Annika Wines

Because we met Annika and her husband Mike at the Pebble Beach Food and Wine Magazine event two weekends we were lucky to get an invitation to the inaugural release of Annika at Wente Vineyards.

Back in October of 2008 Annika partnered with family-owned Wente Vinyards to embark on a new chapter in her life and follow in Greg Normans footsteps. This evening 2006 Annika Syrah will be released at her event in Livermore, CA. My family and I are lucky enough to attend a blending event tonight with dinner along with a golf clinic taught by Annika with a Tournament hosted by Annika to follow on Saturday. I am very excited for the event and as you know I will be twittering the entire time and taking as many pictures as possible. Hopefully the weather holds up. The predictions are rain Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Yuck!

Sunday at The Masters

The day started off well. The running of the bulls to get good seats on the 18th green wasn’t too bad and in the end we ended up with great seats 4 or 5 rows from the green. We had about two hours to kill once we put our chairs down, so we walked around and my parents decided to go and sit at hole 4 while I decided to go to the driving range so I could watch a few players including Rory warm up. But, when I got there it was completely packed with people so I decided to go to the short game practice area and watch there and I was blown away at the shots everyone was hitting. They are so accurate on every shot from the bunker and around the greens. I was the most impressed with the fact that most players would choose one wedge and use it on every shot from the bunker to chip and pitch shots around the greens. The trajectories varied on each shot which was the most amazing. They rarely missed shots far from the hole. Rory had an awesome short game practice and it really came in handy during his round.

I spent the day following Rory McIlroy and Luke Donald and once they came in I sat in my chair on the 18th green and watched the rest of the action. When the rest of the groups were on the back nine all you could here where roars every few minutes. Everyone would look to the big leader board and wait in anticipation for who made birdies. It was so exciting when Tiger and Phil were both making a run at the lead with birdies. There was a point when Tiger made it to 10 under that I thought he would birdie the last three holes to be at 13 under, which is where Perry was. The whole tournament was sooooo amazing. As much as last year was mesmerizing this year was so much more exciting just because there were about a handful of players in contention and you really didn’t know up until the end who would win. When it was all over it felt like a big dream and I didn’t want it to end. The trophy presentation with the sunset in the background was icing on the cake. It was such a surreal moment that I can’t wait/hope to experience next year.

Par 3 - Challenge

Wednesday was the Par 3 Challenge, which is always really fun to watch. We got to the course early and stood for two hours just so we could get really good seats on the 9th green. After we put our chairs down we walked around the course and I took close to 1,000 pictures for the entire day. I love taking pictures and at Augusta National it isn’t hard to go crazy taking pictures. At around 1:30 p.m. we headed to the Par 3 course and stayed until the second to last group came through. As we headed up Rory McIlroy and Lee Westwood were teeing off on hole 8. Rory was signing autographs, so I decided to stick my hat out and he happily signed it for me. As he moved along I saw him take a picture with a kid and I called him back to take a picture with me. He was nice enough to come all the way back to where I was and take a picture with me and he actually smiled in the picture! He wasn’t ticked that I called him back for the picture which has made me a Rory fan for life! Maybe I will follow him tomorrow. Hmmm...

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