Ever feel burned out, losing focus on why you started something in the first place? After spending the spring chasing scores before a buddies trip, I forgot where the joy was found for me in golf. A quick trip to a show in Knoxville helped remind me.
Two and a half feet.
That’s all I had left for par on number eight at Mossy Oak in West Point, Mississippi. This had to go in—another bogey and I’d have a hard time winning The Cup, the trophy my group of college buddies play for once a year.
I stood over the putt trying so hard to forget about the two other putts I had already missed inside of three feet that day, and as I made contact with the ball I shoved it to the right, never touching the hole.
Blinded with rage, I took a step forward and whacked my ball towards the 9th tee box, walked over to it, picked the ball up and spiked it into the turf harder than Gronk after a fourth-quarter touchdown. “That’s the angriest I’ve ever seen you on a golf course,” a friend would tell me after the round.
Standing on the ninth tee moments later, I stared blankly ahead with two thoughts in my head: 1) Holy shit, I underestimated what a high of 94 degrees feels like in rural Mississippi, and 2) I never want to feel this angry on a golf course ever again.
Do you ever forget why you started something in the first place? Do you ever get so far down a path that you lose focus on what led you down that path? I have felt this way this past month, leaving my golf fuel tank on E, but a quick trip to the Bijou Theater in Knoxville and the random pairing story contest helped remind me why I started this project in the first place.
From left to right: Me (Jeremy), Evan, Patrick, Steven, William, Drew, and Jay.
A group of buddies of mine from college take a trip once a year to play for The Cup—a gold-colored trophy that has, “The Cup,” stamped on the front. Clever, I know. Now is not the time for a detailed account of The Cup’s origins—which are an even mix of hysterical and bizarre—but it’s important to know the format. We have handicaps in our group ranging from 1.4 to 15+, but we have always played straight-up stroke play, no matter what. This made more sense when we were a little more evenly matched in college, but now it has resulted in only three guys out of the group having won the past 10+ Cups. Again, now is not the time to dissect that methodology.
While The Cup trip is only once a year, the group text and anticipation is a 12-month sport. All scores from rounds in the months leading up are posted on the group thread, immediately followed by some not-so-passive aggressive questions of the course rating and difficulty. With this score-posting climate, I get hyper focused on the scores I’m shooting about two months out from the Cup. Then when the actual Cup weekend arrives, the rounds are played like a PGA TOUR event, grinding over three footers on every hole until you almost lose your mind.
Or until, in my case, you actually lose it.
I love my friends and I cherish these rounds of golf with them, but the past couple of years I have felt empty after these weekends, and I couldn’t figure out why. My favorite golfing moments and rounds usually result in me only wanting to play more golf, but The Cup rounds have sent me down a path of needing a golf detox afterwards. With this year’s Cup at Old Waverly and Mossy Oak in Mississippi finishing the first weekend of June, my golf fuel tank has been running on fumes since.
But then I took a quick trip to Knoxville.
One of my favorite authors/podcaster/speakers is in the middle of tour called The Introduction to Joy, and his nearest show to my home in Nashville was two-and-a-half hours away in Knoxville. Having attended so many of his events in the past few years, I considered skipping until a friend offered me a free ticket the week before.
In the midst of his two-hour show, one line jumped out and met me in my current running-on-fumes place:
“Joy is recapturing what lit you up in the first place.”
These past few months before and after The Cup I had forgotten what lit me up in the first place with Paired Up. The fire in Paired Up was never about the courses, the PGA TOUR, the witty comments on social media, and certainly not about the scores—in fact, I’m not sure I’ll ever post what someone shoots unless it’s unbelievably remarkable. The fire in Paired Up was about the people. That’s what this project is all about, but I lost focus while chasing numbers, grinding the joy right out of my golf game.
Luckily, you all sent me dozens of reminders to get back on the right path.
As you may be aware, I had a contest where people sent in their favorite moments from a random pairing. I loved reading through these. Most entries took a comedic story path, a few others were more heartfelt, but there was a reoccurring theme with so many of the stories regardless of their genre.
Nearly every story about a random playing partner ended with this line: we exchanged information at the end of the round and kept up for a while afterwards.
Some stories even went a step further and said that this random pairing became their go-to playing partner for years, and others went out to dinner and/or drinks with their random pairing.
The speaker in Knoxville mentioned that joy is found in those moments where you find yourself looking around and saying, “This is what it’s all about,” and that’s the exact sentiment I had when reading these stories. Having a random playing partner crack your friends neck and then staying in touch after the round? That’s what it’s all about. Prejudging a mother and daughter on the first tee and then getting beaten by both of them? That’s what it’s all about. Accidentally throwing an important customer through the front windshield of your cart and then luckily laughing it off? That’s what it’s all about. The most intriguing part of every story you all sent in had nothing to do with the score and everything to do with the people.
That said, I am not anti keeping score. I don’t want to come across as a golf hipster who only plays with hickory-shafted clubs in a single-strap carry bag, preferring only golden-age architecture courses and thinking par should be abolished. (Ok, a lot of that is true about me, but hear me out…)
There is definitely a ton of value in keeping score. I love catching up with my buddy Tim in Chicago—who I caddied for in the PGA Pros Championship this year—and talking through his sectional tournaments and what scores he shot and what he’s working on at the moment. Also, as a competitive guy, I want to shoot good scores and track my progress every time I play, because it’s still a sport after all.
But for me, golf becomes miserable when it’s ONLY about posting a number. That’s when I lose focus on where the joy is in golf for me, leading me to spike a ball on the ground and go angrily quiet for two holes on a golf trip with seven friends from college that I don’t get to see very often.
That’s miserable and quite frankly the opposite of the Paired Up ethos.
Paired Up is about what lit me up in the first place: the people and their stories.
So as we head into the teeth of the summer, let’s get back to the core of where the joy is (for me) in the game—getting the focus back on the people and sharing their stories that go, as the Paired Up tagline says, beyond the scorecard.
Man, the answer was in the subtitle of my own logo the entire time.
After this lesson in remembering and a refocus on Paired Up, I still needed to do something about my empty golf fuel tank.
A trip to Sweetens Cove for a round of golf with a new friend would do just the trick, next time on Paired Up.
The ninth hole at Mossy Oak. A pretty place to have a meltdown.