Boring story about me winning club championship at age 15

[DrVanNostrin]

good story westhoff (and others),

*warning: low golf content, cliff notes at bottom*

I won my first tournament at 16. It was in North Adams, MA, which is a pretty good drive for me. It was on a very short 9 hole course from the 1920s (I think). The greens were all tiny and very fast. My friend had been bragging about Jack had invited him to play this tournament and it would be limited to players with < 5 handicaps. Jack was an old drunk who would always play us straight up even though he should have been getting ~6 shots from us. He was not liked by a lot of players at the club but he was always very nice to my friend and I. It should also be noted that my friend grossly exaggerates everything and is a compulsive liar. [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

At the time I was a 4 or 5 and didn't have much interest in playing (it was $150, which was a lot then). I made no attempt to get invited.

The day of the tounament I get a call from my friend, he says one of the guys who was going dropped out, could I go? I didn't want to at first but he, with the help of Jack convinced me to go. Jack let us stay in a hotel with him for the weekend. Hilarity would insue, keep in mind Jack is an old drunk, and evidently had an old flame in the area (more on this later).

The tourament is 3 days, the first day is medal play to be seeded into divisions, the final two days consist of four 18 hole matches. After the medal round there is a dinner and Calcutta bidding on the championship flight. The course suited my game very well at the time. I played okay in the medal round and shot 75 (+3) which put me in 5th, easily making the championship flight.

Then it was bidding time. The guy announcing said he'd open the bidding at $30 and jokingly added if no one bids on you you'll be asked to buy yourself for $30, if you don't want to buy yourself for $30 you'll be asked to not return next year. I was thinking $30, wtf, I don't want to pay $30 for myself. The first couple guys went in the $100-$200 range so I'm feeling pretty confident that I won't have to buy myself. [img]/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img]

Then the bidding on me starts. I'm amazed. I end up going for over $300. Appartently Jack had told everyone I was much better than I was. I don't know what he was thinking because he ended up being the winner and drove the price up for himself. He offered me a share, but I declined as I figured my price was much too high (go old EV calculations).

After the bidding Jack is pretty lit. We are expecting to go back to the hotel. But Jack stops at this house he knocks on the door and a woman answers (she's ~40 and decent looking for someone that age). "Jack are you drunk?!", we can hear her say from his van (Jack is always telling us about how he got sober when he was 38). He mumbles something and the next thing you know he gives us a wave as he goes inside.

We go back to the hotel with the other guy (the other guy is 60 or so). At 2am or so Jack returns, with the woman! He goes to the bathroom. While he's in there the woman straddles my friend and says "you're cute, you should have come out with us tonight" (keep in mind she's 40 and we're 16 and 17). I'm trying my hardest not to burst out laughing. I'm tired and somehow fall asleep and without seeing the situation resolve itself. Or maybe I did see it resolve itself and have repressed the memory, who knows. [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

The next morning my match is with an old man who thinks he has no chance. I played poorly and still beat him easily and don't remember much.

My next match is with the legendary Jim Peace. He's also an old man, but he's very solid and has won this thing many times. He hit a butt cut down the middle everytime and made a ton of pars. I'm playing pretty good and after 14 holes we're all square. On 15 we both have 5 footers for par, mine is staight uphill, his straight downhill. I was shaking and Jim is a rock. I go first and don't touch the cup. I'm shocked when Jim runs his 4 feet past and misses the comeback. 1 up. The next hole he leaves himself a long birdie putt and 3 putts for bogey, I'm 2 up with 3 to play. 16 is a ~290 par 4 and a little uphill, it's a out of reach for both of us. He sparys one right and I think the match is over. But he ends up finding it, pitching it to 20 feet and makes a par. I roll a 15 footer in for birdie. Jim was a gentelman, he congratulated me and wished me good luck.

The morning my match is with (surprise) another old man, named Leo. We both play good and end up going extra holes. I rattled off 4 straight nerve racking pars to match him. On 5 he drives it into the woods, plays pinball for a little while, ballgame.

The final match is pretty bad. By now most players have been eliminated, so we have a gallery of 30 or so. We both play like crap (he hit several shanks), but my poor play kept the match going to 17 where I was 1 up. It's a short par 3 with OB right and a bunker left. I hit it fat ~15 yards short of the green. He hits it into the bunker. I pitch to about 15 feet. He leaves it in the trap twice then skulls it OB. Not the most glorius win ever, but a win non the less.

Jack, my friend, and the other guy are all very pleased with me as they get to cash in on their investment.

cliff notes: I win "big" tourament at 16 while dealing with the amusing antics of a drunk old man.

[Mark1808]

You never forget those good times in golf because usually golf is frustrating! I remember my first club championship well. I have struggled with the putter all my life and have had an involuntary flinch at impact (YIPS). I have used the long putter now for years and it has greatly improved my game, this particular year I had the short putter and was tied at the end of regulation 54 holes and we went in to a play off.

On the second extra hole I had a 4 footer for par and my opponent had just inside of me. It was do or die and a tricky downhill putt. I could just feel the yip coming on and sure enough I flinched at impact and the ball went 6 feet buy. There were about 50 or so in the gallery and you could hear everyone go, “What the [censored]?” I felt I had lost the tournament in a sickening way and I felt terrible. Then I gutted up and said to myself if I could recover and make the next putt my opponent could miss the same as me. If you have never had the yips you don’t know how hard that next putt was for me, but I made it and somehow my opponent missed. The next hole I had to 2 putt from like 60 feet with a 4 footer to win and made it and it was the most incredible feeling to stand their and known I had won while carrying an incredible sinking feeling in my stomach. After the putt elation sunk in. Years later I can close my eyes and go back to that moment and feel good.

[tuq]

OK goddammit I'll post this story because I'm not sure I've done it before in its entirety and these stories so far - read them all, they're good - have inspired me.

We were the defending state champions in 1989 and were returning four of the five from state. I was coming off of a great summer and my best season yet; I was playing well enough that I was pushing our best player (Ted Purdy, has since made millions on various tours). However, right at the end of the season I suffered from a slump or burnout, take your pick. I just couldn't execute. In regionals, which were a joke for our team and a routine walk, I shot 80-80 on a very easy course and both of my scores were thrown out. On the first day of state I shot an 81 and that was tossed too. I was just a security blanket for the other guys at this point, so bad was my game.

Going into the last day, I think we were in third, but just a few shots out of first. Nothing we couldn't overcome. I remember our scores on day one because they were all odd numbers: 73-75-77-79-81, and we could all improve on those (particularly me). I did, with a really solid 74 that could have been better but felt good anyway - the previous year I shot 80-75 at state, again overcoming some problems.

So as I was playing well in front of everyone, I just kicked back on the 18th green and waited for the groups to come through. From memory, one of our guys shot a 71 that day, an outstanding round under the conditions. A couple of others shot mid-high 70s, so we carded well. We came to calculate that with one group remaining we were ahead of the next closest team by four shots.

The 18th is a short par-5 but with water down the left-hand side, bunkers right, and then you have to hit across the water to a well-protected green. The website for this course sucks but here is a picture from the putting green, the balance of the hole being to the right of this shot:



In the final threesome were one from their team, one from our team, and my best golf friend growing up, the same guy I just mentioned in that Tiger Woods thread (it was the following summer he would play Notah Begay at the US Junior). As our luck would have it, our guy - a moody but talented player - roped his drive into the drink off the tee. Their guy, who went on to be medalist, bombed a drive then hit the green in two and went on to make the putt for eagle, edging out my friend for the title. Meanwhile our guy is busy flailing around the hole and when the dust settled managed to double bogey it and give them all four strokes back. Tie.

I wasn't even thinking about this so in the downtime of maybe two hours that I waited for everyone to finish I didn't bother to stay loose. But there we were, all ten of us on the first tee. Going off in two fivesomes, it was determined that three of theirs and two of ours would play in group one, and vice versa in our group. Highest score for each team would be thrown out.

A fairly easy par-4, unless you really come out of a drive and shove it into the pond that fronts the tee and juts out to the right, only nerves would cause a huge blowup here. Which is apparently what happened to our double bogey guy, as he went in the first group and carded yet another double bogey by airmailing the green on his approach. All three of their players and our other guy made par. Because of whispers and murmurs we knew all this by the time we got to the green, all five of us on or around the green, mine the closest at maybe 15 feet.

Going last, I putted it to maybe 2 1/2 feet. A conservative but nervous stroke, I played more to not lose than to win. Everyone else finished out with pars and I stood alone with a very easy but very tense short putt to advance the playoff to a second hole.

To this day I don't know how that putt went in. My knees were shaking, at least fifty people were watching, I was overcome by the no-win situation presented to me: either push or lose. I was a few years removed from my best golf and a chubby kid wearing flaming red pants that all the other teams mocked us for having to wear. I was not in my happy place but somehow it went in. To this day if I was to believe in a higher power it would be that putt right there, that somehow it was guided in despite my best efforts to talk myself out of it.

The next hole is another reachable par-5, this time a sharp dogleg right. They say when you're under pressure the best swing is a hard swing, and where I absolutely pummeled my drive on the first hole, it would once again be the best drive out of the five, cutting the corner and leaving maybe 210 to the green. Following me Purdy, who up until this point had been solid, hit a massive slice, uttered "I knew it" indicating his own mental weakness, and watched helplessly as the ball disappeared over some houses. He hit a provisional but incredibly someone in the group in front of us spotted it hit the top of a tile roof and bounce over the fence barely into play, just inside the wall. With this new life he knocked it onto the green and made a two-putt birdie. I drew a pretty bad lie in the fairway but maybe that helped me concentrate better as I lifted a 5-wood out of it to pin high right and pitched it to gimmie range. Those birdies plus various follies by the two opponents in our group sealed our win and repeat as champions.

Some reporter came up to me afterwards and asked about the birdie and if that made me "the hero". Basically he wanted me to write his article for him. Of course I wasn't, more than any team event I've been involved in we pitched in almost equally. Even our double bogey guy did - we would never have made the playoff weren't it for his solid play the first 35 holes.

On the way home we stopped to get beer. Our coach was a non-faculty graduate who corrupted us quite a bit. As we were rolling down the freeway the team we beat passed us. Coach honked, we held up our beers, and the rest is history. That may be considered a dick move but we knew all the guys on their team, they were all friends of ours from the tours. And we got ours the next year when we lost three seniors and Purdy + me + three noobs were only good enough for third place.

Hope that didn't suck.

[1o BoY]

I was the youngest golfer in the UK to hold a coure record at age 14.

I also won both mens and junior club champs the following year.