsin pride, the Wisconsin-Michigan game of 1924 was the first live broadcast of a football game ever. There have been two UW Heisman Award winners: 1954 - Alan Ameche and 1999 - Ron Dayne. Ron “Great Dayne” Dayne still holds NCAA and Big Ten records for career rushing yards at 6,397.

One of Wisconsin Badger fans and athletes alike, favorite traditions is the Paul Bunyan’s Axe (formerly as the slab of bacon trophy). It is a trophy that follows the winner home of the UW/U of M game, which is the oldest rivalry in all of football battling each other every year since 1890.

        Another big tradition in Badger football is “Jump Around”, which is played between the third and fourth quarters as the student section literally jumps around to liven up. “Jump Around” by House of Pain, is a tradition that started on Homecoming night, October 10^th, 1999, against Drew Brees and the rest of the Purdue team. Jamar Fletcher intercepted his pass and got a pick six at the final play of the third quarter, sending the fans into a frenzy of excitement. Wanting to keep the crowd on its feet during the TV commercial break, the man in charge of the music happened to see “Jump Around” and played it. “…I looked at the crowd and it looked like popcorn. All the students were jumping,” he recalled. Now the stadium is known for that song and it is played at every home game in the second half. It gets fans pumped up and players, who usually get a few jumps in as well. New sports announcers get nervous being there because literally everything shakes, including the TVs mounted in the press boxes.

The Badgers hold the record for playing in a bowl game while the basketball team plays in the NCAA tournament during the same year. The streak has lasted since the 2002-2003 season and still continues. Records like these are what make watching the games even more worthwhile. When there are day to day life chores that need to be met, it is fun to feel like a kid again and cheer your heart out to put that joy on your face. It is fun watching these athletes go on to professional sports, because you feel like they are a part of your family almost. For instance, Jim Leonhard, who tied a Big Ten record with eleven picks in one season. It was awesome watching him play on Sunday night in the NFL. Even though he wasn’t a Packer, we still cheered him on.

The Big Ten is the oldest conference in the country, founded in 1896. And we have been watching our teams play ever since. Sports bring excitement, anticipation, and pure happiness that we don’t always feel with the other aspects of our day. It is nice to unwind and not worry about what is going to happen at work tomorrow. So go ahead and tailgate, show some Wisconsin pride and let that improper adult out to have a good time.

Sources: Kendleigh, Andy. The Best Wisconsin Sports Arguments. Naperville; Sourcebooks, Inc. 2009.

Kaufman, Gabriel. Inside College Football: Football in the Big Ten. New York; The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc. 2008

Minnich, Jerry. Badger Sports Trivia Teasers. Madison; Big Earth Publishing. 2006

Anderson, Dave. Images of Sports. Charleston; Arcadia Publishing. 2006.

Baggot, Andy. http://host.madison.com/sports/college/badgersports. April 25, 2015.

Telander, Rick. From Red Ink to Roses. New York; Simon & Schuster. 1994.

Who Needs College

I’m here to tell you that college isn’t all that its cracked up to be.  Proving nothing to me of importance, I didn’t take it very seriously.  And who knows, maybe I should have.  I do however have a plan now, that I won’t need college for.  My plan can succeed if I try to make it succeed, and that’s really all there is to it. 

But really, who can afford college anyways? Rhetorical question, yes I know.

After three years of going to an institution where they expected me to have my life decided by the time I was only eighteen years old, I gave up.  It wasn’t hard for me, and don’t get me wrong it wasn’t a cakewalk either, but the challenge level isn’t what scared me away.  There were plenty of people who were interesting, but in a welcoming school, it wasn’t as welcoming as my hometown. 

I had it all in high school, and had it all taken away in college. My dream occupation and job, wiped clean.  My goal to be a music major didn’t happen like I wanted it to. There were guidelines that weren’t explained, which is my fault as well because I didn’t look into it like I should have.

So I moved onto my next major choice of English, which I wasn’t really sure of anyways. See I was still dead set on being a music major, and after a semester with the new choice, I got bored. Business seemed more intriguing to me than English did, because I could do so much with that degree. After a year in business classes, I switched to economics. That didn’t suite me either. Finally, I settled on Communications: Journalism.

I took a semester and a half in that field and was going to switch to Event Planning, but instead I decided to leave school until I could live my life a little and make up my mind. College is expensive after all…I didn’t have the money to pay for more classes when I still didn’t know what I wanted to do.

After three years of school, I have a crap ton of general classes under my belt with a bunch of useless credits towards any major, wasted time, and thousands of dollars of debt.  Hmmm...is the better option to continue down this disastrous path?  I think not!  So I up and left.

I had dreams.  Where I thought I would be at the age of twenty-six, is not actually where I am. No, I’m not married. I’m not a big time show choir choreographer helping schools out all over the country. I’m not even close to any of the feasible options I pictured for possible other career choices.

Maybe if I just would have stuck it out with my English major, I’d be fine right now. I guess I’ll never know.

Everyone, and I mean everyone tells me that I should go back and finish up college. I think they assume I’d just have a year to go, but truth be told, I’d have to basically start from scratch. And I’m still at the point that I was at when I left in the first place, unsure of what I’d do.

Maybe I’ll never have it figured out. That could be what being an adult really is. The real definition of an adult must read, “the complete certainty to be unknown.” Because no matter how much you plan things will always happen out of your control. No one does exactly what they believed would happen in life. No one.

College is a possible dream for everyone. There are resources out there so that the unlikely becomes imaginable. Many people go and succeed, making the best out of their higher education. But then there are some like me, who thought that after graduating high school one is supposed to go on to school. Because that is what was expected of me, that is what I did. There are many circumstances for why people never finish and get their degree. And those people should never be judged. Those people may be more intelligent than you. There are even people that don’t go to college at all.

The stigma behind the idea that everyone needs to go to school to get a great job, basically that a university is the only way that you will succeed in life, is pure hogwash. All degrees are not more important than experience or knowledge of the job. The ability to gain information and process what is happening around you are significant attributes to the business world. Those are the characteristics I would look for in an employee.

I mostly just wish that after graduating high school I would have known these things before I jumped right into the university setting. Knowing that college didn’t need to be the only option for me would have made my life easier. Who knows, maybe I still would have gone, but maybe I wouldn’t have. I did learn a lot and don’t get me wrong, I had a blast there, but college set me back, not ahead like it was supposed to.

I don’t know if maybe I was burnt out with school after being involved with everything in high school. Maybe it was because I’m from a smaller town where I felt that I was important, talented, and smart; that once I was in college I became just ordinary. That feeling made me discouraged. I’m a competitive person, and back in my home town, I knew if I tried hard enough I could be the best at what I tried at. In college, there was too much for me to try and rise above. I didn’t want to try for something and then feel like a failure. So I just didn’t try.

I know I’m not the only one who has dropped out of school after feeling this way. I’ve had friends and family all drop out of school for various other reasons. And I don’t fault them. I don’t think they are any less intelligent than I know that they are. They are people…human. We don’t have our life figured out yet. And being forced to decide what you want to do for the next forty-five years of your life when you’re eighteen years old, is almost inhumane. High school counselors should understand this before they push these kids down that one bumpy direction. 

I feel bad for the people that want to start their career path all over when they are in their forty’s. Society is totally against them. Even though they have proven in their past job what an asset that they can be, if they don’t have that degree, odds are not in their favor over some newly graduated twenty-three year old.

College doesn’t need to be the path you choose. It is a big commitment: lots of money and time. If you want to head down the university path, by all means, you go for it. College will help with so many endeavors in life. But just know that it isn’t all that you need to make your life successful. That relies on you. Just because most of your graduating class is heading to U of M doesn’t mean that you have to. Society doesn’t have to be your guidelines as to what is the right and proper thing to do now that you’re an adult. After all you’re the adult. You set your own guidelines. Be creative and do your thing, you’ll make it.

Tough 'N' Rough - Golf: An Interview with Tony Nelson

When one drives past a golf course, it seems that there are only retired men on the green. This sport didn’t hold my interest as I didn’t understand the shots and I didn’t think that there were many people my age that played. Boy, was I wrong.

Golf is actually a very interesting sport that is older than most of the other popularly broadcasted sports on cable TV. The first resemblance of golf came about in the mid-sixteenth to early seventeenth centuries along the East coast of Scotland. It was a sport typically played by men, but gained great interest through everyone, men and women alike, including the royals. Mary Queen of Scots was beheaded for playing golf the day after her husband was murdered, along with a few other charges. Once one plays golf, they usually get addicted.

The invention of the gutta percha ball was a turning point in golf’s history as it was cheaper to make and durable, and helped offer golf’s image as a rich man’s past-time.

There are four championships in the sport every year that every golfer wishes to play in. The four are known as the Majors, consisting of The Open, which is referred to as the British Open here in the USA, The US Open, The PGA, and the Masters.

Many successful golfers have played the game; some of the more prominent figures are Arnie Palmer, Tiger Woods, and Jack Nicklaus.  When the television era made its debut, there was one golfer better than the rest of the pack. That was golf star Arnold “Arnie” Palmer. He is considered the greatest role model of any sport ever and transcended the game to be the rising success that it is today.

     Jack Nicklaus was one of the greatest golfers of all time with many honors, records, and wins. Tom Weiskopf said it best, “Jack knew he was going to beat you. You knew Jack was going to beat you. And Jack knew that you knew he was going to beat you.”

     The most famous golfer that will probably be known as the greatest golfer of all time, is of course Tiger Woods. He achieved what most only dream of at a very young age. He was so good that he joined the most elite and exclusive club in the game of golf.

     Tiger woods is one of five members to be in the Grand Slam Winner’s Club. To be a part of this group you need to have won all of the championships in the four Majors. The others with him are Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, and Jack Nicklaus.

Men aren’t the only success story however; the first successful women’s golfer was Joyce Wethered in the early twentieth century. For the past few decades we’ve seen the likes of Annika Sorenstam, Lorena Ochoa, and Michelle Wie power over the LPGA which was established in 1950. Today’s winners receive prize money worth two million dollars or more. Most successful female golfers don’t play in the main male dominated events because the challenge level is harder. But that didn’t stop some, like Sorenstam who made a name for herself.

After doing a little research on the sport, I found out that golfers have a team of people even though it is considered an individual sport. Almost every professional golfer has a caddie, coach, mind coach, and a personal trainer.

     The more that I read up on the sport, the more interested I got. So I decided to ask an expert on the sport and interviewed avid Wisconsin golfer, Tony Nelson to get his opinions about the ever popular game.

What drew you into playing golf?

     I watched my parents play when I was roughly four years old. One day I asked if I could try to swing a club and my dad fabricated a club for me. I was hooked on the first swing.

What is your favorite course that you’ve ever played on?

     Greenwood Hills Country Club in Wausau, WI.

If you could play on any one course no matter where it was, just once, what would it be?

     I would play Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Georgia.

Of the Majors, which championships do you like to watch the most: The Open, The US Open, PGA, or the Masters?

     Masters by far. That’s hosted on the Augusta club that I mentioned earlier.

    In your opinion, who is the greatest golfer of all time?

     Tiger Woods

   Have you ever hit a hole-in-one? How hard is it really?

           No I have not. Odds I hear are about 1 in 12,000. You have to have the correct club, perfect swing, judge the wind and weather, and know where to land the ball on the green for it to roll in for a hole-in-one. Not easy, but always exciting.

    Is the proper stance really important in golf?

           Yes! There are a lot of ways to hit a golf ball wrong but only a few ways to hit it right. One wrong positioning or line up and you will be hitting goose eggs.

   Did you play golf in college, and if so, was it pretty competitive?

            Yes. Even at the junior college level it is competitive, everyone wanted to win. Especially the State tournament.

   As I understand it, the modern golf business is pretty high end, with endorsements, clothing lines, and golf equipment. Do you take much stock into what is the “new best” thing?

           I only look into club technology when I feel I need to get a new club. It’s a lot like seeing car commercials on TV. Every brand says they are the best with such and such new features. But, in the end, you have to test out each brand’s club before you make the correct purchase.

   As I myself haven’t heard of any, are there any promising

women golfers? Is it hard for women golfers on main events?

     I knew Annika Sorenstam was big in the 1990s to early 2000s with ten Majors and seventy-two LPGA tour wins, but I haven’t heard of a complete dominate female golfer in some time. I will admit though that I don’t pay too much attention to the LPGA.

    What are you most proud of with your golf experience?

          I would say being a two-time Varsity letter award winner at UW-Barron County. I competed in every match both years and I was the team Captain my second year.

    What is the most enjoyable thing, in your opinion, about golf? And why should others play?

          Golf is universal. What I mean by that is you can be male or female, young or old, competitive or the average joe and enjoy the game. There are high, medium, and low skill level of courses for everyone to enjoy. There are golf pros available for lessons if you’d like or you can learn at your own pace. Everyone can play and enjoy themselves.

Top World golf courses

· Ballybunion, Ireland

· Kingsbarns, Scotland

· St. Andrews, Scotland

· Augusta National, United States

· Les Bordes, France

· Sinnecock Hills, United States

· Fancourt, South Africa

· Sunningdale, England

· Cape Kidnappers, New Zealand

· Cypress Point, United States

Pick up a copy of The Golf Book with introduction by Nick Bradley for anything you need to know about the sport.