CA Course Reporters: Thursday afternoon

Editor's note: The CA Course Bloggers -- Ellie Maniery, Desi Brantley, Stefano Diaz and Philip Spano -- will be taking PGATOUR.COM fans behind the scenes at the World Golf Championships-CA Championship this week. The bloggers will be filing a total of 32 entries over five days, so check back frequently to see what they have discovered.

Other blogs: Wednesday's entries | Thursday's morning entries

Incredible shots mark exciting afternoon
By Stefano Diaz

Hello! It's Stefano again and -- wow -- I just got back from the heart-stopping action of the first day. I saw Tiger hit a 30-yard bunker shot crosswind and uphill to within a foot of the cup. Now, I don't know what you say but that shot made up my mind -- Tiger is not human. This guy is just insane. He's so good. He is behind right now, but remember, it's Tiger, so I'm sure he'll comeback. Someone who is really putting up a good score is Australian Geoff Ogilvy. As I'm writing this, he posted a score of 6-under par with three holes left and he could go lower than that.

Argentinean Andres Romero, a rookie on TOUR, has posted a 5-under total through 13 holes, including an eagle on No. 16 of the Blue Monster. Miguel Angel Jimenez had an eagle on No. 1 and, on the same hole and in the same group, Ross Fisher also had an eagle. Can you believe it? Wow -- that's all I can say. That's why they are pros, right?

Today has been a very, very interesting day full of excitement and numerous roars. I hope to see and hear even better things tomorrow.

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Taking on a new job
By Philip Spano

This afternoon I went over to the Volunteer Tent where I met John Steinbauer, a really nice guy who gave me the privilege of being a standard bearer. A standard bearer is the person who carries the scoreboard around and follows the golfers. J.R. Steinbauer, John Steinbauer's son, brought me to the 18th hole where I became the standard bearer for the group of Trevor Immelman, Lee Westwood and John Rollins. The guy who I "stole" the job from -- Elliot Cone -- taught me the tricks of the trade. One thing that he showed me was how to hold the scoreboard upright which surprisingly is harder than I thought. If I wasn't careful, the wind would have blown the scoreboard right out of my hands! He told me that he had been a standard bearer before and had done it for a lot of really great golfers. Eliot also said that he'd gotten the autographs of everyone in this championship. That was pretty cool.

I think I might have been on TV because I was the standard bearer for the 18th hole and there were a lot of cameras and people watching. I would really like to see the look on my brother's face if he saw me on TV right in the middle of this golf tournament!

It's hard to believe that almost everyone who is working this tournament is a volunteer. These people sacrifice time out of their day just to do some volunteer work. It is the hard work that these people do behind-the-scene that gives us the opportunity to watch golf on TV. If these people didn't help out, there would be no golf tournaments.

The people who do the volunteering at this tournament are all very nice people, and I'd like to say "thank you" to them for allowing me to get behind the scenes. Thank you for allowing me to do the things that you do. It was a great experience to be so close to the golfers and see exactly how a tournament is run.

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Learning from the volunteers
By Ellie Maniery

Since this morning's entry we've been all over the place. The coolest thing that happened was when we went to the volunteer tent to see how things operated at that end of the tournament. Volunteers are some of the most important people in any PGA TOUR event. The tournament could not happen without them. Unless they are a member of the PGA TOUR or the media, more or less everyone you see working on the course is a volunteer. One of the things that struck me was the sheer amount of marshals that are needed for something like this. I mean, in Sacramento junior tournaments there are four to five groups for every one rules official. Here, there are over four marshals stationed on every hole. And that's just out on the course. There's a whole mess of marshals for the driving range and putting green and other groups of marshals they call rovers, who follow around a player who has an enormous fan following to make sure the gallery is kept in control.

John Steinbauer, one of the great people we met at the volunteer tent, allowed us to become the standard bearer for a hole. We ventured out on the course with John's son, J.R., and borrowed the sign from the official standard bearer already working with those groups. For me, this meant walking inside the ropes with the party containing Angel Cabrera, Steve Stricker and Anton Haig. It was awesome to walk alongside the players. Being the standard bearer is tougher than it seems. The sign by itself isn't heavy at all, but when the wind starts to howl it takes a lot of effort to keep it from blowing all over the place. It smacked me in the head more than once, basically whenever a particularly nasty gust of wind came along. I sincerely hope they didn't have any cameras around at those points. The eighth grader whose sign I borrowed, Andrew Holtz, told me that one year the wind blew 40 mph, plus it was pouring rain. I can only imagine how tough it must be to keep from getting blown away in conditions like that. Anyway, being that close to professionals that good, walking in the fairways and around the green -- it was a privilege.

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Lending the players a helping hand
By Desi Brantley

The afternoon was so cool! Well, what happened was we walked out to see some players play their holes. I got the chance to be a volunteer and help the players out on the course. What I mean by "help the players" is I was in charge of telling the fans to be quiet while the players hit their shots.

One of the official volunteers, Aaron, helped show me how to work the ropes, too. He said the first step was to hold the ropes in front of the fans so the players could pass. Then I had to tell the people to back up from the ropes because they will crowd you and try to get as close to the players as they can. He even said they get so close they nearly jump on you.

The second step to working the ropes was that after I finished holding the rope I had to follow the player inside the fence and down to the end of the gate. Then, I got the chance to walk them across the practice putting green and up to the next tee.

After I finished working the ropes, I told Aaron that I wanted to see Tiger Woods so bad. And that's when he said, "Do you want to go see him right now?"

I said, "Of course!"

We went and saw him hit a shot. After Tiger was done, he asked me, "Was that good enough?"

I said, "That was great!"