Let the NFL DDC Hype Begin

My fellow DDC Participants and Fans:

I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the missed putts and arrant tee shots let loose in the past. I thank the rest of the DDC committee for their service to our golf tournament, as well as the generosity and cooperation they have shown throughout the years.

Four cities have hosted the NFL DDC and soon a fifth will be added to this most honored list. The tournament has been played during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often the competition has been played amidst gathering clouds, raging storms, and deep hangovers. At these moments, the DDC has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those playing the game, as we all know this skill is not that great, but because the fans have remained faithful to the ideals of our forebears, and true to our founding documents, the DDC Charter and By-Laws.

So it has been. So it must be with this generation of DDC Players.

That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our short games are at war, against a far-reaching network of wrist breaks and chunking it. Our trouble shots are badly weakened, a consequence of not getting out there and playing on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare our game for hitting it out of the woods opposite handed. Holes have been lost; grips shed; driving ranges shuttered. Our club care is too costly; our golf schools fail too many; and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use our mid-irons strengthen our adversaries and threaten our scores.

These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable but no less profound is a sapping of confidence in our games — a nagging fear that Roush and Stachowiak’s decline is inevitable, and that they must lower their sights.

Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America — they will be met.

On this day, we gather because we have chosen consistency over power, teamwork and concentration over discord.

On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the fat jokes and trying to get the other team drunker, the stale mental games and misplaced psych-out tactics, that for far too long have strangled our game.

We remain a young team, but in the words of Bo, the time has come to become champions. The time has come to reaffirm our golfing dominance; to remember our winning history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that Jim and Mike will become DDC Champions once again.

In reaffirming the greatness of team Roush/Stachowiak, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of shortcuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted — for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of 10-8 beat downs and passing fame for winning a the first two holes. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the Tin Cup moments, the makers of putts — some celebrated but more often obscure in their repetitiveness, that has carried us up the long, rugged path towards winning The Birdie.

For us, Jim and Mike packed up their few golf bags and traveled across the Midwest in search of finding their game.

For us, Jim and Mike toiled on driving ranges and putting greens; endured the shanks and lip outs.

For us, Jim and Mike fought and lost, in places like Ann Arbor and Chicago; North Liberty and Hacker Hills.

Time and again these two struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that they might claim a piece of sports history. They saw the DDC as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions; greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction.

This is the journey they continue today. Stachowiak and Roush remain the most proud, powerful golf duo on Earth. Their drives are no less productive than when this crisis began. Their shot making is no less inventive. Their golfing ability remains undiminished. But their time of standing pat, of protecting narrow one hole leads and putting off aggressive plays — that time has surely passed. Starting today, Jim and Mike must pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and begin again the work of remaking the NFL DDC.

For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of their putting game calls for action, bold and swift, and they will act — not only to create new range on the green, but to lay a new short game that will provide shorter putts. Jim and Mike will restore themselves to its rightful place DDC history, and wield Titlelist’s wonders to raise ball flight and lower course records. They will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel their decision making and shot selection. And they will transform their tee shots and approach shots to meet the demands of the course. All this Jim and Mike can do. All this they will do.

Now, there are some who question the scale of Roush and Stachowiak’s ambitions — who suggest that their game cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short. For they have forgotten what this team has already done; what Jim and Mike can achieve when preparation is joined to common purpose, and necessity to go for it over the water.

What Butts and Nolan fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them — that the stale golf arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether Jim and Mike’s scores are too high or talent too small, but whether it works — whether it helps the team find its way to winning a hole, putts they can sink, a chip that is make-able. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, adjustments will be made to his stance, grip, or follow through.

Nor is the question before us whether the fade is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate good looks at the green and expand shot selection is unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the ball can spin out of control — and that the team cannot hold the lead in the DDC long when it favors only the power fade. The success of Jim and Mike’s scoring has always depended not just on the length of their putts, but on the reach of their fairway shots; on their ability to extend opportunity to their next shot — not out of just necessity, but because it is the surest route to their common good.

As for Ostrander and Nolan, we reject as false the choice between Jim and Mike’s victory and their ideals. Our founding fathers ... our found fathers (aka us), faced with nothing to do, drafted a DDC charter to assure the fun of golf and the rights to meet up with each other at least once a year outside of a wedding or football game, a charter expanded by dinners at Outback and Ditka’s. Those ideals still light the tournament, and we will not give them up just because the National Football League Draft Day Classic does not actually occur on the day of the National Football League Draft. And so to all the other peoples and sports fans who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small Indiana village where my father was born: know that the NFL DDC is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of golf at its best, and that Jim and Mike are ready to lead once more.

Recall that earlier Jim and Mike DDC victories faced wet sand traps and shots that landed on Ann Arbor-Saline not just with Titlelists and Top Flites, but with Slazengers and Maxflis. They understood that their power alone cannot protect their lead, nor does it entitle them to just tee it high and let it fly as they please. Instead, they knew that their power grows through its prudent use; their lead security emanates from the wisdom of their shots, the line of their putts, the tempering qualities of not always letting the big dog eat.

We are the keepers of this legacy. Guided by these principles once more, Jim and Mike can meet those new threats of Nolan’s new Driver and Ostrander’s new weight that demand even greater effort — even greater cooperation and understanding between teammates. Jim and Mike will begin to responsibly leave losing balls in the past, and forge a hard-earned victory in St. Louis.

Against old friends that are former and current foes, Jim and Mike will work tirelessly to lessen the dormie threat, and roll back the specter of another DDC lost. They will not apologize for making Nolan putt it out, nor will they waver in forcing Ostrander to walk the course, and for Team Ostrander/Nolan who to advance their aims by inducing terror by slaughtering par threes, Jim and Mike say to you now that their spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast them, and they will defeat you.

For Roush and Stachowiak know that the patchwork heritage of the DDC is a strength, not a weakness. We are a fake golf tournament of Lawyers and Teachers, Engineers and….a soon to be lawyer. We are shaped by pretty much the same language and culture, drawn from every end of the upper Midwest; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of having our football team go 3-9, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the tradition of calling Ostrander “Buttstrander” shall soon dissolve; that as Michael’s waistline grows smaller, our common Michigan-ity shall reveal itself; and that the NFL DDC must play its role in ushering in a new era of excellent golfing.

To the non-golfing world, we seek a new way forward, based not on mutual interest and but I guess on some kind of mutual respect? To Team Nolan/Ostrander who seeks to sow conflict amongst Team Roush/Stachowiak, or blame their lousy shots on the bird chirping in their backswing — know that the DDC will judge you on what you can recover from, not what you blame. To those who cling to last year’s DDC results, which were garnered through corruption and deceit and the silencing of Roush’s five wood, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but Jim and Mike will extend a hand if you are willing to give up now.

As we consider the road that unfolds before us, we remember with humble gratitude those brave golfers who, at this very hour, hack away at far-off desert courses in Scottsdale and distant mountain golf resorts. They have something to tell us, just as the fallen legends like Walter Hagen, Bobby Jones, and Ben Hogan whisper through the ages. We honor them not only because they had to use real wood woods and did not have Nike as a sponsor, but because they embody the spirit of the game; a willingness to find meaning in breaking par greater than themselves. And yet, at this moment — a moment that will define a generation of DDC members — it is precisely this spirit that must inhabit us all.

For as much as Team Roush/Stachowiak can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of their supporters upon which this team relies. It is the kindness to let their husband grab a quick nine before dinner, the selflessness of co-workers to cover for Jim as he sneaks away from the office to work on his flop shot that will finally decide the team’s fate.

Our challenges may be new, as Jim and Mike are used to winning. The instruments with which we meet them may be new because Mike has a new set of irons. But those values upon which Jim and Mike’s success depends — hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and getting Team Nolan/Ostrander to implode on the back nine — these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout the DDC’s history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of dominance — a recognition, on the part of every member of Team Roush/Stachowiak, that they have duties to themselves, their team, and the world, duties that they do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to the DDC and kicking the snot out of Nolan and Ostrander.

This is the price and the promise of DDC glory.

This is the source of Jim and Mike’s confidence — the knowledge that David Ledbetter calls on us to fix that hitch in our backswings.

This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed — why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent country, and why a man whose father less than ten years ago had Rams season tickets and a newly purchased armada of private jets, can one day a few months from now stand here and be an NFL DDC champion.

So let us mark this day with remembrance, of who we are and how far we have traveled. In the year of the DDC’s birth, in the mildest of months, a small band of buddies huddled over a bloomin’ onion on the shores of the Huron River. The college was abandoned except for all the students, professors, and employees. Graduation was advancing. The snow was not stained with blood as it was spring and not particularly violent. At a moment when the outcome of our future opportunities to golf together was most in doubt, the father of our golf tournament ordered these words be read to the people:

"Let it be told to the future world ... that around the time the NFL draft takes place, when ESPN has Mel Kiper, Jr on for hours and hours...that the golfing buddies, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet (it)."

NFL DDC, in the face of our common dangers, in this winter of 2009, let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the fairways and roughs, and endure what bogeys may come. Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the pin and Bo Schembechler’s grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of overly competitive golf and delivered it safely to future generations.

Thank you. God bless you. And God bless the NFL DDC.