Daily Archives: May 15, 2005

Definitely not Ozzie and Harriet’s family

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O'Hair.jpgTiger Woods isn’t playing this weekend, but I bet you will want to watch the final round of the Byron Nelson Golf Tournament in Dallas after you read this blog post, anyway.
22 year-old Sean O’Hair — who was born and raised in Lubbock — is leading the tournament going into the final round. O’Hair was a high school student and one of the nation’s top junior players when he turned pro at 17 in September, 1999, one calendar year before fellow teens and future PGA Tour card-holders Ty Tryon and Kevin Na.
However, O’Hair’s journey to the PGA Tour was anything but a smooth one. He languished on the mini-tours for the past five years, traveling over 200,000 miles in the process. O’Hair finally won his Tour card by finishing fourth in the 2004 PGA Tour Qualifying School this past fall, but as this January, 2005 GolfWorld article reports, O’Hair has had to overcome a lot more than just the rigors of travel on the mini-tours in attaining his PGA Tour Card:

Marc O’Hair [Sean O’Hair’s father], 52, signed management contracts with his son, says he invested $2 million in his boy’s professional future and subjected Sean to a physical and psychological regimen that would make most drill sergeants blush. Sean broke free in 2002 and has not spoken to his father since a perfunctory greeting at Sean’s wedding more than two years ago.

Marc O’Hair, a large man who wore dark sunglasses, subjected Sean to a rigorous routine that stood out. He was sometimes brusque to tournament, rules and school officials, event organizers and other parents. His son, by design, was treated as a commodity.
Sean signed his first contract with his dad when he was 17, requiring him to pay his father 10 percent of his professional earnings for life. He signed another when he was 20, Marc says.

“I told him, ‘I can’t blow this kind of money without a return,'” Marc says.” ‘When you make it, there has to be payback someday.'”

Taking a tough-love approach, Marc drove his son hard. While the results speak for themselves, those who watched the duo believe there was madness in the method. As a junior player, Sean was forced to run a mile for making bogeys or finishing over par at tournaments. Marc once claimed he made Sean run eight miles in 93-degree heat after shooting an 80. At a 1998 AJGA tournament in California, Sean shot 79, then spent part of the night logging seven miles on a treadmill, a friend, Christo Greyling, says.

“The next day, he could hardly walk,” remembers Greyling, a former AJGA player and a senior at University of Georgia. “We could hardly believe he [Marc] went through with it.”

Other players . . . say Marc would berate his son in the presence of others. Dad admits slapping his son, but he says he never injured him. Sean declines to discuss the specifics of his father’s behavior, but he missed numerous social activities because he was on the driving range, working out or watching tapes of his swing. “We’d go to the beach, have an outing at Disney, do something social, and he’d be out in the parking lot with his dad doing some crazy crap [drill],” says Erik Compton, who competed in AJGA events with Sean and roomed with him at the 1998 Canon Cup team matches.
In addition to the golf work, Marc awakened his son at 5 a.m., had him run a mile and lift weights. After Sean turned pro, Marc cooked meals on a portable stove in their hotel room so that Sean ate the right foods. Every day was like boot camp, and the military comparisons aren’t by accident.

“What am I supposed to do, say, ‘Oh, Seany boy, you don’t have to get up early today,'” Marc says sarcastically. “The military, they know how to build a champion. Somebody who slacks off, that’s a loser. The typical high-school kid is hanging out at the mall – that’s a loser. You have to have a goal or you are just wasting time. I busted my [butt] on this thing. I thought I was doing him a favor. You would not believe what I did for him.”

How the family dynamic develops from here is anybody’s guess. No question, dad feels a broiling sense of festering betrayal. In fact, Sean is worried that Marc will someday sue him for repayment of the money spent fostering his career. “I hope I don’t have to go through that,” he says of a legal battle, “because that’s been a bit of a concern.” Truth be told, dad has other ideas. Marc says he has placed 25 photocopies of their contracts and a cover letter into envelopes he plans to mail to media outlets when his son makes a splash on tour.

“As soon as he gets famous, I am going to lower the boom,” Marc says. “I am going to show everybody what he did to me. I have no intention of suing him. I intend to crucify him in the media, because what he did to me is not right.”

Read the entire article. Then go watch the tournament and pull for this kid to win it, and for his father never to receive a nickel from him.
Update: Young O’Hair acquitted himself well in the final round, shooting a two under par 68 and finishing in second place, one stroke off Ted Purdy’s 15 under par winning score. O’Hair won $669,600 for his second place finish.

T. Boone Pickens on energy prices

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pickens.gifT. Boone Pickens started Mesa Petroleum Company in 1956 with a $2,500 investment and built it into the largest independent oil and gas company in America. Then, during the 1980’s, Mr. Pickens became well-known in business circles (Fortune magazine called him the “most hated man in America”) for leading a series of hostile takeover attempts that earned him a reputation as a corporate raider and greenmailer. Although Mr. Pickens’ ideas about corporate restructuring and the tactics he used for achieving them were controversial in those days, many of those ideas are common practice in the business world today, even among hedge funds.
This article reports on recent remarks of the 77 year old Mr. Pickens in which he provides an interesting overview of current oil demand and production statistics:

Let me tell you some facts the way I see it. Global oil (production) is 84 million barrels (a day). I don’t believe you can get it any more than 84 million barrels. I don’t care what (Saudi Crown Prince) Abdullah, (Russian Premier Vladimir) Putin or anybody else says about oil reserves or production. I think they are on decline in the biggest oil fields in the world today and I know what’s it like once you turn the corner and start declining, it’s a tread mill that you just can’t keep up with.
So, when you start adding the reserves in these countries, you’re not even replacing what you’re taking out.
Let me take you to another situation quickly. 84 million barrels a day times 365 days is 30 billion barrels of oil a year that we’re depleting. All of the world’s (oil) industry doesn’t even come close to replacing 30 billion barrels of oil. We don’t spend enough money to even give ourselves a chance to replace 30 billion barrels. It may be because the prospects are not there. I rather imagine that’s what the answer is to that.
So, if you accept that 84 million barrels a day is all the world can (produce), and then look at refining capacity, I think it’s just a coincidence that refining capacity… world capacity… is 84 million barrels a day. So, we’re in balance: 84, 84.
Now you see the projections for the fourth quarter of ’05, I mean like tomorrow; it is 86 to 87 million barrels of oil a day required. China (and) India (are) growing fast. Our economy is going down a little bit, but it doesn’t seem to be shutting off demand for gasoline, oil, natural gas, whatever. But around the world… just assume that the (U.S.) economy is slowing, but China is still ramped up; it is still 86, 87 million for the fourth quarter.
Now we’ve got some pretty good inventory, those will be… I think.. they’ll be gone in the third quarter. I can’t wait to see how this is all going to play out.

After his remarks, Mr. Pickens was asked if he agrees with Houston-based investment banker Matt Simmons that Saudi Arabia’s oil fields may be on the verge of decline. Mr. Pickens replied that he agreed with Mr. Simmons.
As the article on Mr. Pickens’ remarks notes, if he and Mr. Simmons are correct that Saudi promises to raise production over the next decade cannot be fulfilled, then Saudi Arabia’s role as a swing producer and oil price stabilizer will be a thing of the past. That would probably lead to more volatility in energy prices as the world economy begins to adjust to more expensive fossil fuels. Thus, the coming year could be a very interesting one in the oil and gas business.