For many recent weeks local golf addicts have been glued to the tube watching the world’s best professionals competing for honors on some of the world’s toughest golf courses.

As I have given up the game and joined the televised slicers and hookers I have to admit I am an ardent fan of the young Irish Rory McIlroy.

He became my hero simply because my own father, though never a golfer to my knowledge, was born and raised in the same county as Rory. Dad made his way to Canada and eventually to New York.

He eventually married my mom, Eva May who never played golf either but did work for Thomas Edison in New Jersey and she once talked to the great inventor when he stopped by her work bench (she was very pretty) and chatted with her.

She knew nothing about golf but her own dad (a pattern maker) invented a machine that wound the continuous rubber band that is inside golf balls.

Where was I...?

Oh, yes...

One of my golfing friends was Rudy Bundas. He was also a world famous fine artist who spent a lot of time at Jefferson golf course in the early ‘70s on Beacon Hill. Rudy was a demon putter with only one eye. He lost the other as a child in Hungary during WWII.

Jefferson, a public course, always had a crush of men on the putting green awaiting a tee-time. Rudy was in that crush and one day joined in a winner-take-all match on the putting green.

The marathon match came down to Rudy and young Freddie Couples, a boy who lived near the course. It ended when Freddie ran in a 30-footer Rudy could not duplicate. Rudy passed away a few years ago but he was likely rooting for Freddie in the Boeing Classic at Snoqualmie Ridge last week.