Fuente: © World Golf Championships
http://www.worldgolfchampionships.com/

WORLD GOLF CHAMPIONSHIP: Blog: Alexander completes his "great experience"

/noticias.info/ Editor’s note: Buddy Alexander, who is the men's golf coach at the University of Florida, is caddying for one of his former players, Camilo Villegas, as he represents Colombia in the World Golf Championships-Barbados World Cup this week. Alexander will be writing about the experience daily for PGATOUR.com. This is his fourth, and final, installment.

ST. JAMES, Barbados -- Today was a fun day. Everyone was calling me ‘coach’ so I guess people have been reading this blog. The volunteers were saying, ‘Hey, coach, the ball is over here.’ Or, ‘Coach, look over there.’ I don’t think there’s any other way they’d know who was on Camilo’s bag this week. So that was pretty funny.

The front nine today was bizarre. The weather was worse than Thursday. It was raining sideways. Everyone kept saying that at least we’re not cold. But it got to the point when you were soaked through that you’d be a little chilled. My feet may never dry out completely, and there’s a good chances that these shoes will be left here in Barbados. It was a mistake not to bring my Gortex shoes -- very poor coaching on my part. But I didn’t expect so much rain. I paid the price, too.

We shot even par on the front nine and 2 under on the back. They played in the worst of the rain. It started when we walked off the first tee and we were on the ninth when play was suspended. So to shoot even par on the front nine was pretty good. Manuel, who played at BYU, finally got his putter going and made some birdie putts on Nos. 14, 16 and 18 -- that was terrific to see. Their putts didn’t burn the edges like they did the other day. I guess they got about what they deserved today.

This has been a great experience for me. I really think the thing that sticks out in my mind the most is that this is probably the best golf I’ve seen Camilo Villegas play. I haven’t seen him up close like this in three years. His status as a world-class player is definitely higher than as a first-team All-American. I would have expected him to have improved but I was impressed at how much he has. He played extremely well. Most every putt he hit looked like it was going to scare the hole whether it went in or not. He was clearly straighter, not as long maybe, and he had a definite tendency of right-to-left. There is a lot of consistency to his ball-striking. This is the best golf I have ever seen him play. It may not have shown on the scoreboard, but sometime that’s the way golf is, and this was a team event. I am very proud of the way he played.

And it was good to see that he’s still my little boy. I am very close to Camilo and his younger brother, Manny, who is a redshirt junior on my team. Camilo is a lot of fun to be around. He might not show it to everyone -- I mean, he’s a professional now -- but he still has a lot of little boy in him. So that was great to see. I knew he’d improved, but it was nice to see that up close. In reality, though, what I really liked was seeing that he hasn’t changed. notas_de_prensa_archivo