I played in a golf tournament last weekend. It was a team event. The players gathered on Saturday evening, August 26, to hold a “draft”. The forty-eight players were organized by handicap. Those with the lowest handicap were the “A” players, the next were “B”, then “C”, and the final dozen were “D” like me.
The draft was a blind draw. You didn’t know who you’d be playing with until the last name was drawn, and an A, B, C and D player had been assigned to each. After the forty-eight were selected, one of the four club pros was assigned to each team through a similar draw. Once we had our teams assigned, we met to select a pro player from the weekend PGA event. He was our sixth man. He didn’t know it, but he was on our team, nonetheless.
The format called for each team to use the two lowest scores from their fivesome. This would be the first portion of your score. Your tour pro’s fourth round score was the final piece.
Tour pros were selected in the same manner as the teams were created. We had a total of twelve teams, and we selected twelve pros to join us. We held another blind draw to determine which team would select its pro first. You had to have twelve pros listed in the order of your preference in case your names had been selected by another team. Determining the order for our draft of a pro took the longest amount of time.
There’s a bit of strategy involved in selecting your pro. Some teams look for a guy a couple strokes out of the lead, hoping he’ll try harder and make a charge on the final day. Some look for players who have a history of doing well during their final round, and others latch onto the leader hoping he’ll continue to do well.
We were team number eleven. John was a 7 handicap, Novo a 14, Ron was 15, and I was 20. I’d get two strokes on the two hardest holes. Jared was our club pro. We decided our tour pro first choice would be Xander Schauffele and our second would be Viktor Hovland. Viktor was the leader after three rounds and Xander was in second. We hoped their head-to-head match would result in lows scores. When it was our turn to pick, Xander was off the board, so we went with Viktor.
I had trouble sleeping Saturday night. I tossed, turned and walked around a bit. When I did sleep, I thought of our team and knew, just knew, we were going to win. We were team number 11. Ruth’s birthday was the 11th of April and we got married on the 11th of September. This competition was the only golf tournament Ruth played in at Tullymore. I had to talk her into it, and she had a great time. This year’s event was on the 27th, 11 months to the day since her accident.
And then there was our team, our “A” player, John, was the only man I met at the club that rubbed me the wrong way. Perhaps playing together would change that. Novo is my new next-door neighbor. We’ve known each other six weeks, and perhaps, we’ll grow to be friends. Ron’s wife, Jenny, was the last person from Tullymore that Ruth spoke to the day she died. And I’m helping Ron and Jenny look for a winter rental in The Villages. As far as Jered is concerned, I didn’t know which tees I should play from when I first joined the club. He suggested the White/Gold and they’ve served me well. I was convinced that Ruth played a part in putting our team together. It was a spiritual revelation.
Sunday was a shotgun start, meaning each team teed off from different holes. We’d all finish about the same time. We had the opportunity to place bets. I’d never bet on a Tullymore event before, but since I knew we were going to win, I bet $5.00 across the board. That meant I’d win something if we came in first. second, or third. I placed the bets on second and third place in case I’d misinterpreted my dream.
We teed off on hole number two, the hardest hole on the course. I got a parr and two strokes, so we were two under after the first hole. I won’t bore you with a hole-by-hole description of the day, but after nine holes, we were fifteen under parr and I was responsible for eight of the fifteen. I shot 40, two strokes better than my best, and six strokes better than my average.
The second nine didn’t go as well as the first. We finished nine under on the back, and three of the nine were mine. It was my best round of the year. I’m not bragging, just reporting, because you see, eleven of our twenty-four strokes under parr can be attributed to me.
After golf, we had dinner and watched the end of the PGA tournament. As each pro finished, his score was added to the team total. The new totals eliminated some teams from the competition. Since our man, Viktor, was in the final group, we had to wait until the end of the broadcast. We watched in great anticipation because the match came down to the final putt.
Earlier, Novo made a 50-foot birdie putt on our hole seventeen. I followed that with a 30-foot birdie putt on our eighteenth. Viktor Hovland birdied his sixteenth and seventeenth holes. If he birdied his eighteenth, we’d win. If not, we come in second. He didn’t need to make three birdies in a row to finish in first place in the televised tournament. He could have taken the safer approach and parred his way in, but he didn’t. He birdies all three for us and we won by one. Everyone was surprised but me, because I knew it. I just knew it.
Novo’s birdie, followed by my birdie, followed by Viktor’s three in a row, secured our success. I couldn’t have written a better script.
As for my $15 wager. I won each of the three bets. $225 for the win, $35 for placing, and $10 for the show. We were a long shot at 47 to 1 to win, but we did, and I pocketed $270, the largest win of the day. All thanks to a string of 11’s and the team Ruth helped draw.