Puggy, much like Stewart Cink, is known to be a super nice guy and obviously a great coach building up the Georgia Tech golf program, and now also at the University of South Carolina. He has helped me out so many times with my playing and practicing, and now years later with Golf GameBook.
It was somehow very natural to ask him be one of the amazing advisors that we have on GameBook Team. Advisors have been a great help for me when building networks in the US. Especially in 2008 when we organized the GameBook Pilot in South Carolina to get feedback from players and golf clubs on the early stages of GameBook development. Warm thank you, Puggy & Stewart, for making that a success!
Glad Golf Reunion
Last fall I had an opportunity to catch up again with both Puggy Blackmon and Happ Lathrop (of South Carolina Golf Association). We met at the Cocky Classic, a fundraiser for the USC golf program, where we had the privilege to provide GameBook Live Scoring. Also, it is always nice to visit Bill McDonald, the head coach for the USC men's team, who also played at Georgia Tech in the late 80s and early 90s. Great golf personalities altogether!
Can't wait to visit again… And this weekend I will go back to South Carolina, to Kiawah, at least in my mind. With all these joyful memories I will follow the PGA Championship very closely.
--Mikko
Twitter @MikkoRantanen
PS. Here below some old pictures and an extra “Thank You section” related to the GameBook piloting:
I owe a lot for several persons within the South Carolina golf sphere. So here’s a sequel of thank you’s:
We have great relationship with the South Carolina Golf Association and the key persons there, Happ Lathrop, Biff Lathrop and Chris Miller. They helped us with the Pilot Courses. I am very grateful to them. They know the game so well!
Here’s couple of other highlights from the pilot & thank you for you all:
- Woodlands Country Club was the most active course with super diligent Head Pro Tom Mason. He was helping us a great deal, also after the pilot.
- Brad Swanson ended up winning the Pilot Grand Prize: round of golf with Stewart Cink himself, a weekend getaway at Chateau Elan Resort, a custom fitted set of Nike Clubs, where Cink advised on the custom fitting part together with Nike rep Shawn Cummins. Brad took his wife Patti and dad Gordon to play together with Cink with mom Yvonne watching 'within the ropes'.
- Jody Newman from Strategic Marketing Services was our marketing specialist during the Pilot - great materials and awesome pictures from Bulls Bay!
- Warren Thomas was a great help supporting the pilot golf clubs and getting feedback from players and dogfights.
