Buick Open

Sports writer Jo-Ann Barnas is blogging from this week’s Buick Open. Come back throughout the day for periodic updates. Brian Bateman’s team, which includes new Detroit Lions head coach Jim Schwartz, isn’t exactly lighting up the course: the group is even through 12 holes (after starting on the back nine). Afternoon play is slow, which is typical for a pro-am filled with amateurs with varying degrees of ability. Schwartz’s group, for example, is en route to a five-hour-plus round. It teed off at 12:50 p.m.

With the start of training camp just two days away, Schwartz seems to be enjoying himself -- and the fans seem to be enjoying him. While members of his group walked ahead to the first tee to play their second nine, Schwartz stayed behind for a minute to sign autographs. He commented to one fan that he had been signing a lot of commemorative flags from No. 17. He theorized, “ 'cause that’s the party hole, huh?’” Schwartz is correct; the par-three 17th has long been known as one of the most raucous holes on the PGA Tour.

If the Buick Open indeed ends its 51-year run with this year’s event, Woody Austin said that hole will be the one he’ll miss the most. Austin won the Buick in 1995, his rookie year, by defeating Mike Brisky on the second hole of a playoff. “Since it was my rookie year, it was kind of my first experience with a rowdy crowd,” Austin said of the 17th. “I’d been playing with Freddie Couples the first couple of days and always hearing, 'Fred-die! Fred-die!’

Julie A. Corey

Julie A. Corey has been held as a fugitive from justice in the case of Darlene Haynes. Corey will be arraigned on Thursday in Concord NH. Darlene Haynes (pictured above) was found murdered in the closet of her apartment on Monday. She had suffered injuries to the head. However, it wasn't until the autopsy that it was realized that her baby, at that time eight months after conception, had been cut out of her body. As we said yesterday, this is not the first time such a terrible thing has happened to a pregnant woman.

Julie A. Corey went to a New Hampshire homeless shelter on Tuesday night and told staff there that she was the mother of the six day old baby. However, she seemed to know very little about the baby and so, suspicious, the staff informed the police. Remarkably, the baby, who Darlene Haynes had intended to call Sheila Marie, appears to be in "fairly good health" in hospital.

Julie A. Corey reportedly told neighbors she was pregnant with a baby girl when she moved into 3 Henry Terrace Apartments in April. “She said she was due in June,” said a neighbor. “She called me over on Friday and said she had the baby on Thursday. “That was it. She wasn't nervous at all. I didn't question it because nowadays hospitals are baby drive-throughs.” The neighbor, in an interview this morning, said Ms. Corey, 35, and her boyfriend, Alex Dion, had moved into apartment 7A, where Alex's uncle lived.

Beer Summit

At 6pm today, a beer war of international scope will begin. That's because the participants in the Beer Summit -- President Barack H. Obama, Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, and Cambridge, Massachusetts Police Sargent James Crowley -- will each be drinking different beers. Those who thought that Boston Brewing Company (SAM) would be a big winner, including me, could be out to lunch unless a last minute lobbying effort pays off.

And it now looks like today's Beer Summit will pit two corporate beer titans -- Belgium's Anheuser-Busch's InBev NV and Colorado's Molson Coors Brewing Company (TAP) -- against each other and a privately-held Jamaican brewer, Desnoes & Geddes (D&G). Which company will benefit the most from this beer face-off at the picnic table on the South Lawn?

Meanwhile, it strikes me as a missed opportunity to give so much publicity to firms based in Belgium, London, and Jamaica when there is a perfectly good American company -- Boston Brewing -- which could probably benefit from a little help. Peter Cohan is president of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College.