Month: June 2019

Congratulations to Ben Green, the winner of the Random Pairing Story Contest and an all-day free foursome to Sweetens Cove! His story “Faith in the Random Pairing” cuts right to the core of what Paired Up is all about—above all else, the people are what can make a round the most memorable if you take a minute to hear their story. Ben is new to the game, and his story is from his second random pairing ever. Come meet Marty and Phil, two guys who restored Ben’s faith in the community around golf!

This past August I began my golfing career, and what a ride it has been: I have already been on my first buddies trip, I have broken 100 (woot!), I have spent an amount of money that makes my wife nervous, and I have gotten to know some of my closest friends even better.

I have a very young track record with random parings. There is a muni course here in Chattanooga very close to my house, and only on two separate occasions I have gotten up and gone to the course to be randomly paired up.

The first pairing was not so great. The person I was paired up with was interesting. He was nearly 50 years older than me. He told me about his life growing up New Orleans, his father getting him into golf, and his cancer that has kept him in Chattanooga for the foreseeable future. All that being said, he really tried to correct my swing while we were playing, and if that has ever happened to you, you know how that can ruin your round. This really put me off to joining with other players.

This past weekend, however, I gave it another chance. I had a solo tee time, but when I got to the starter he asked if I would like to join the pair in front of me. I obliged out of guilt or fear of slowing people down behind me. I was paired up with Phil and Marty—two 55 year old men who have been playing together for over two decades. They are active members of the pushcart mafia, and their game could not have been more different than my first experience.

We all three shanked our first tee shots. I would say they just decided to not finish 6 of the 18 holes because they either hit a really bad shot and said, “Screw it,” or, they hit a really good shot and said, “Screw it.” We all celebrated the 20-foot putts that went in, and we celebrated Marty’s eagle putt. We laughed off Phil and my 3-putts that resulted in pars. I learned about how Phil was a kicker at the University of Tennessee and now does sports photography. I learned that Marty really didn’t care much for sharing about his work or life, but would love for me to try out his Ping driver that he was really proud of.

This was the kind of paring that restored my faith in the community around golf. This round can take up one of two spaces in my mind. I could hang my head and remember that I lost 9 golf balls, shooting a 96 with multiple triple bogies. Instead, I will look back on this round and think of Phil and Marty and how happy and excited they were at all times during the round. I will remember how willing they were to let me join. I will remember how they laughed off the bad ones, celebrated the good ones, and welcomed me as if I had been playing the same game with them for the past 20 years.

I now have faith in the random paring. I learned this weekend that there is immense possibility for new friendships on the links. Marty got my number after the round and has invited me to play sometime in the near future with him and Phil. Who knows, maybe I won’t need a random paring anymore.

To new friends.

Our final runner-up story also comes from The Happiest Place on Earth—Disney World. Quinn Virgil found himself with two random playing partners that were playing out of the same golf bag, but quickly learned to not judge a pairing by their bag. Thanks, Quinn!

I go to Disney World every year for spring break with my family. Last year I snuck out to play a quick round on the last day I was there. I was waiting at the first tee for the two people I was supposed to be playing with when I saw them drive up.

It looked like a mother and daughter, and they only had one set of clubs. I started to think negatively towards it. The set of clubs was the daughter’s, and the mom was going to be using them as well. We introduced ourselves, and then the mom went up to the forward tees and had a pretty nice shot.

The daughter—who was in college—came back where I was by the white tees, so I said, “You can tee off first.” She said she was going to be playing the back tees. She walked back there and pounded a drive way out there, so I decided I better go back and play those tees as well. I had a really good drive as well, but was still 5 yards shorter than her.

As I drove away I saw that she had an Ohio State golf bag and played on the Ohio State womens team. She ended up beating me by two strokes. She shot 38 and I shot 40, which is good for me. The mom played well, too.

I had a great time and learned not to judge when getting paired up. I learned that the daughter had been playing in a tournament there and was getting a round in before they left town. The mom didn’t bring her clubs because she was there to just watch her daughter’s tournament.

If she had her own set she would’ve probably beaten me as well.

Man, this one was so close to being the winner. Today on the site we have a tie for 2nd place, and both take place at Disney, because where else would a great random pairing happen? This story is from Joe Mayberry, who had a random pairing offer his medical services to Joe’s playing partner. Check out this hilarious story below!

Spring break trip with one of my coworkers, and we were playing the Disney resort courses in Orlando. On the first tee we meet our partners for they day and we immediately hit it off. They were BAD at golf and totally admitted it, but they played super fast and laughed and had a great time.

As we go along, the guy says to my playing partner, “What’s wrong with your neck? I’m a chiropractor and can tell you can’t turn your head to the left.” My playing partner was a former professional athlete and HATES the thought of a chiropractor. He brushed it off and said he slept wrong, but the truth was he had been complaining for three days about his neck and how bad it hurts.

We play on and the Doc says, “Let me adjust you, let me fix your neck, let me look,” and was very persistent. Now, we have no clue if this guy was a doctor, but he talked a good game. Finally my partner gives in and says, “F-it, if he kills me, he kills me.”

So the doctor puts my partner on the front of the cart and crawls through the window above the steering wheel and tells Jim (my partner) to relax, it’ll be fine.

As Jim begins talking the Doctor cranks on his neck and you could hear three absurdly loud pops and Jim let out the biggest groan/sigh I’ve ever heard. He sat there stunned and the doctor just starts laughing hysterically and asks him to move his neck.

It’s instantly better, and the doctor tells him to take some aspirin and a beer and he will be fine. Jim got in the cart and punched me in the arm and asked why I let him do it and what the hell was I thinking letting him almost get killed!

The rest of the round was great and we stayed in contact for a couple more months, but then the couple broke up and the rest is history. Jim and I still laugh about that to this day… and he still won’t go back to the chiropractor.

The 4th place story in our Random Pairing Story Contest belongs to Adam Taylor with “The Great Brake Quake.” Adam shows us how the combination of alcohol, a corporate outing, and squealing brakes of a golf cart still aren’t enough to defy Sir Isaac Newton’s First Law of Motion. Thank you for this, Adam! I’m still not sure how you didn’t lose your job.

Sir Isaac Newton’s first law of motion states that every object in a state of uniform motion will remain in that state of motion unless an external force acts on it.

Several years ago, I was in a sales support role at my previous job, and one of our larger customer outings was approaching. The sales director asked if I could go represent our company in the outing since he couldn’t attend, and I gladly jumped at the chance knowing that at this specific outing, they gave every participant a raffle ticket to be drawn for great prizes – everything from golf swag, gift cards, putters, wedges, woods, and drivers cool tech gifts like headphones, iPads, smart watches, and GPSs. Everyone walked away with something awesome.

When I got to the outing, I learned that I was paired with the guy who was in charge of purchasing all of the products that my company sold to them. This was a pretty important guy in our corporate relationship. We’ll call him James for anonymity’s sake. Now James was in fact a large dude. I would say he was 6’1” and about 350 lbs. James let me drive that afternoon and we had a great time. In a foursome of mid to high handicappers, we were just happy to be on the golf course and not be in our respective offices. Drinks were flowing and as they flowed, both my golfing abilities and golf cart driving abilities became slightly impaired. It was about that time in the day where you hear loud brake squeaks from around the course, and I came to the revelation that “Hey, that sounds like fun. We should definitely try that.”

So I tried it.

I gathered up some speed in the golf cart and slammed on the emergency brake. Apparently James was not adequately prepared for my shenanigans, and at that exact moment I was reminded of Sir Isaac Newton. My procurement counterpart and golfing partner James flew forward and knocked out the entire plastic windshield of the golf cart. The force of 350 lb James was so strong that he kept going and hit the pavement in front of where the golf cart had stopped. His lower legs were still dangling inside the cart, but most of James was outside of the cart. The external force of the ground had stopped James, and I was worried that it would also stop our business relationship. But luckily for me we had a good laugh after he dusted himself off. And that of course was directly after I had nearly soiled myself out of terror. By the end of the round, we’d all moved past “The Great Brake Quake of 2014” incident, but when I got back to my company the next day, my sales director laughed his head off.

(Coming in fifth place in the Random Pairing Story Contest is Gary Albrecht and his story “Stuck in the Desert.” Gary takes us to Arizona where he was randomly Paired Up with “Tom,” who had a tough time with the desert landscape. Thanks, Gary!)

It was probably early 1997, while I was still a member at Desert Mountain Golf Club in Scottsdale, AZ. I was visiting from my home in Colorado with my wife-at-the-time-whose-name-I-don’t-recall—let’s just call her 2X.

2X and I were playing the Geronimo course that day, a ruggedly beautiful monster of a course. For those who have played in the Arizona desert, you know how different and beautiful it can be—and so different from the golf in Minnesota (where I grew up) and Colorado. However, aside from the rare sighting of a rattlesnake, desert golf has some subtle dangers, including cholla and cat’s paw.

Cholla is also known as the jumping cactus. They look a bit like large, dried out dill pickles, but with armor in the form of sharp spines that encircle each segmented joint or lobe. They’re called “jumping cactus” because of how easily the spines on the lobes attach to things like skin if one gets too close. Once you’re stuck by one of these spines it can be very difficult to remove them.

Cat’s paw (or cat’s claw) is even more subtle. It’s a shrubby tree with small but very nasty thorns that will strafe your finest golf shirt.

2X and I were paired with “Tom,” a new member from the Midwest. It became apparent that Tom was not familiar with the desert and its hidden dangers, so I decided to forewarn him, explaining that he needed to beware of the two I’ve described, and why.

Well, Tom’s not-so-good game was rusty, making it even worse. He struggled mightily, hitting tee shot after tee shot into the desert. 2X and I dutifully helped him search. Somewhere toward the end of our round on the back nine, after yet another errant tee shot, we were looking for Tom’s ball. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Tom bend down to pick it up, an instant before he let out a bloody shriek. He stood up with a cholla lobe stuck to the top of his left index finger. As he started to reach for the lobe with his right hand, I yelled to him to stop because we needed to remove the lobe with a tool like a comb or he would surely have cholla spines in both hands.

We were able to free Tom from the lobe, but the spines—probably at least five of them—remained stuck to the top of his left index finger, now drawing blood. We could not remove them by pulling on them, and we didn’t have anything that would work. Here I have to point out that Midwesterners are a pretty hardy breed, especially after a long winter without golf, and Tom was no exception. He decided that he would try to finish out the round with the spines stuck in his finger. A lefty, he addressed the ball on the next tee with his bloody left finger off the grip, pointing toward the ground. He quickly realized that was a very bad idea and took off in his golf cart in search of a pair of pliers, never to be seen again.