Cubs hosted the Mariners this afternoon at a sparkling summer Wrigley Field. Just a gem. Tough to see others living your dream.

The KPMG Women’s PGA Championship is this weekend at, you guessed it, Gil Hanse designed Field Ranch East course at PGA Frisco. A mouthful. PGA Frisco is the new headquarters of the PGA (from Ponte Vedra Beach - Sawgrass). Frisco is going to host 6 majors over the next 29 years including the 2027 Men’s PGA Championship. Gil Hanse is everywhere. He is the Hillstone Restaurant Group of Golf.

Absolutely no one thought the Pacers would take this series to 7 games and yet here we are. Do they have one more in them? Let’s get Hard in the Paint.

The Basketball Community is asking Why/How the Pacers are winning, and I don’t have the answers. Should we care? This series opened with more discussion about the potential ratings impact of a one sided series featuring two small markets than it did any basketball strategy talk. Even KMARKus pitched a neutral site NBA Finals to spice things up. Well, here we are, Game 7 will rescue the ratings that have comparably been dim.

Are we watching Good Basketball? Yes. Affirmed. That’s what I’ll take most from this matchup. Both teams are playing with more energy, defensive tenacity, and balance than we’ve seen in Finals past. These teams are Young. They play like they’re uninhibited by star dominant offense. What do I mean? Lebron’s teams feature a singular star dissecting a defense for the best possible matchup or shot. It’s a plodding offense. Even the Warriors, despite all their ball and player movement, keyed their offense around Steph and Klay. The supporting casts were differential to the stars. Indiana has no such offensive overhead. Haliburton participates nearly as much as he dictates. For OKC, at their best, SGA and Jalen Williams are a better version of the “my turn, your turn” Jayson Tatum/Jaylen Brown Celtics. Lot of Jalens. The Thunder supporting cast is more involved this year than the additional Celtics ever were.

I call this Camp Basketball. As a Young myself, I spent two summers at Snow Valley Basketball Camp. Among many drills, Snow Valley is famous for a 3 on 3 half-court scrimmage. Win enough scrimmages and you play on Center Stage in front of the whole camp. When I say it’s elbows, knee-biting, scratch and claw competition, I very much mean that blood was drawn. More to the point, in this particular drill, if you score but forget to thank the teammate that passed you the ball, then you lose the points and possession. Team over everything. I’m only half joking that I’ve been chasing that High ever since. There’s a radical presence to being surrounded by your peers, capturing their envy, performing at the highest level and connected to your teammates. 8 years as a product manager at American Express struggled to reproduce that.

These are two connected teams. The front offices aren’t in upheaval. The coaches aren’t getting fired. Ownership is stable. And the players have grown up together tested in battle. Sunday night we get one more game with all the stakes on the line.

Cruden Bay is two hours north of St. Andrews. Above, you’ll see the Cruden Bay Hotel which was conveniently built by the Great North of Scotland Railway company. Not be outdone by Bandon Dunes, but the Scots were doing Destination Golf long before us.

The hotel no longer stands. Tough Times, World Wars, and no Marriot Holding Companies made running the hospitality business difficult. What remains is the golf though, and people have had to fight to keep even that.

Over the last 100 years, the course has been rescued from financial ruin. Long after the railroad fell out of fashion, getting to Cruden was no easy feat. Only once the highway from Aberdeen to the town was completed around the early 2000s did Cruden become more accessible for the golfing masses. Local Crudes fought off calls to remake the course into pasture land and what’s survived is one of Scotland’s best.

Playing Cruden is a fight in itself, but also produces sheer relief that it still exists. It’s a great emotional roller coaster to ride. This is just the appetizer. More to come from H.P. Monday.