remedial math needed

once again the stage was tobacco road, and for a good reason - it is awesome. the kind of course that just makes you think all day and gives you lots of great scenery. the weather forecast was for partly cloudy skies and a temp of around 70 degrees...on my way to the course i drove through some rain...ugh! did not even want to play yet another round in the rain, but it was just mother nature saying, "psych". it was foggy most of the way there so i just hoped the sun would come out and burn off the fog...which it did on about the 4th hole. we were drenched in sun the rest of the day.

i finally got my shafts replaced and have not had a lot of time to get used to them, so I did have some off the tee fears, which really diminished after the first drive. but as usual on the tobacco road course, it is all about placement, not distance. if you don't stay in the fairway or land shots in the appropriate places, you are in for a long day and a high score.

since this group had handicaps as low as 3 and as high as 23, decided to play a couple of different games to help level the playing field. front nine was a team event, them against us, counting your two lowest scores.

team 1

lawn mower guy

marine

pirate

air force guy

team 2

concrete guy

insurance guy

me

now i have to give props to the concrete guy, he played from the tips, now that is what i call a stand up move, so it is obvious that he is a regular guy...lowest handicap and plays from the tips. as the air force guy would say in his best john houseman impression..."well played concrete guy, well played" and the best impression is adequate at best.

the foursome teed off first, so we followed and kept them in sight most of the day, but could really not tell how well they were playing. i was keeping score and driving the cart...two things that i am never allowed to do, but on this day i only missed one hole on the card and kept all 4 wheels on the ground...however, there was on instance on #13 when the insurance guy reached over and grabbed my forearm and said too fast, too fast... i assured him that since the cart paths were dry, he was safe.

so as the round progressed through the front nine, i thought we may have a chance, at one time we were 3 under, mostly due to back to back birdies by the insurance guy! when we arrived at the #9 tee ( i hope you are starting to see a pattern on the ninth hole, i am) we were even and thought for sure we would need a birdie to possibly win. the concrete guy crushed a drive into the forest on the right, the insurance guy hit the fairway...as usual and i drilled one down the left side into the grass bunker, leaving myself about 115 in to the  pin. i will not go into the details of what happened after the tee shots as it would certainly lessen your opinion of all three of us, but we did finish 14 over. 

the front nine is done and its a new 9! we lost $10 on the front and would have won if we would have bogeyed the hole...go figure...but we are not thinking about  that...now it is individual play and we are playing for skins and the closest to the hole on the two par 3's. our back nine is not too bad, but we could just not score, it seemed like all 3 us were on the bogey train...which in this format was a train to "pay me some money".

i will say that the negative side of formats with more than 4 is that you miss out on all the stuff going on in the other group, and from what we heard after the round, we missed quite a bit. the first par 3 that was eligible for a closest was number 14, with a front right pin and now card to be seen on the green, we decided we only needed to hit the green to get some $$. concrete guy went left, insurance guy went wet and i went left in the sand. first thing i thought was...carryover! next par 3 will be worth double...until we arrived at the green to find a card placed ever so neatly pin high, tucked up against the fringe, with the marines name boldly printed on the card...

carding only a few pars on the back we all just figured this round was toast. the last par 3 was once again a dismal failure for us, we could see the card this time, which was neatly placed about 10 feet left of the stick, by the lawn mower guy.

after the round we all gathered in the clubhouse and had a cold one to figure up the scores...this is where the remedial math part comes into play. i think that in my spare time (like i have any of that) i will go back to school and take a high school math class...i think it took us an hour to just figure out who got what. and with the team score pretty easy to figure, it only left paying 2 closest and 4 skins.

now i was not going to mention this, but after rolling this over in my head again and again, i know why we had such a difficult time...there was one guy sitting at the table who would quietly give math answers...that were incorrect and they went unchallenged until the lawn mower guy got out a calculator. i think it ended up correct, the marine possibly is short $3, but i will get back to you on that after the math class.

going to be an event at lonnie poole in raleigh, the n c state course in late january, if you want to play let me know. i should have the math class done by then, so no worries there. i will send out an email with dates and tee times to those who express interest, and until then don't forget to golf your balls.