Micah Woods Official Site

This Month in Air Travel: 1

I'll start this series by posing a question: how best to divide one's time between the full-service noodle bar at the ANA Lounge in the No. 4 Satellite zone of Narita International Airport Terminal 1's South Wing, and the self-service sake bar at the opposite end of the same lounge? Bonus question: how best to navigate the intervening section between the aforementioned bars without grabbing at least one piece of shortbread from the food bar?

September Golf Report

I went undefeated in September, first winning a nine hole match in Shizuoka and making an incredible birdie that I celebrated first by planking the green and then by performing a crepuscular birdie dance. 

My second win of September was in Hokkaido. And it had been brought to my attention that planking on golf course putting greens is signally inappropriate, especially so for a turfgrass scientist, so I took the opportunity to practice a new birdie dance that I hope will be appreciated by all.

If you were at Takanodai CC today, you would have seen me perform the new birdie dance after I chipped in on the second hole, only to stand down after I realized I'd just holed out for a double bogey, rather than a birdie.

Takanodai is the host club for this year's Japan Open Championship and as a consequence the rough is grown up to about 150 mm. The Open will be played in two weeks and I found Takanodai with its narrow fairways, firm greens, and penal rough to be a fine test as I make my final preparations for next week's Micah Woods Invitational. I played two matches today, winning one, and fighting back for a draw in the other.

We stopped for lunch after the front nine, and I'd like to think that this hearty steak lunch, a Takanodai specialty, helped to fortify me for the back nine. 

August Golf Report

What a month! I won four matches to start before losing my fifth and final match of August. Yesterday I was soundly defeated in a high-stakes match at one of Japan's finest courses. Next week I'll be paying off the bet, and I hesitate to go into all the details, but I can say that it involves ramen. 

August started with sartorial elegance on a cerulean morning at Higashi Hirono. Two birdies on the day, with accompanying dances, and I was optimistic that I would have another undefeated month. I won the next day at Yamaguchi, and then again in a hard-fought 2&1 victory at The Orchard that we celebrated into the evening.

Then it was back to Japan, and a truly dominating performance in the mountains of Nagano, with three birdies on the fast bentgrass greens of Minami Tateshina Golf Course. 

So when I teed it up yesterday, I was expecting another birdie-filled performance and another victory to close out the month. But I won't make excuses. If I were to be so mean, I might say that I should not have stopped after nine holes to have soup, and salad, and wagyu beef served with daikon and soy sauce. Maybe I shouldn't have had the ice-cold jug of Asahi with the beef at 10:30 in the morning. Perhaps the coffee after my mid-round meal caused my paroxysmal tee shot on the 10^th. Maybe I should have asked to see my opponent's handicap card before I agreed to play him at scratch. Maybe I should have brought a full set of clubs. 

With more big matches coming up in September, and then the Micah Woods Invitational in October, I must make a rapid recovery from this stunning loss.

Insights Into Golf, Life, and Turfgrass

It has been pointed out from many corners that I have been making a lot of birdie dances recently. I'll personally take a lot of the credit for that, but I also want to share with you a new philosophy that is helping me to make incredible breakthroughs in my golf and in my turfgrass work. 

That philosophy? A simple (perhaps too simple?) one:

“it's not rocet science”

I'm not quite sure what that means, but ever since I was introduced to this philosophy at a sporting goods shop in Sannomiya, I've made birdie after birdie, and breakthrough after breakthrough in my attempts to produce more incompehensible bubble charts and heat maps.

I presented the interactive and animated bubble charts in a seminar at University of the Philippines Los Baños last week, at the invitation of Dr. Amihan Arquiza. This seminar was actually a double debut, as this was also my first time to wear my new tie from Barneys New York. Taste, luxury, humor — Barneys New York is … a mecca for discerning fashionistas and clothing connoisseurs since 1923. Of course it is. This is not rocet science, after all. 

Nor is the birdie dance.

Last Week, the Outtakes

You've probably already seen the classy birdie dance photo from last week. Perhaps you followed along on twitter, or Facebook, or Google+. But those are hardly the place for copious disquisitions.

There was a lot more to last week than the birdie dance. In fact, it was a week of inimitable rakishness. Here are the outtakes. I traveled across a large part of Japan last week, hitting the golf hotspots of Chiba and Hyogo, stopping at Kanagawa and Yamaguchi and Fukuoka as well, riding innumerable trains, and eating. How about nama oysters the size of dinner plates, and kujira sashimi? 

For that matter, how about kujira bacon? 

It looks a bit like a sliced radish, but the taste is rather different. 

There were a lot of golf courses last week, and a lot of photos of my trousers. Here I deflect attention from the trousers, pointing out that the grass is worthy of attention also. Or was I trying vainly to draw attention to my trousers? What trousers?

Whatever it was, I finished 5^th in the golf tournament against a strong field on a day so hot (liquefyingly so, it felt) that the caddie was giving us ice packs to place on our heads. To keep our brains from melting, apparently. I obviously scored a victory against the elements, if not against the field, so I'm marking my card as undefeated so far in August.

Reading and Writing

I've been at Japan this week and had a chance to review some of the published Golf Course Seminar articles I have written this year. One could almost say I can't understand a word I wrote, although with a bit of attention I can make out some of it.

The R&A have a new website, The Golf Course, that includes case studies I put together for The Banyan Golf Club in Thailand and Wack Wack Golf and Country Club in the Philippines.

Banyan case study

Wack Wack case study

It is great to see these case studies featured so prominently on The R&A's website, right beside Royal St. Georges where I will be for The Open next week!

Too full of Adventure to be briefly described

I have traveled to six countries this month, getting on an airplane once every 54 hours (on average) and staying at hotels from the waterfront at Kota Kinabalu to the noisome streets of Kowloon and to a surprisingly quiet Kanda last week. I returned to Thailand in the early morning hours today and have three consecutive days here before my next departure. 

At Vietnam last week I had the opportunity to take this interesting photograph with Tiger Song, the principal of Korea's Songho Golf Design Group. We smiled as we imagined the mirthsome headline Tiger meets Woods. 

In addition to the advisory and research work that took me to Malaysia, Philippines, Hong Kong, and Vietnam this month, I also went to Japan to teach about turfgrass science in full-day seminars at Tokyo and Osaka. One of the challenges in giving seminars in Asia is that the handouts and other presentation materials must invariably be translated well in advance of the seminars. By the time of the actual seminars, we have a lot of fun. 

And the bow tie adds a rakish flair to the proceedings, doesn't it? 

A Rakish Guide to Central Hokkaido

When you think of Hokkaido, I'm sure what comes to mind is Genghis Khan and chocolate-covered potato chips. After spending the past few days at Sapporo, Furano, and Asahikawa, I can assure you that there is a lot more to Hokkaido than that. Here are a few of the highlights.

How about some of the best shirako you will find anywhere? How about epic powder on mountains so good that it always amazes me to find so few people there? How's this for Furano on a Sunday afternoon? It was a pity, actually, that there weren't more people there to see me take some wicked lines down the mountain.

Everyone knows Sapporo Beer and Nikka Whisky. But you may not be aware of Otakayama sake and the sake museum and brewery at Asahikawa. And then there is the shochu.

I have a general and well-considered policy of not drinking shochu, but after some prompting following an epic day on the slopes at Furano, the shochu I had was as mild and fragrant as a lavender field in July. Distilled from sweet potatoes, I was expecting a Kagoshima-style imojochu but found something rather more subtle and complex.

I was at Hokkaido for seminars about turfgrass management. I guess that explains how I came to be photographed at the lobby of the Jozankei View Hotel with a vicious bear while my appurtenances were only a bow tie and a small carry bag. 

In this rakish guide, perhaps you were expecting more details about the nightlife of these cities. If only I hadn't been working so hard, perhaps I would have been able to experience more of the nightlife. Sure, I had ramen at midnight and soba at 01:30, but who doesn't take time for a bowl of steaming noodles on a snowy night? Perhaps people who are at home in their beds.

But that would not be very rakish at all.

 

Last Week in 70 Epic Seconds

Seminar in a Tall Building

Do I look rakish? There is good reason for it. I had a presentation yesterday at the Park Hyatt Tokyo with 160 greenkeepers in attendance. We talked about why Japan is the most difficult place in the world to grow grass, and what to do about it. You may be familiar with the Park Hyatt as the setting for much of the film Lost in Translation.

The view from my room with a 180° view of Tokyo at night was striking. As was the view from the fitness center as I set a new personal speed record for an 8 km run above the 45^th floor of any building. As was the view of Mt. Fuji from the hotel lobby as I checked out this morning. That makes one seminar completed this month, with five more to go. All at salubrious places, Fukuoka tomorrow, Tokyo again next week, Osaka, then two at Hokkaido. But none will be in such a tall building.