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.
Dan Bishop (R-HIPPOLAND) absolutely walks around with a six-shooter on his hip and a RINO HUNTER bumper sticker.
Best ball tournaments with 4 man teams are a blast. Even the worst player in the group is going to get the best ball a couple times over 18 holes so it ends up being fun for everyone.
We played in one in San Diego where we were -5 after nine holes and I was thinking we must be firmly in the lead. Turned out we were in third place.
(We faded down the stretch and didn’t place. I did, however, stick the green on a par 3 after my teammates had all missed it pretty badly – while the drink cart girl was watching. This isn’t the drink cart girl of “The Night I Won the Super Bowl” legend, but certainly a girl I was hoping to impress).
All drink cart girls are angels sent from above.
Apologies for the interruption, but…
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, GINNY!
Right now she’s shrieking at an underling to have Willard Scott killed for not saying her name “on the moving pictures box.”
“Mrs. McCaskey, we’ve been over this a hundred times – the word ‘colored’ just isn’t something people say anymore…” – an exhausted public relations manager for the Bears
the smile of someone getting her dusty vajayjay getting blown out!
So we finish eighteen and he’s gonna stiff me. And I say, “Hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort.” And he says, “Oh, uh, there won’t be any money, but when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness.” . . .
Winnings are winnings! Like driving through a random state, cashing $5 on a $2 scratch-off ticket.
Felt good to know “I have taken $3 from the schoolchildren of Illinois!”
Oh, they would have just spent it on food.
Fuck ’em, get a paper route if you want to eat! #Bootstraps
i want my two dollars
plus tip!
You’re thinking of “Indiana” and “gravy” which I suppose is a type of food but it’s more like oxygen to them.
Fuck ’em, get a paper route if you want to breathe! #Bootstraps
When playing golf, biennially, i use the number of golf balls lost and found as my score. I’m usually there for a day out with friends and happy to be out.
Unless I’m playing competitively (which I don’t, ever) I don’t penalize myself strokes for lost balls. It’s punishment enough that I lost the ball!
we usually play with a 10 stroke max (phrasing/humble brag), so most rounds you can put 180 down and it will be close to my final score
Way back when golfing in high school, one of my buddies kept having these great shots from the fairway. As none of us were very good, it was strange but whatever. It took us to somewhere in the back nine to figure out that he’d been putting his ball on a tee for all shots not on the green. He didn’t know that you’re not allowed to do that.
My other buddy has what we refer to as a “foot wedge” in that he kicks his ball forward a buncha times like it didn’t happen and then plays from the better spot.
I used to play at a course in Maryland that used “preferred lie” which meant that if your ball landed on one of the numerous patches of basically gravel there you could move it onto the grass.
this but trying not to be caught
I envision that this series will have every Caddyshack gif that exists.
If it doesn’t, we have failed as a clubhouse.