A Humbling Experience

First I would like to come clean about the 24 hour bug that I was stricken with yesterday. I actually played hooky and teed it up at a local municipal course with a couple of old friends. I won’t go into the details of my round but let’s just say I verified the old saying that “A bad day of golf is better than a good day at work”. I did read Bill’s post and I have to say that he hit the nail on the head. Golf is truly a game that will never be mastered, it can only be played.

I wanted to share another experience that took place in Florida in the one tournament I played on the Space Coast Tour. I was a pro at a beautiful course up in Roanoke Va. called Hidden Valley Country Club. As you can imagine there’s a lot of downtime during the winter in the mountains. I was invited by one of the member’s sons to travel to Florida with him to play a Space Coast Tour Event. I figured why not!

As a club pro you pay for nothing. Clubs, balls, gloves, shoes, clothes, greens fees, and cart fees…all taken care of! From head to toe I looked like I was a 62 waiting to happen! The reason I share this with you because looks can be deceiving. Anyway, we make our way to Florida and had a big steak dinner. We both went to bed early so we could be bright-eyed and ready to play.

My tee time was at 7:30am and I strolled to the tee looking like I just walked off the cover of Golf Digest. We were playing in a threesome. I was the only one there and at the last-minute a guy walked up to the tee and introduced himself. His name was Joe, a local guy that looked like he had not slept in days. He was wearing double-knit Sansabelt pants with cigarette burns all over them, what looked like a wrinkled leisure suit shirt, had greasy hair and a scruffy beard, but he was nice enough. Our third never showed up so it was eighteen holes of golf, grungy man playing with a fashion plate. I scraped it down the right side of the fairway on #1, then it was Joe’s turn. He hadn’t hit a single range ball or practice putt, hell he probably hadn’t been awake for more than thirty minutes. He proceeded to stripe it about 320 down the middle. I played all day long 20-30 yards behind him. He was knocking it stiff from the fairway or getting up and down from a garbage can. The only way I could describe his putting would be Chevy Chase’s character in Caddyshack, Ty Webb.  I ended up posting a sporty 77 but had the pleasure of witnessing a grungy, hung over, “fashion don’t” shoot a 65 that easily could have been a 62.

This was a humbling and eye-opening day that I will never forget. So take from this story what you will, but the bottom line is that there are guys like Joe out there that have the game to play the big tour. For what ever reason they choose to just go win some money when they need it.  My lesson learned is…  be careful on the first tee not to prejudge your opponent. Don’t let the clothes fool you!

Fairways and Greens

Robert Rowe

Chevy Chase & Micheal O’Keefe
in “Caddyshack”

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