BMW Sunday notebook: lemonade, bugs and how to divot right

The final day of BMW Championship brought crowds and cheers for leaders

By Jim Bebbington

Many of the homes alongside holes at Castle Pines Golf Club are separated from the course by only a thin green rope set up for the BMW Championship.

One family decided to take advantage and set up one of the world’s nicest lemonade stands.

Grace’s father, Jeff Messner, has a friend who lives alongside the hole No. 3, and they worked to set up a lemonade stand where his daughter Grace and her friend Sophia Gaudreau can sell cool drinks to parched patrons. Sophia’s family makes lemonade, kombucha and ginger beer for farmers markets, Messner said, and they brought a little of that mojo to Castle Pines.

“It was a little slow the first couple of days but people have gotten to know about it,” he said. “We told the girls they sell distilled water up top, we’re going to sell good water.”

What is the deal with the bugs?

Viewers and patrons of the BMW Championship this week have frequently been witness to players and their caddies sweeping the putting greens with towels, hats and their hands.

What are they doing?

They are trying to swipe away bugs.

The small flies don’t blanket the greens, but they are large enough that players are afraid they could deflect a putted ball if they got in the way.

Save a driving range; cluster your shots

This is how the pros do it.

When the final group teed off Sunday at the BMW Championship, the driving range at Castle Pines Golf Club probably breathed a sigh of relief. It had had a hard week.

This week all pros worked through their bags each morning before teeing off on the nearby No. 1 tee. Some returned after their rounds to focus on a particularly problematic part of their game.

Rory McIlroy almost always put on a driving range show. On Tuesday he hit driver over the netting at the back of the range until workers asked him to tone it down. Saturday he finished with some precision driving drill, and put a ball through the 250-yard sign at the back of the range.

For all that use, however, the driving range retained a surprising amount of grass. That’s because pros know how to use a driving range. They cluster their shots, position balls further and further back along a straight line starting over with a new line directly next to the first.

The result is that while they are masters at taking deep divots, the pros leave behind more clean grass than they took out.

We can all learn from them.

 Follow @ColoradoAvidGolfer on Instagram and other social media and visit ColoradoAvidGolfer.Com all week for coverage of the 2024 BMW Championship.