As you may or may not have noticed, there was no Balls Magazine last week. The reason for that is that I haven’t had the time to get out onto the course or the driving range.

That all changes today as my local golf club just had its third tourney of the year.

This time, it was a Two-Person Scramble Tournament. I got paired up with a random club member and we ended up playing with another team as a foursome.

My tee time was originally 9:20 but then got moved back to 9:50, so you know I got an extra half hour of sleep! Actually, I got a little more than that and I got to the course with a little less time to spare as in previous times.

The 30 ball warmup went quickly as did my usual pregame putting drill. I wasn’t nervous at all because the scramble format takes a lot of pressure off.

Here is the way Scramble works:

• Both players tee off.
• The team picks the ball they want to play. Typically, this is the ball closest to the hole, but it could be the ball in the best position, irrespective of distance. A lot of things come into play in determining which ball to choose to play. You need to think about the next shot and how it fits the strengths and weaknesses of the players.
• The player whose ball wasn’t selected picks up her/his ball and plays from the chosen ball spot.
• Both players hit again.
• Rinse and repeat until you put the ball in the hole.

The tourney was set up so that you had to use at least six tee shots from each player. That meant you couldn’t just depend on one player to play well while the other one got, in the golf parlance, “carried”.

My teammate was friends with one of the guys on the other team and I was curious as to why they weren’t paired together. His friend is a similar handicap as me (30ish) while his friend’s teammate is a 4. My teammate is a 20.

It didn’t matter because we all ended up playing together most of the time and making lots of jokes. It truly was a fun playing group.

We started out with a bogey, a double bogey, and then another bogey. Now, on a normal day, I’d be pretty happy with that, but in Scramble you’re expected to score lower than usual as you get two chances at each shot. For us, par was the target.

On the bright side, we used my tee shots on the first three holes, so I wasn’t worried anymore about not getting to six. It actually turned out we used nine of mine and nine of his.

We settled down and started playing well. We got pars on the next 3 holes and started joking about getting on the Par Train. Apparently, this was an inside joke between my teammate and his friend as it annoys him whenever my teammate makes the Par Train reference and then goes

while singing loudly, “CHOO CHOO!”.

A bogey, a par, and another bogey finished out our Front Nine. We scored a 41.

We continued playing well in the Back Nine. As you all know by now, I do better in the Back.

We got three straight pars (More Par Train!), two bogeys and then two more pars (Choo choo!). Then came the 17th, a Par 3.

My teammate hit his shot into the fence separating our hole from the tee box on the 18th. It was up to me to get a decent shot off. I hit it well, but short of the green. I rationalized to my teammate, “Hey, we’re in good shape. Easy chip in from there!”

He said, “You know you have to make that, right? Since you called it.”

He went first.

And chipped it into the hole!

A birdie 2 in the most unlikely of ways. We bogeyed the last hole and ended up with a 37 on the Back for a total of 78.

The other team scored a 38 on the Back, so we beat them there and got an overall score of 73.

However, apparently there were handicaps involved! My teammate and I got 12 strokes while the other team got 6. That means we actually beat them 66 to 67!

I have no idea what the rest of the teams scored, but if I get the results before this posts, I’ll update and let you know.

UPDATE: We finished eleventh against the entire field of 32 teams! Top ten got paid so we just barely missed out on the $100 prize for tenth!

PROS

The guys I played with were a lot of fun and it was a very good time!

The Scramble format enabled us to score low and get scores we normally wouldn’t.

It was also great that, if one of us hit a bad shot, the other would hit a good shot to make up for it. We made a really good team.

CONS

The round doesn’t count towards lowering my handicap since I didn’t play all my shots.

OVERALL RATING:

It’s a lot of fun to play as a team. It adds a new element to golf and it makes it more enjoyable. You celebrate each other’s successes as if they were your own.

I hit a clutch putt and my partner celebrated while I yelled a loud WOOOOO when he chipped in the birdie. I thoroughly enjoyed it and I can’t wait to do this again.

See you next time.