George Vasiloff shot a 93 in his first time playing Aronimink.
Editor's Note: The Tiger Woods Foundation and AT&T National selected George Vasiloff, a Pennsylvania native and chief master sergeant in the Pennsylvania National Guard, to play in the AT&T National Pro-Am Wednesday. The pro in Vasiloff's group was Tiger Woods. The 45-year-old Vasiloff is chief of logistics in the 201st unit RED HORSE -- short for Rapid Engineer Deployable Heavy Operation Repair Squadron Engineer -- and is based at Fort Indiantown Gap outside Harrisburg, Pa. Following his round, Vasiloff sat down to talk about his day.
NEWTOWN SQUARE, Pa. -- I have to admit when I stepped on the first tee this morning at Aronimink Golf Club, it was just like I expected. I couldn't breathe.
There were so many people there, and Tiger was watching. No pressure at all. It was pretty intense. But I didn't hit my drive too badly. I'm an 8-handicap, so I can play all right. I hit my ball into the right rough, and it wasn't too far off target. But when they say "rough," they're right. It was definitely challenging and a little different from what I'm used to. So I opened my pro-am round with Tiger Woods with a double bogey. That was the beginning of what was a pretty incredible day.
How I came to play in the AT&T National Pro-Am still is amazing to me. Even now, I'm thinking, "Did all this really happen? Did I really just play a round of golf with Tiger Woods?"
This is how it all came about. A couple of months ago, a bunch of us received an e-mail from Kim Kavanagh of the Tiger Woods Foundation, and she was wondering if anybody from our base wanted tickets to AT&T National. I'm a big golf fan, so I was definitely interested.
I asked for eight tickets. Then the next thing I knew, they asked me if I would be interested in being a part of the military caddie program, in which troops get to serve as caddies for the pros on one of the holes during the pro-am. Even better. I guess one thing led to another, and pretty soon, I was getting an e-mail asking if I wanted to play in the pro-am, with Tiger Woods as my pro. I have a couple of buddies who are better players than I am, so you can imagine how jealous they are.
So I got about 40 minutes of sleep Tuesday night. While I wasn't sleeping, I just kept telling myself, "Keep the ball in play."
Prior to Wednesday, I had never seen a tournament with Tiger, so I had never seen him in person. I spent the night in a hotel and went to the pairings party. I then woke up Wednesday morning and got to the course at about 5:20. Our tee time was 6:40. I hit some balls, and I have to admit I was spraying them all over. I finally made my way to the first tee, and he came up to me and said, "Hi, I'm Tiger. What's your name?"
He gave me a couple of tips along the way, but he kept screwing with me on the greens. He was very personable and gave me two rules to remember about putting on a Donald Ross course. The first, he said, was to keep the ball below the hole. The second rule was to follow rule No. 1. It was good advice. They were easily the fastest greens I've ever played.
Tiger couldn't have been more gracious with me as a member of the military. He thanked me for my service, but I felt I had to thank him for what he does for the military, for this tournament, for all the tickets we get and for the hospitality tents and everything set up at the tournament for us. He's a very personable guy, and he made plenty of time for us.
The whole day was memorable, but a couple of things stood out. First of all, my whole family was there to watch. My wife, Ronda, and my two sons, Nicolas and Tristan, came down this morning, plus my mom and dad were there, along with two sisters-in-law, my brother-in-law, my aunt and two of my golf buddies. My caddie was Joe Laneski, a retired colonel who is my usual golf partner. So it really was an awesome day playing golf with the best player in the world and sharing the experience with my family and friends.
As for my playing, the highlight of the round came on No. 4. On that hole, I actually outdrove Tiger. OK, so he was playing from the pros' tees. No need to let the facts get in the way of my good story. Still, my family saw my ball ahead of Tiger's on the fairway. No. 4 is a par 4, and I had about 90 yards to the pin, so I hit a pitching wedge to about six or eight feet. Tiger missed the green and made par. I made my putt for birdie. That was pretty good.
I shot a 93, which I don't think was too bad since I was playing the course for the first time under those conditions. I also didn't hit anybody, so that's a good thing since that was always in the back of my mind.
I obviously didn't want the day to end, but it eventually did. When we were done, I gave Tiger one of my unit hats and a RED HORSE coin. He signed another unit hat for me, along with the photo we had taken.
I look back and realize something like this will probably never happen again, and I'm definitely going to have a hard time getting any work done tomorrow. I'll definitely be thinking how I walked 18 holes at Aronimink Golf Club with Tiger Woods, the best player in the world and one of the best of all time, with my whole family there to watch.
You can't beat that.