The excitement continues!

I got some GREAT news today... my editor-in-chief returned from Minneapolis, where he attended the annual Turf and Ornamental Communicators Association annual meeting. TOCA is an association everyone on my staff belongs to, as do other industry magazines like Golfdom, GolfWeek SuperNews, TurfNet, Superintendent (you get the picture -- I'm sure you subscribe to a few of those I just mentioned).

He brought back 7 TOCA awards, one of which was the 2008 first place award for general feature writing, which I won for "A Shark's Tale," my December 2007 cover story on Greg Norman.

YEAHH!!!!

It's no Golf Writers Association of America award (I've written about the GWAA here before, those are the awards I REALLY covet) but it's a first place writing award, which makes me smile. I'm really, really happy about it, actually. I've won three TOCA awards before this, two were for photography, and one was for writing, but I was a co-author.

This one is solely mine, and it's in a category I just love -- general feature writing. It's the "best actor" award of magazine writing, in my eyes. Other categories were things like, "best story about a new product," or "best story by a left-handed, near-sighted author in the Pacific Northwest." OK, that last one is BS, but you get what I'm saying, right?

I've got this award, now I can start working harder on trying to crack through on the GWAA awards... I feel a step closer now, like maybe I'm doing something worthwhile every so often, I just need to keep working hard.

I re-read the story today, sat in my office and tried to just enjoy it, 8 months removed from writing it. I found a few parts in the story I would like to change right now, but that's the advantage of hindsight. I don't think it's my best writing... maybe I'm still a little burned up that I didn't win this award in 2007 for my story on New Orleans (our competitor won it on the same story... and that was crap, in my eyes). But it is a pretty good piece on Greg Norman, some fun insights on who he is, and why he's so adamant about protecting the environment.

I think I'll send thank you notes to everyone in the story who I interviewed. It feels like the right thing to do. Greg Norman, Steve Elkington, Pete Dye, Bill Kubly, among others, will all be getting a nice note from me in the mail.

You want a speech? How't this:

To quote the great Rod Tidwell, as played by Cuba Gooding Jr. in Jerry Maguire, "Wait, wait, wait, wait... just... let me enjoy this for a minute."