Keeping up with the Jones: Almost everything is awesome

Seth Jones

Greetings from the Sunflower State, where Kansas Jayhawk football just ended a nine-year (nine-year!) road losing streak, the Kansas City Chiefs are 3-0 behind talk-of-the-NFL phenom Patrick Mahomes II, and today’s headline in the Lawrence Journal-World boasts, “Kansans’ Incomes Booming.”

There’s a handmade yard sign in my little town of 6,000 that I drive by every day when I’m dropping off my kids at school. It simply reads, “Remember: you’re awesome!”

‘Awesome’ might be overused these days — everything is not awesome — but it is a nice sign to drive by every morning. I give my fellow Eudora, Kan., residents a mental high-five whenever I see it. And honestly, enough good things have been happening lately — here in Kansas and elsewhere — that I’m happy to sit back and appreciate it for a minute.

Consider these things, which are all awesome in my book:

Tiger’s win at the Tour Championship. How good did it feel to see Tiger in the zone on Saturday and Sunday (and by the way, how good did East Lake look?) Talk about the need for an emergency 9… the PGA Tour season can’t end now, can it? With Tiger hoisting a trophy? Isn’t there a rule that states the season gets extended by an extra three weeks if Tiger wins the last tournament of the year? Well, there should be.

At the beginning of the season I bet Golfdom Publisher Craig MacGregor $100 that Tiger would never win another major championship. Right now that Ben Franklin looks like it’s in jeopardy, but like I told Mac back then — I’d pay off that bet grinning ear to ear, because if I lost it meant Tiger had his 15th major, which isn’t just awesome in general, but also amazing for the game.

The economy and our 401(k)s are rocking. That’s no baloney about the economy in Kansas. According to a report by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, Kansans saw an increase in their incomes of 4.7 percent in the second quarter of 2018, good enough to put us in the top 10 states. Texas (6 percent increase), Louisiana (5.9 percent increase) and Kentucky (5.5 percent increase) were the top three, while Washington came in last with a 1.6-percent increase (sorry, Huskies.)

So everything remains bigger in Texas. I’m cool with that.

Microbreweries are popping up all over. As you may have surmised at any time over the last nine years I’ve been writing this column, I’m something of a beer fan… my favorite beer is cold beer, but I also like to try other cold beers, while sometimes I just stick to cold Miller Lite.

The microbrewery craze has gotten so ridiculous now that I even had one pop up in my no-stoplight town of 6,000: Wakarusa Brewery, named after the nearby river.

You know what would be really awesome? If they created a brew named after their nearby Golfdom editor. Something to strive for…

Promotions for team Golfdom. We’ve had some promotions here at North Coast Media. While maintaining my role of Golfdom editor-in-chief, I’ve also been promoted to the dual role of EIC of our sister publication, Landscape Management. Similarly, Abby Hart, who was managing editor of both pubs, has been deservedly promoted to senior editor of both books. We’ve also been empowered with an energetic staff of five editors to help us manage the chaos of publishing two turf books a month.

So I’ve got that going for me, which is nice.

I shouldn’t need a handmade yard sign to remind me that there are cool things going on right now. While the beginning of 2018 had my head spinning, the closing of 2018 looks… awesome.