DC, the U.S. Open and our Anniversary - weekend of June 17th

Our 3rd wedding anniversary was June 14th (which also marked the 1 year anniversary of living in Jersey), fell on a Tuesday this year.  We had planned on going to Long Island for a night the weekend after our anniversary, but the week before Charlie's friend Jon offered up free tickets to golf's U.S. Open at Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, MD.  This is just outside of Washington D.C.  Jon was getting married a few weeks after this weekend, and just didn't have the time to make it.  We decided, hey, that sounds better than Long Island, so we took Jon up on the offer.

We both took Friday off and drove down to D.C.  We got there in the early afternoon and walked around to a bunch of the monuments on the National Mall.  We didn't have time to see every one, but we saw a number of monuments we hadn't been to yet, including the Jefferson and FDR Memorials.  The Roosevelt Memorial is one of the newer ones at the National Mall, and it was cool to see.  We also stopped by the Washington and Lincoln monuments, and noticed they are currently working on a tribute to Martin Luther King.

After that, we went to a eat near Capitol Hill at the Monacle.  The Monacle is a great little restaurant that is apparently frequented by politicians.  It wasn't too crowded the night we were there, which was great, and we both had great steak dinners.

The next morning we drove to an area North of Bethesda, where we grabbed the free shuttle to Congressional Country Club, the site of the 111th United States Open.  The Open started in October 1895, and has been the site of the U.S. golf championship ever since (except for 6 years missed due to the first and second World War).

This was the 3rd time the Open had come to Congressional - the previous two times it was won by Ken Venturi of San Francisco (1964) and Ernie Els of South Africa (1997).  When we arrived there, 22-year old Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland had an enormous lead on the field.  He was at an incredible 11-under par, which was 6 strokes clear of 2nd place and 9 strokes clear of everyone else.  He only increased his lead that day, and went on to to win the tournament.  

We didn't spend a lot of time watching McIlroy; the last group teed off pretty late, and the crowd was enormous.  When we first got there, we bought some memorabilia in the enormous gift shop tent (as we walked in one of the volunteers was saying "welcome to wal-mart" which was very appropriate for as large as this gift shop was).  Next stop was the hospitality tent.  It was great - an air-conditioned tent with free food and drinks!  Most important was the air-conditioning, as the temperatures were over 90 degrees with a lot of humidity.  Katie sat on the 18th green to watch the golfers finish, while Charlie walked the course.  He followed Lee Westwood and Fredrik Jacobsen, who both moved up the leader board on Saturday.  He also followed Phil Mickelson - who wears a KPMG hat as he's sponsored by Charlie's company.  We got the shuttle back around 7:30 and headed home, tired from an eventful weekend in our nation's capital!