Appeal tribune., October 03, 2018, Page 1B, Image 5

Appeal Tribune
܂ WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2018܂ 1B
Sports
South Salem grad appears
on reality TV golfing show
Gary Horowitz
Salem Statesman Journal
USA TODAY NETWORK
CORVALLIS — When Tim Slama was
a student at Candalaria Elementary
School in Salem, his fifth-grade class
was given an assignment to craft a fu-
ture resume.
Slama found that resume while
cleaning his room recently. His goals
haven’t changed.
“Golf design is what I’ve wanted to do
since I was 10,” he said.
Slama is close to making that a reali-
ty.
A senior at Oregon State majoring in
mechanical engineering and business,
Slama is among 14 finalists who will ap-
pear on Golf Channel’s “Driver vs. Driver
2,” a reality TV competition series that
premiered Tuesday (6 p.m. Pacific
Time) and runs through Nov. 13.
The seven-episode series follows the
trials and tribulations of aspiring golf
equipment designers in an elimination-
style format, similar to “Shark Tank.”
The show was taped last fall in Chi-
cago, and finalists signed non-disclo-
sure agreements. The winner receives
$250,000 and their driver design will be
sold in golf stores worldwide.
Slama, 22, was the youngest finalist
in the competition.
“I felt like I stepped up there and said
everything I wanted to say,” said Slama,
a graduate of South Salem High School.
“There’s a lot of pressure when you’re
under the lights like that.”
The first version of the show, “Driver
vs. Driver,” aired in 2016, but Slama was
too young to apply at that time. He sub-
mitted an application for “Driver vs.
Driver 2” in May of 2017, which included
a five-minute video describing his driv-
er concept and sketches.
Of the hundreds of applications, Sla-
ma made the cut. The finalists were
flown to Wilson Sporting Goods head-
quarters in Chicago where the show was
taped before a panel of three judges in
an office setting without a studio audi-
ence.
Slama pitched his driver concept to
PGA pro and golf equipment reviewer
Rich Shiels, nine-time NHL All-Star Jer-
emy Roenick, and Wilson Golf president
Tim Clarke. At the end of each show, the
three panelists determined which de-
signers advanced and had their driver
concepts field tested.
“You step up onto a stage and you’ve
got a slide deck and PowerPoint behind
you, and you go through your idea and
Oregon State’s Tim Slama gives a presentation on Golf Channel’s “Driver vs. Driver 2.” JESSICA DANSER/GOLF CHANNEL
Driver vs. Driver 2
When: 6 p.m. Tuesdays
TV: Golf Channel
Of note: Oregon State senior Tim Slama
is among 14 finalists who will pitch their
golf driver designs to a panel of ex-
perts. The seven-episode reality TV
series runs through Nov. 13 on Golf
Channel with one winner receiving
$250,000, and their driver design will
be sold in golf stores worldwide.
let it out for the first time in front of ev-
eryone,” said Slama, co-founder of the
Oregon State Sports Engineering Club.
Slama named his driver Roswell after
the New Mexico city best known as the
site of an alleged UFO incident in 1947.
He was aware of the history behind
Roswell, and felt it was an appropriate
name for the driver because “it kind of
takes extra terrestrial technology,” Sla-
ma said with a smile.
A golfing family
Golf has been part of Slama’s life for
as long as he can remember. He grew up
playing with his dad, Doug, and younger
sister, Ellie, and was a district champion
at South Salem.
Ellie Slama, a sophomore on the OSU
women’s golf team, was a two-time
state champion at South Salem and
earned medalist honors in her third col-
legiate tournament.
“I’m so proud of him,” Ellie Slama
said. “He never wanted to do anything
else but become a mechanical engineer
and design golf clubs and be in the golf
industry. Accomplishing that is amaz-
ing.”
Tim Slama is an accomplished golfer
in his own right, but he realized long ago
that playing on the PGA Tour wasn’t in
the cards.
“I ultimately decided academics was
what I wanted to pursue, and through
engineering I would still connect with
the sport,” he said.
Entrepreneur mentality
A member of the honors college at
OSU, Slama has displayed an entrepre-
neur mentality throughout his college
career and credits many of his profes-
sors for helping him pursue his goals.
Last summer Slama worked as a de-
sign engineering intern for Nike Inc.
“Tim’s a true innovator, a true entre-
preneur,” said Dale McCauley, program
manager for Innovation X at the OSU
Entrepreneur Center.
“He’s the type of guy, he’s just gonna
go push through the barriers and figure
things out. And he’s also taking advan-
tage of all the resources that Oregon
State University has to offer. It’s college
done right.”
According to Slama, the concept be-
hind his driver allows for “an infinite
number of combinations and permuta-
tions” on the club head, which in theory
provides greater distance and accuracy.
If Slama emerges as the winner of
“Driver vs. Driver 2,” his prototype driv-
er could be used by professional golfers
and players at every level.
Even if he doesn’t receive the
$250,000 prize, participating in the
process bodes well for his future.
“It was an amazing opportunity,” Sla-
ma said. “It’s like do your ideas match
up with what the experts think?”
ghorowitz@StatesmanJournal.com
or Twitter.com/ghorowitz
Bears more plentiful than fish in Alaska
Fishing
Henry Miller
Guest columnist
YAKUTAT, Alaska – Here’s one side of
a phone conversation overheard the
past week in the lounge and TV room at
Leonard’s Landing Lodge:
“Honey, I didn’t get very many fish.
And I’m coming home really sunburned.
“But I swear I really am in Alaska.”
Yep, a just-concluded weeklong fish-
ing trip to the unseasonably dry north
was like that: Warm (hot at times, actu-
ally), not a drop of rain, dust clouds be-
hind vehicles reminiscent of a BLM road
in eastern Oregon in August and hordes
of small biting flies known notoriously
as “white socks.”
The lack of water – locals said it
rained 14 inches in August, then nothing
- led to a dearth of salmon in the rivers
that had the locals saying repeatedly,
“those who know how to fish are getting
fish. Those who don’t aren’t.”
During a week of arm-wearying cast-
ing and retrieving I hooked and lost
about 10 fish and caught and landed
five, just one of those a coho salmon.
One salvation for the expense is that
one of the other fish was a 50-pound
halibut. On the flip side, I also foul-
hooked a 3-inch pile perch that was try-
ing to steal my bait.
In retrospect, one of the biggest up-
sides to the week was rehabilitating my
reputation for futility as one of those
who don’t and aren’t. That is now fully
Left to right, Tom Wasson, Mike Flood
and Rick Thoresen on the shore of
Harlequin Lake with icebergs that
calved from the Yakutat Glacier.
PHOTOS BY HENRY MILLER/
SPECIAL TO THE STATESMAN JOURNAL
restored.
So much for the delusions of adequa-
cy from the deep-tissue ego massage of
the 2017 trip.
Other quick notes from the week:
The most wry quip from a member of
our party was by Rick Thoresen.
“Now there’s a lesson in futility,” he
said.
Rick was referring to a spray can of
Lysol “neutra air energizing citrus zest”
air freshener.
It was located in the well-used, and
occasionally abused, porta pot next to
the Ankau River Bridge, a usually fabu-
lous fishing spot.
From the do as I say, not as I do de-
partment: Another Ankau Bridge quote
came from a local angler who shall re-
main nameless.
He warned about the perils of com-
bining alcoholic beverages and smoking
weed.
“It makes you volatile,” the fishing
philosopher said while alternately tok-
ing then taking long pulls from a nearly
depleted bottle of Jack Daniels Old No. 7
Tennessee Sippin’ Whiskey.
His volatility index at the time that he
issued the caution seemed to hover
somewhere between lethargy and co-
ma.
Fishing frustration led to a daylong
sightseeing outing to a place nicknamed
“the bridge to nowhere” over the Dan-
gerous River. The road actually did go
somewhere, dead-ending in a dirt park-
ing lot for about a dozen vehicles on the
far side of the bridge.
The pilings that support the bridge
have steel, wedge-shaped ice guards at
the base to deflect the sometimes mas-
sive icebergs that float downriver from
Harlequin Lake about three-quarters of
a mile upstream.
From the bridge, you can see the ice
floes, most grounded, some floating, on
the lake.
The sights and sounds that you expe-
rience if you make the short, relatively
flat hike into Harlequin are amazing.
Chunks, blocks and slabs of ice calve
off of the face of the Yakutat Glacier into
the lake, sounding like reverberating ri-
fle shots.
The four of us who hiked in – Rick,
Tom Wasson, Mike Flood and me – were
in awe.
Thanks for sharing, guys.
Bear alert: There were a lot of them
around.
The closest that I came was shooting
a picture of a pile of fresh poo on a trail
near the Situk River that was as large as
my size 13 wader boot.
One smallish brown bear even wan-
dered around near the Leonard’s Land-
ing cabins, and one approached some
members of our fishing party at the Ita-
lio River.
My lone sighting was a huge brown
bear slow-walking across a highway
seen through the van windshield com-
ing back from the bridge to nowhere. It
was about 200 yards in front of us.
But there were a lot of other critter
sightings: A pair of whales, about a half
dozen porpoises, two deer grazing on a
front-lawn in downtown (if you can call
it that) Yakutat and three sea otters, the
largest of which looked about the size of
a back-stroking Newfoundland dog
paddling lazily upriver near the Ankau
Bridge.
“Did anyone check the fish ropes?”
Dick Wasson, Tom’s dad, asked about
the three silver salmon on the stringers
that were caught by the anglers in our
party who know how and did after the
otter had passed.
Not a worry for me.
“When it rains, the rivers are going to
come up, and fishing will be fantastic,”
Dick said.
A weeklong storm began soaking the
area … three days after we left.
Henry Miller is a retired Statesman
Journal outdoor columnist and outdoor
writer. You can contact him via email at
HenryMillerSJ@gmail.com