Balls Magazine Volume 2

It was 7 AM on a Sunday morning and I was headed to Palm Springs to play in a tournament. Tee time was at 10 and I wanted to get there early to properly warm up. The beautiful thing about driving east on a Sunday morning is that you can cruise going 100.

Allegedly.

My retired friend from work had invited me. He and his wife have a house on the course. He organizes his own tourney during the summer and this was winter, but his friends were organizing it and he was looking to fill up the slots.

I like to help a brother out by filling slots any time I can, so I was happy to do it.

I arrived around 8:30 (fuck, how fast was I going???) and he pulled up in his decked-out Raiders golf cart. Yes, you read that sentence correctly.

As Rikki can attest, there are ALL kinds of Raiders fans.

The price included golf, a cart, and a burrito. The burrito was the best thing of the three that day.

I shouldn’t say that. The cart didn’t break down.

The tourney format was Best Ball (I was partnered with another friend from work who was, luckily and surprisingly, a worse golfer than me) for the first 9 holes and then Scramble for the last 9. Only the first 9 could count towards my handicap.

I started out well hitting my first tee shot right down the middle. The second shot was on the right side of the fairway on the dogleg right par 5.

I almost hit a house on my third.

I recovered to salvage a bogey, which was not bad, considering.

I got a 6 on the par 4 second and made the fatal mistake of thinking, “Hey, I might do really well today!” The third hole was a 354 yard Par 4. I got a 10. My partner got an 11, so we ended up taking my score.

As I write this, I can’t tell you what exactly happened. My recollection of that round is that I, for some weird reason, started topping the ball. It would go straight, but not very far.

I got another 10 on the Par 5 fifth but I did manage a par on the Par 3 ninth. It was a total of 61 for the front 9. We used my score on every hole except the fifth.

The Scramble format worked a lot better for us on the back 9 and we collectively shot a 51. On one memorable hole, I lost 3 balls on three consecutive shots. That takes some special skill to do that!

I seriously wanted to pull one of these, but there were no substitutes available:

The hilarious part is that we found out days later that, thanks to some obscure Callaway system they used to gauge our non-handicap performance, my playing partner and I each won $4 from the prize pool.

So, I consider the trip a success. Did I mention the burrito was good? Also, traffic on the way back was thankfully light, so I got home at a decent hour.

PROS

Got a Par.

Got to drive my car the way it was meant to be driven. Allegedly.

Met a very nice 80+ year old man in our playing group that was so much a better golfer than me it wasn’t even funny.

Won $4.

CONS

Lost multiple balls.

No sexy cart girls.

OVERALL RATING:

See you next time.