Yesterday was the semi-annual Callaway Golf company best-ball scramble, taking place at the Avery Ranch Golf Club not far from our house. I’m admittedly a very bad golfer, and the only time I step foot on a golf course is when we have these tournaments, but WOW. Yesterday I took bad to a whole new level.
Each team has an A, B, C, and D player. I was of course a D player, meaning I was allowed to tee up any shot and throw the ball if I wanted. But that didn’t really help me any. They give every player a dozen balls to use for the day. All of mine were lost by the FOURTH HOLE! Luckily I brought another dozen of my own and would eventually lose nine more of those! To my credit, I did hit quite a few balls a really long ways, but they were all into trees or fairways of other holes or someone’s yard or even the highway.
There were various contests set up within the tournament as well, including the longest drive and closest-to-the-pin for players of each skill level. I didn’t even get a chance to enter either contest because my shots were so wild. Everyone kept telling me my problem was that I was trying to kill the ball, to just slow down. For some reason I just couldn’t do it, and as a result I’m extremely sore all over today.
On the day, I had one respectable shot that our team used, and it was amazingly on a drive on the 16th hole that traveled about 325 yards. I also had one throw that our team used. The D players aren’t exactly counted on to help out a team very much, but this was ridiculous. One of my shots astoundingly went directly towards myself. I have no idea how one can manage to swing outwardly and hit the ball into one’s own legs, but it damn near happened. In the end, our A and B players played well, but no one could make a putt all day long and our team finished 7th of 9.
To add injury to insult, I gashed my index finger open at the buffet line afterwards trying to open an aluminum container of brisket. I also was one of the few whose ticket was not drawn in a very large raffle for various golf prizes.
But even so, it was still a fun day. I managed to keep my composure and shrugged off my poor play, which is usually not my style. I would really like to take some actual golf lessons someday. I work at a golf company; it would be nice to not be the worst golfer I’ve ever seen!
Ryan Glanzer Blog 