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(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.

“There’s so much shit in the marketplace, not just the golf marketplace, but in every business and marketplace, there’s so much lying and inauthenticity that people are so desperate for authentic experiences they want to shove it in their veins.”

“You must be Rob, correct?” asked a young, twenty-something guy who pulled up to the shed in a golf cart from the ninth green with his mom in the passenger seat.

“Yeah. How’s it going?” Rob answered.

“We’re traveling from Wisconsin to Florida and we wanted to stop by. We’ve heard about the place and absolutely had to come. It’s awesome!”

“No kidding! That’s so cool. Thanks for stopping by,” Rob said.

“This is our only stop on the way to Florida,” the boy’s mom said with an accent fitting their home.

“To be honest with you, this is the whole reason we’re driving down. We just figured we’d see family in Florida while we’re down here,” the son added.

“How cool is that?” I asked Rob as the mother and son walked back to their cars.

“That never gets old, I’d be lying if I said it did,” he answered.

One More Question to Answer

Back in December I took a trip to South Pittsburg, Tennessee to play a round of golf with Rob Collins, the principal designer of Sweetens Cove Golf Club. I had played his course for the first time the previous August, and I had two main takeaways that I wanted to talk to Rob about.

1) Sweetens Cove felt sacred to me from the moment I pulled into the grass parking lot. Why? I found this answer during our 9-hole round together and wrote about it in part one: https://www.pairedupgolf.com/new-blog/pairedupwithrobcollinspartone

2) The second takeaway is one that ate away at me for weeks after my first trip to Sweetens in August: why did this place stick with me—and many others—like a spiritual experience? This answer was revealed to me while Rob and I sat and talked on the porch of America’s favorite shed/pro shop/clubhouse/snack shop on a cold December morning.

Golf As Art

One of the hardest walks in golf is from the ninth green back to the shed at Sweetens Cove—not because it is physically strenuous, but because it’s so hard not to walk right back to the first tee and play it again. On the ninth green, however, we had just finished talking about Michelangelo’s creative process—as you often do during a round of golf—and I could feel that we were on the path to discovering the answer to my question, so I read Rob this quote as we made our way back to the steps of the shed:

“Your vocation in life is where your greatest joy meets the world’s greatest need.”

“I think there is a void in the world of great architecture, and the more you put out into the world the more people are exposed to it and can experience it,” Rob replied. “Most people don’t see golf as art, but to me, it’s really as complex of an art for as you can find anywhere in the world because you’re physically interacting with the work, you’re playing a game upon it, and how that all unfolds and what it presents to you is part of the art of it. You can’t walk into the Louvre and take the Mona Lisa off the wall and just start playing around with it. What would you do anyway if you could? But here, it affects you mentally, emotionally, physically, and there’s a visual artistry to it, but then there’s also the underlying artistry of it which is the questions that it asks and the problems that it makes you solve, and the story that it tells.”

Looking back to my childhood, so many of the golf courses I grew up playing in Florida felt formulaic, built with an assembly-line approach: a developer buys a large piece of land, builds 500+ homes, adds a community pool and tennis courts, and then throws in a golf course just as an amenity. That was the golf industry norm for quite a while, and what’s the result? You feel empty after playing there—and you tear a few pool screens with errant tee shots.

But if we are seeing Sweetens Cove as a living and breathing artwork, then what does good art do? It’s a disruption in your way of thinking, it challenges the perceived norms, and it is done without an unnecessary frills.

Sweetens Cove: Golf’s Greatest Comedian

“A good joke is the most you can say in the least amount of words.” –Larry Wilmore.

I liken Sweetens to a standup comedian, and the best comedians do two things really well: 1) they point out and challenge social norms, forcing you to analyze if these norms are even important to you, and 2) the best ones can do it in the fewest amount of words.

The moment you pull into Sweetens Cove, you are forced to answer a few questions. Is having a paved parking lot with a circle drive near the clubhouse where I can drop my clubs important to me, or am I okay with a grass parking lot? Do I need a large clubhouse with central A/C, a locker room, and a big pro shop with more golf polos than anyone could ever buy, or is a 10’ x 20’ wooden shed enough? Am I ok with using a port-a-potty at one of Golfweek’s Top 100 Modern Courses, or is a blue port-a-potty sufficient? You are forced to analyze what’s important to you in having a fun golf experience, unlike any other course in America, because it’s all part of the story this living artwork tells.

The story that Sweetens Cove is telling is subversive, approaching the industry from a punk rock angle. “Patrick (former GM) described it recently as an anti-establishment establishment, and it definitely is that without a doubt,” Rob said. “The place in its current state is a reflection of economic reality on one hand—if we could build a clubhouse we would, and we’re working towards that. But the whole vibe of the place is a reflection of mine and Patrick and others’ personality. You get what you get and you don’t pitch a fit. You have one of the best courses in the country—if not the world—and if that’s not enough for you then go somewhere else.”

After analyzing what’s important to you in a golf experience—regardless of your verdict—one resounding fact hits you before put a tee in the ground on the first hole: Sweetens Cove is authentic. Rob didn’t stumble upon authenticity by making a golf course and experience people were asking for, but rather one from his soul.

A hack is only thinking about the audience, only playing to what they will like. A hack can have success, but it’s empty. But a true artist, like Rob, creates what he thinks is interesting, bringing to life a project that is inside of him, not worrying about the reception, creating from his soul.

Back to comedy—the bad comedian tries to think what the audience will laugh at, but the good one writes what he thinks is funny, and then invites the audience to come along with him if they want. That’s authentic, and that’s Sweetens Cove. They don’t worry about the audience’s reception anymore, and they don’t hide from the past. No, they leave the shed and port-a-potty right there front and center, which led to a funny correlation.

Weaknesses Becoming Strengths

“The brand was created out of necessity, and the feel around the brand is a result of scrapping it together—just what me and Patrick (previous GM) could get from one day to the next,” Rob told me. “The fact that we weren’t well capitalized put pressures on the business and created certain realities that, like the shed and port-a-potty, were at one time a weakness that have turned into a strength.”

It wouldn’t be authentic if they did the shed on purpose, trying to be edgy. It was all they could do at the time economically, which a) makes it authentic, and b) is a constant reminder of the struggle, but with a new spin. There’s a Greek word for that, and I’m going to type it out to seem smart, but please don’t ask me to pronounce it: anakephalaoisasthai.

You know when you’re playing your career-best round of golf and only need a bogey on the last hole, but you hit a hosel rocket out of bounds, and then hit another hosel rocket even further out of bounds on your next drop? Or you know when you’re on vacation and you get a flat tire on the way to the airport in the pouring rain?

That’s the worst part of the round or trip in the moment, but it becomes the best moment when you retell the story later to your golf buddies or at a dinner party. That Greek word (that I’m avoiding typing again) means to retell or rename an experience. You gather up all of the pieces and you retell it after the fact because there’s a new center to the story. That’s what Sweetens Cove did to their story.

The grass parking lot, green shed, and port-a-potty were the worst part of their story in the moment, but they’ve now become, like Rob said, strengths. When you anakeph-whatever the story, you don’t hide the painful moment, instead you highlight those parts, and that’s what makes the story so compelling.

Every time I tell someone about Sweetens Cove I start with talking about the rural town of South Pittsburg, and then the grass parking lot, the shed, the port-a-potty, and lastly the world-class golf course—which might not be Rob’s preferred order. But those are the people, stories, and places that are easy to root for.

We’re not inspired by the stories where everything went right. “If you were given $20 million dollars to build a $10 million dollar golf course, $5 million dollar clubhouse, and the rest to build some cabins, you would absolutely cut your left [arm] off as an owner to have this level of brand identity and authenticity, and 99% chance you’re not going to get it,” Rob said passionately.

“I’m not taking all the credit or anything, but a lot of it is dealing with the realities of the situation you’re given and doing the best you’ve got,” he added. “We’re so lucky to have this brand identity now. Nash (the GM) posted a picture of some tees last week and people went crazy for them. If there’s another golf course that posts a picture of tees, no one gives a shit.” Nash laughed in the background as he unboxed the tees.

Then Rob hit the nail on the head. “There’s so much shit in the marketplace, not just the golf marketplace, but in every business and marketplace, there’s so much lying and inauthenticity that people are so desperate for authentic experiences they want to shove it in their veins. That’s what we offer here, and that’s why a guy from Wisconsin just stopped to see the place.”

A first visit to Sweetens Cove is a disruption from the bullshit in the golf marketplace—even if you didn’t know you needed it—and it goes right into your veins.

The people who fell down and kept going inspire us. Those are the authentic stories we can’t get enough, and that’s why I left Sweetens that day in December so inspired by my time with Rob Collins.

But that initial hit of authenticity isn’t enough, so what makes it stay in our system for weeks, months and years later?

Why So Spiritual?

The reason Sweetens Cove sticks with us like a lasting spiritual experience is because it’s a reflection of our own story.

We have all had a Sweetens Cove moment or project in our life, scrapping things together, hoping and trusting that it would work, that it would connect with someone. We’ve had a shed as a makeshift-clubhouse in our life. We’ve had times where we can only offer a port-a-potty to our customers and hope they’re okay with it. I’m sitting alone at my desk writing this well past midnight—with a long to-do list for my day job on hold—working to get this website off the ground about the strangers I meet at golf courses, hoping people will get it. That’s my green shed. I bet you have one too.

An authentic spiritual experience isn’t found in the church hallway taking a picture for Instagram in front of a mural and hashtagging #Easter2k19 while a song you’ve heard 100 times plays in the sanctuary. You want to post the picture, get the likes, and be done with it.

An authentic spiritual experience places you in the center of the story—boots on the ground—letting you experience it first hand. When it’s over, you can’t help but tell everyone you cross paths with. That’s why we leave these authentic experiences so inspired, because if they can make it, then so can we.

That’s what Sweetens Cove offers from the moment you step foot on the property: an invitation to participate in their story, where you get to interact with the artwork—an artwork paired with the reminders of their struggle not buried off in the distance, but right there front and center where you pay your greens fee, showcasing it’s authenticity.

That’s what Rob Collins and company have built in South Pittsburg, TN, and he’s forever grateful that you were a part of it for the day.

“I will never tire of hearing people’s experiences and the way it has impacted them,” Rob said. “It means so much to me and everyone else who limped it along, because so much of us is in it.”

So on your next trip to Sweetens Cove, take a moment to look around, and I bet you’ll find yourself in it, too.

Contest for a free all-day foursome pass to sweetens cove!

Thank you for reading parts one and two of my story on Rob Collins. To further celebrate Sweetens Cove, let’s end with a contest!

How to enter the contest:

1) Subscribe to Paired Up at this link: https://www.pairedupgolf.com/subscribe

2) Send me your favorite story from a random pairing! It can be short or long, funny, heartfelt—whatever! Just tell me your favorite story or moment from a random golf pairing. Submissions can be sent through the contact page of the website or to [email protected]

Every submission gets a FREE Paired Up logo towel!

The winner gets a FREE all-day foursome pass to Sweetens Cove, and their story will be featured on Paired Up! Come on, let me hear you best story.

Thanks!

On a cold and windy evening in Nashville,

I searched for a kindred spirit to chase a childhood feeling…

“Is there anyone out there?” I asked the pro shop attendant.

“Not for a while,” he said while not taking his eyes off the TV behind me, watching a replay of the final round.

Dark clouds filled the evening sky, it was 50 degrees (and dropping) while the wind whipped out of the north at over 20mph. It was truly an awful day for golf in Nashville.

But on the evening of Tiger Woods’ 5th Masters victory, I set off to the local muni looking for a kindred spirit.

Do you remember that feeling?

“We were kids back then, thinkin’ we could live forever,

We were kids back then.

We were wild and free, takin’ on the world together,

We were kids back then.

That’s how we’re always gonna be”

–Kids, by Ben Rector

Remember when we were kids and we’d go outside to recreate the sports moment we just watched? For me, a kid born in April of 1990, I was in my driveway as Kobe, coming off a screen from Shaq and shooting that patented fadeaway. Or I was Marvin Harrison catching corner routes thrown by Peyton Manning—played by my father (more times than you could imagine). For you, maybe you were Michael Jordan, or Jerry Rice, or—for the generation behind me—Lebron.

But for anyone near my age of 29, all backyard-golf recreations turned us into Tiger Woods, because he was the author of all of our golf memories. All of them.

Do you remember that feeling?

When Tiger holed the final putt on Sunday to win the 2019 Masters, his 15th major—and first major since 2008—that feeling crept up on me for the first time in 15 or so years. I wanted to go play golf and recreate some of Tiger’s shots at my local muni.

Even with the garbage weather outside, I had a feeling I wasn’t alone.

The Search for a Kindred Spirit

When I walked down the first fairway I thought surely someone would tee off behind me. As I got to the green, the wind howling like Nashville had been transported to the coast of Scotland, I thought maybe I’ll catch up to someone. Walking up to the second green with no one in sight in any direction, I realized that I might be alone in this childhood feeling. What the hell was I doing out there in this weather? I considered leaving and forfeiting the $13 greens fee, but then I heard a ping from the 5th tee box.

I wasn’t alone.

“Could this guy be out here chasing that childhood feeling, too?” I wondered as I waited by the 6th tee to join him for the last four holes, hoping he was ok with that. As he walked up the hill to the 6th tee box I saw a Masters logo beaming from his pullover and hat like a light house guiding lost ships into harbor.

Hell yes. I found my guy.

His name was Nate, and he graduated from Belmont in 2012, the same year I graduated from Tennessee. He owns and operates two companies in town; one is a merchandizing company for touring musical artists, and the other is an apparel company that has grown like wildfire the past couple of years.

Considering that he was wearing two Masters logos, I didn’t feel the need to ask if he watched. Instead, as we walked down the 6th fairway, all I had to say was, “How awesome was today?” He grinned and said, “I just flew in this morning from Augusta. I’ve been there all week.” Too perfect.

A college friend of his is from Augusta, and he has gone every year since 2015, attending the event via their family passes. This week for Nate was filled with rounds at the nearby Augusta Country Club in the mornings, and going to the tournament in the afternoons. I have that down in my notes as “not terrible.”

Having a suspicion that he was recreating the Tiger childhood feelings too, I asked what brought him out here on an awful weather day.

He said he hadn’t seen his fiancé all week, so they had planned to come out and play together this evening after knocking out a couple hours of cleaning around the house. “When I landed this morning it was 75 degrees outside. After watching Tiger and cleaning the house it was 50 out and she didn’t want to go anymore, but there was no doubt in my mind that I was coming out here today.” Sounds like two of us were buzzing off of an old school Tiger high.

However, a certain phrase he said there caught my attention, just like hearing a song from a “Now That What I Call Music!” album playing through the speakers at Walgreens, because I hadn’t heard it since the late-2000’s: “After watching Tiger.” That’s what we used to say when we were kids. We would never ask buddies if they watched the tournament—we’d say, “Did you watch Tiger this weekend?” I felt more and more teleported back to the 2000’s as we went along.

Nate had a nice bag and clubs to go along with his smooth swing, so I asked him when he started playing. “Not until I was 15 or 16. I always played baseball growing up, but then around age 15 I started going to this 9-hole golf course in a pasture back in Hunstville, Alabama where I grew up. We’d go after baseball practice all the time back then.”

Knowing that it would’ve been around 2004-2006 when he was 15 or 16-years-old, I asked him what his first Tiger memory was. For me, it was watching the 1997 Masters with my dad as a young Tiger torched the field. For Nate, “It was probably the Masters where that chip barely rolled in on 16,” he told me, which happened at the 2005 Masters. I asked if he was a huge Tiger fan, and he said, “Yeah, but isn’t everyone else who’s our age?” That was like asking someone in the 1960’s if they were into the Beatles—it’s just assumed.

I see it as no coincidence that he got into golf right around the same time as Tiger’s iconic chip-in on 16 at Augusta on his way to his 4th Masters victory. We all wanted to be like Tiger, and here we were on the afternoon of Tiger’s 5th Masters victory—the first in 14 years—out playing our muni at the age of 29 because we were fired up by Tiger. I had found a kindred spirit.

Time Machine

Tiger’s win on Sunday was special for all of the historical reasons, but for people my age, his win provided a time machine for a day trip back to our childhood. Back to watching the man in red make his playing partners wilt. Back to standing from the couch for every putt. Back to high-fiving my older brother, who happened to be in town for the final round this Sunday. Back to openly rooting for other golfers’ shots to find the bottom of the lake, and raising our fists with joy when they did. Back to wanting to grab my clubs and go directly to the course to try and recreate the shots that Tiger hit.

For 12 hours on Sunday, Tiger’s victory was a trip back to a simpler time when we were the age of his son, Charlie, wearing our red shirts and black Nike hats too, dreaming of making the last putt on a Sunday at Augusta to win the Green Jacket.

On a cold and windy Sunday evening in April, Tiger Woods inspired Nate and me to tap back into that childhood feeling, wanting to imitate our hero for the day.

Like the Ben Rector song ends…

“We were kids back then, and that’s how we’re always gonna be.”

Thank you, Tiger.

“I was just about homeless, man. I got fired from a restaurant, and I called my landlord and was like, ‘Hey, I just got fired and my unemployment should be coming,’ and he was like, ‘Ok, just keep me posted at what’s going on.’ A few weeks later he hit me up and says, ‘If you don’t pay the rent this time around I’m going to need you to move out the next week,’ and the next day my money came through. I was getting like $240/week, which was just enough for me to barely live on. It was motivating to never let it get like this again.”

Strung out, stretched too thin, flying by the seat of my pants, juggling ten-too-many things at once, and days and weeks running together with no real identity. That’s the best way I could describe my winter. Have you been there before?

D.A., my playing partner from the only nine holes I played this winter, knows the feeling well. Addiction, hustling, eviction notices, a firing—he has seen it all. On an unseasonably warm day in January, this random pairing at my local muni told me his story, a story that had the antidote to my strung-out feeling baked into it.

Oh, the weather outside is… actually nice?

I believe it was Old Tom Morris who said, “If you live in Tennessee and happen to get a sunny 60° day in the winter and don’t go play golf, then you’ll receive seven years of bad luck.” Well, it was either Old Tom or a chain email from Myspace Tom.

Either way, on a Sunday in early January I found myself with a 60° forecast and a long to-do list at my house, but not wanting to let either Tom down—Old or Myspace—I grabbed my sticks and made my way to the local muni to get paired up with some fellow Nashvillians.

The closest muni to my house is McCabe Golf Course, which opened in 1942 and features 27 holes, nine of which accommodate walk-ups on the weekend. It isn’t Nashville’s premier course by any means, but it is the only one located in a high-traffic area in the city, so it gets an unbelievable amount of play. McCabe is the Jimmy John’s of golf—a decent option when nearby, but you’d never go out of your way for it.

After circling the parking lot three times in search of a space I realized I wasn’t the only one avoiding back luck from a 2003 chain email. With each lap I knew I was looking down the barrel of a three-hour round of nine holes, which is expected on a day like this in January. It’s kind of like how you know you’ll feel like shit after eating Five Guys, but the thought of a grease-soaked, brown paper bag overflowing with fries just hits the spot sometimes.

The Pairing

“You’re welcome to walk down to the North nine to see if you can get on, but good luck because there are eight or nine groups ahead of you,” was the reassuring message I got from the pro shop while checking in, so I walked to the first tee hoping for a miracle. The line was longer than one you’d see in front of a Nashville mural full of wanna-be Instagram influencers trying to get their likes up. As the only single walker in a sea of carts, I decided to quietly walk past every cart towards the first tee box—like the asshole in traffic that merges into the crowded turn lane at the last second—and that’s when I first met D.A.

“If you’re a single then hop in with us because we only have three, and we’re up next,” he said, helping me avoid what was surely a 60-minute wait. D.A. was a middle aged black man with his clubs resting in a pushcart. He saved my golfing life that day much like golf helped save his actual life, but more on that later. “Our other two are over there,” he added, pointing at a couple in a nearby cart.

The couple in the cart were Korean, which gave me the rare—but refreshing—experience of being the only white guy in a golf pairing in the South. The husband’s name in the cart was B.H., and the wife introduced herself as L.W., making D.A. say, “Welcome to the initials party.” I told them to call me J.W. to further confuse everyone. After introductions, it was our turn to tee off.

Since D.A. and I were both walking I knew most of my conversation would be with him, because you really only see the riders on the tee box and green. You’ll talk to the fellow walker the entire day like you’re old buddies, but you’ll just have small talk with the riders like they’re someone you just bumped into that you haven’t seen since college. However, due to an in-theory drivable second hole, I had plenty of time to get to know the riders.

The Wait

Delusion knows no greater ally in golf than a player’s maximum distance off the tee. Ask 100 random golfers at your local muni how far they hit their driver, and the majority will inflate their number by 15-20 yards. Being able to hit a ball 300 yards with your driver is somewhat of a badge of honor in golf, so because of this, way too many people think they are capable of hitting the ball 300 yards “if they really catch one.” For non-golfers, it’s like how people think everyone in their current city are the worst drivers, but everyone in their hometown are true savants behind the wheel.

The second hole on the North Course at McCabe is a 319-yard par 4—catnip for the “if I really catch one” crowd. As the initials mafia and I walked off the first green, we saw five groups waiting to tee off on the second hole, each waiting for the green to clear so Joey Delusion could try to drive the green. I’ll give you one guess at how many people reached the green. Yep… big fat zero.

We waited 45 minutes to tee off on number two. To put that in perspective, here are nine things that could’ve happened in that amount of time:

1) You could watch the “Benihana Christmas” episode of The Office.

2) JB Holmes could play two holes.

3) You could watch the last two minutes of a college basketball game, complete with five replay reviews.

4) You could watch the Teeless Driver commercial 90 times.

5) You could have a pointless conference call at work where each person starts their sentence with, “And to piggyback off of that…”

6) I could order dinner at a restaurant and explain all of my food allergies to the waiter.

7) You could listen to 45 ad reads for Blue Apron by your favorite podcast host.

8) B.H. could—and did—smoke 4 cigarettes.

9) I could’ve re-gripped my clubs, let them dry, and then used them on the second hole.

On the bright side, I used this time to get to know B.H. and L.W.

The Olympics of Traveling

“So, do you play here much?” is the most generic, copout question you can ask a random pairing. It’s like talking about the weather with someone on the elevator—they know you just want to fill the air. So to kick things off with B.H. and L.W. I asked, “So, do you play here much?” Couldn’t help myself.

“We used to when we lived closer and before we had kids,” answered L.W., who did most of the talking for them—partly because she had a better personality, and partly because B.H. was busy chiefing down cigarettes. “Today we dropped our kids off at a play date so we could come play golf.” I really hope they lied to the other parents, telling them they needed to make an uninterrupted Costco run.

L.W. and B.H. were born and raised in South Korea, and they moved to Nashville 10 years ago for B.H.’s job. I asked how often they go back to visit. “Every time the Olympics are on we go home to South Korea for a month. The next year my parents come here for a month, then B.H.’s parents come the year after, and then we all take a year off,” L.W. answered.

“Is it hard not to see family on the off year?” I asked.

“Hell no, we need a break after all that,” B.H. chimed in while lighting his next cigarette. Feel free to tell your parents about this routine the next time they bug you about not visiting enough.

We filled the rest of our 45-minute wait by creating a chipping contest near the tee box, and knowing that my playing partners couldn’t drive the green, I hit a 3-iron off the tee for the sake of the groups behind us when it was finally our turn to play.

My favorite moment from B.H. and L.W. happened ahead on the fourth hole. B.H.’s approach shot was just a few feet off of the back of the green, but the rest of us were on. During one of his practice swings he accidentally hit his ball with the toe of his club, sending it fifteen feet to his right into the rough. We all laughed and told him to drop another ball down to play. He took a few much-more-careful practice swings and then bladed his next chip all the way across the green and back out into the fairway. After a couple of expletives he started towards his ball, but as he walked by L.W. she quietly said under her breath, “I think your first ball is closer.”

I laughed, causing B.H. to look over at me. “I’m sorry, but she’s right,” I said. Not finding it nearly as funny as I did, B.H. made the long walk to his second ball to play that one, maybe as a way to stick it to my laughter. He then bladed that chip right back the spot of the original chip, silently walked back across the green, picked up his ball, and walked to the 5th tee. I felt it was best to not mention that he left his first accidental shank in the rough behind as a sacrifice to the golfing gods.

Due to the slow pace of play, L.W. and B.H. had to leave after the 6th to go pick up their kids from the play date. I hope they showed up late, clearly in golf attire, and said, “Sorry, Costco was really crowded.”

D.A.’s Story: A Hustler’s Ambition

The beauty of a random pairing at your local muni is that it challenges you to not make snap judgments about your playing partners, even if they arrive dressed like a tour star but can’t make a single par. There’s always more going on with each person underneath their golf swing, and D.A.’s story was no exception.

A 52-year-old Nashville native, his slow, smooth backswing and methodical stroll down each fairway behind his pushcart did not reflect the complicated life he left behind. “I’ve always been able to hustle,” he told me, and hustle he did.

On the seventh fairway he told me that he spent time as a mortgage broker, even moving to South Florida to do that for a while before the housing market crashed in 2008. “You ever seen the movie The Big Short?” he asked, “It was exactly like that. I would see strippers who owned three houses. It was a wild time.”

After the market crashed, he moved back to Nashville and brought his hustle with him. “I was partying, not really thinking about anything. I was waiting tables at a place, but they moved me over to this other cafe, which was a great gig. You can make $1k cash a week if you hustle, so I was making good money, but I was making awful decisions with alcohol.” These decisions, he told me, took him to his lowest point in life.

“I was just about homeless, man. I got fired from the cafe, and I called my landlord and was like, ‘Hey, I just got fired and my unemployment should be coming,’ and he was like, ‘Ok, just keep me posted at what’s going on.’ A few weeks later he hit me up and says, ‘If you don’t pay the rent this time around I’m going to need you to move out next week,’ and the next day my unemployment came through. I was getting like $240/week, which was just enough for me to barely live on. It was motivating to never let it get like this again.”

When you hit rock bottom, there’s no place to go but up. However, there are many escape routes that bring you right back to rock bottom. D.A. needed a one-way ticket with no return flight, so he looked inward and remembered a passion of his that has always been below the surface: science. That’s when he decided to go to Nursing School. “Was it difficult to go back to school after all these years? Did you feel out of place?” I asked.

“The first class I went to was one of those remedial, one credit classes called Learning in the Dominican Tradition. We’re reading nicomachean ethics and Aristotle, and I’m like what the hell have I gotten myself into? I was 46, and all these kids in there are 19-20 years old, super smart talking about this stuff, and I’m like what are they talking about?”

D.A. wasn’t just starting from scratch, but whatever is below that. (Don’t say it, don’t say it) He was starting from under par. (Sorry)

“I didn’t even have computers the first time I went to school. So the first day of nursing school, we were doing the registration of getting our email and all, and I’m filling out some stuff and I did something wrong and thought oh I need to go back and redo that. This lady says, ‘You can just copy and paste it from here.’ I was like, ‘I’ll just go back and redo it,’ because I didn’t know how to copy and paste. That’s how bad I was.”

Did he ever think that this might not be for him?

“Yeah dude, but I got through it. I actually did pretty well, too. It’s amazing what you can do when you’re motivated. It was a good experience because I learned a lot about myself and what I can do. I was really lucky because I stopped drinking after I got fired. Then early on in school I was starting to see results from the work I was putting in, and I haven’t had a drink since.”

The Triangle of Life

Maybe this is a story you’ve heard before: guy parties, has addiction issues, hustles, loses his job, hits rock bottom, decides to press restart on his life. It’s certainly admirable and moving, but one piece was missing for me. I know that hitting rock bottom had sparked the change, but why did the change have lasting power? He hadn’t really played golf until he hit rock bottom, so I asked him where golf fit into his life.

“It’s part of my triangle of life: Nurse, Golf, Surf. I try to keep things simple now, and if I work my life to doing those three things, I figure that those are pretty good things. It’s in that order. I’m going to nurse more than anything, and then golf is second. I took a vacation to Costa Rica after I completed nursing school and I learned how to surf, but obviously I can’t do that around here as much as the other two. Maybe I’ll change that triangle around as I get older. But it helped simplify things for me,” he told me as we stood on the ninth tee.

That was the key. He simplified his life down to three parts: Nurse, Golf, Surf. They may not seem like simple activities on the surface, but each require 100% of your focus while doing them, making everything else around you take a backseat.

Nursing gave him purpose, a career, and reason to stop drinking. It filled up his schedule, required all of his attention and effort to make it through school, and eliminated the fear of eviction notices. Golfing brought him exercise, a new skill to practice, and it plugged him back in with the community that lives around this golf course. Surfing also brings him a new skill to practice, but it also brings peace while sitting on his board between sets of waves, and time to reflect on his accomplishments. A surfing trip to Costa Rica isn’t on the table when you’re waiting on your unemployment check to cash. I imagine that at the end of the day when he’s sitting on the beach watching the sunset he can see that simplifying his life also concentrated his hustle and used it for good.

What will I take with me from my time with D.A.? Well, I have a tendency to spread myself too thin with ideas, and I end up doing 10 things just mediocre. While it may not be the same three activities for me, Nurse-Golf-Surf is a motto that could help narrow my focus to a smaller amount of things that I truly care about. If I focus more time and effort in these areas, then I won’t feel strung out, and the weeks will slow down and being to have purpose again.

What’s next for D.A.? “Hopefully a trip to Costa Rica in April to the same spot. When I get good enough I’ll go to Santa Cruz to visit a friend who surfs a lot. Then I might go back to school if I can get into the Nurse Practitioner program around here.”

Will he get into the NP program? I don’t know. What I do know is that he won’t let an hour of schoolwork go to waste. Plus, this time he knows how to copy and paste.

[For more photos and videos of this random pairing, head over to @pairedupgolf on Instagram and Twitter]

“Remember that new golf website that launched back in December by that really cool guy? That was the greatest thing I’ve read since To Kill a Mockingbird. Whatever happened to that?”

(Too far? Yeah, you’re right. Anyway…)

Greetings from Nashville where it is raining as I write this, raining when I send this, and—you guessed it—raining when you open it. But the good news is that Nashville is one of the most unique places in municipal golf because each muni was strategically designed to drain up to eight inches of water per hour, making every course extremely playable even during the worst of rainstorms… or maybe every course here is a giant mud pit. I can’t remember, but I know it’s one of the two.

On top of the dreadful weather, I’m in the process of buying a new house. You know how on House Hunters they’ll go look at three places, sit down afterwards to pick one, and—at their own pace—put an offer in way below asking price and easily get the one they want? Well in Nashville, the way you buy a home is by finding it before it’s on the market, paying at least $10,000 over the inflated asking price, and you have to offer to do the seller’s laundry for a year. After that, you’ll then get a call from your agent saying, “Sorry, someone else came in at the last second and offered $20,000 over asking, and they’ll do the seller’s laundry for two years plus dry-cleaning.”

However, I’m also selling my current house, so I was able to find multiple buyers who were willing to separate my laundry into whites and colors. But the winning buyer also offered to be an on-call caddie for me for the next 18 months, whenever and wherever I want to play. That really put them over the top. I promise you the deal we worked out was fair. It’s wasn’t $3,000, and it’s wasn’t 10%.

As a busy winter is nearing its end, here’s what is coming up next on Paired Up…

Three new posts are in the works

Don’t hold me to this order, but the next three posts will be…

Paired Up at the Muni: The Triangle of Life

On a sunny and 60 degree day in January, I spent an afternoon at my local muni with every person in Nashville who has ever even considered playing a round of golf. After fighting the crowds at the first tee, I was paired up with B.H and L.W.—a couple from Korea—and D.A., who promptly said, “Welcome to the initials group.”

In this round I’ll tell you about an absolute zinger that L.W. threw at B.H. that I’m still not sure she meant to be an actual joke, and then I’ll spend the rest of the time sharing D.A.’s story with you. He’s an amazing guy who used his career, golf, and surfing to get his life back together after battling severe addictions. I love meeting people like this at my local muni.

Paired Up with Rob Collins, Part Two: Why so Spiritual?

In part one back in December (which you can read here) we dove into how the creation of Sweetens Cove mirrors the man who designed it. In part two with Rob Collins, we’ll get into why this place he built in the middle of nowhere Tennessee sticks with people like a religious experience.

I found this answer as Rob and I sat on the steps of the shed and talked for another 90 minutes. Writing about Sweetens always makes me want to go play the course, so when you see an Instagram story from there then you’ll know part two is ready.

Paired Up at the People’s Country Club

Last fall on a trip to NYC I hopped on the Long Island Rail Road and played a round at Bethpage. After constantly refreshing their online tee sheet, I got out there on a Sunday morning and was randomly paired up with three locals—one grew up five minutes from the course, the other two were college buddies.

The four of us played the Black Course from the tips, and the day included a near fistfight on #6 green regarding slow play, as well as a train ride back to the city with one of my playing partners. I had a blast at the sight of the 2019 PGA Championship.

Contest Coming Soon

Coming up in the next month or so I’m going to have a contest where the winner gets a FREE all-day foursome pass to Sweetens Cove Golf Club! The way to enter the contest is to…

1) SUBSCRIBE to Paired Up – there’s a link to do this on the top right of the homepage, and I’m pretty sure the site prompts you to do this every time you visit.

2) Send me your favorite story from a random pairing. It can be funny, heartfelt, infuriating—whatever you want. Your entry can be a quick paragraph or however long you want, just tell me your favorite story or moment from a random pairing.

More details to come when the contest goes live, so keep an eye out for that on my social media pages (@pairedupgolf), but brainstorm your entry in the meantime. Every submission will get a FREE Paired Up towel! Speaking of Paired Up towels…

Towels

I ordered a bunch of towels, and they turned out really well! Some of you have been asking how to get one, so if you don’t want to enter the contest then you can buy one on the site. I don’t want to make any guarantees, but if you buy a towel then you’re automatically in the Paired Up circle of trust, and your next random pairing will be the best of your life. That’s the way the universe works. Or you can just enter the contest—the universe works that way, too.

See you back here soon!

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“What are you gonna do with all those damn pictures?!”

My family booked a weeklong vacation in Banff, Canada for the last week in June. If you’re unfamiliar with Banff, it’s where white people go to take a bunch of “candid” shots for their Instagram. About a month before the trip, I did what any golf addict would do: I Googled “golf courses banff canada.”

There’s a trick to squeezing a round of golf into a non-golf vacation – you have to sell the itinerary maker on it. Now, I’d be doing a disservice if I glazed over the process of how my dad puts together a trip itinerary. When he and my mom travel to a new place, he creates an itinerary that details every waking second of the day. Then he’ll have a graphic designer create a unique logo just for the trip that he uses as a letterhead for each page, and this logo usually ends up on t-shirts to commemorate the trip. Yes, Griswold-esque. Here is the first page of our eight-page Banff itinerary.

Besides award-winning itinerary making, my dad’s greatest interests in life are golf, photography, mountains, and Tennessee Volunteers. To sell him on adding a round of golf to the coveted itinerary, I just needed him to see one photo of Banff Springs Golf Club, as it checked three of the four boxes. The next morning, he forwarded me an email with a subject line, “Thank you for booking a tee time.”

As far as scenery goes, Banff Springs is the most beautiful golf course I have ever played. Labeled as one of the most scenic golf courses in the world, every hole is carved through a forest of Evergreens, surrounded by mountains so close that you feel like you might hit an errant shot off of one. A few holes even run along the gorgeous, crystal-clear Bow River.

After originally opening as a nine-hole course in 1911, and later lengthened to 18 holes in 1924 by Donald Ross, Banff Springs was again renovated and rerouted again in 1928 by Stanley Thompson – Canada’s most successful golf architect – as tourism started to explode in Banff. The course today still plays to Thompson’s 1928 design, with the order of holes shuffled slightly over time. The signature hole is the 192-yard par 3 fourth hole named Devil’s Cauldron (pictured above), featuring a steep drop from tee to green over a glacial lake, right at the foot of Mount Rundle, and named by Golf Magazine as one of the top 18 holes in the world. This was the tee box where our photo taking first got under Herb’s skin, but more on that later. (For the golf nerds, I encourage you to check out this detailed piece by Riley Johns)

The weather during our trip had highs in the mid 60’s and lows in the 50’s, nothing too extreme… except this day. I lived through many hurricanes while growing up in Central Florida, but the wind this morning at the course was by far the strongest I had felt since then. My thin Under Armor pullover was no match for the biting wind that plummeted the temperature into the low 40’s, which was particularly jarring when I had flown in two days prior from 100-degree Nashville.

Since we were only playing one round on this trip, we decided to use rental clubs. The moment I set my bag down at the range, the wind blew it directly over, and as I turned to pick it up, my hat blew off 15 yards into the parking lot. We tried to hit a few warm-up shots, but the range faced directly into the wind, and it was hard to even get a shot airborne. I grabbed an eight iron out of the rental set, and at impact of my first swing the club head flew off into the range. What had we gotten ourselves into?

“Last call for the Wilson twosome. Last call for Wilson.”

So, why were we late? Well, I needed to run to the car to snag an extra fleece my dad brought – thanks, dad – and then I was in the golf shop trying on different beanies and contemplating spending $50 on those goofy, oversized Titleist mittens while the staff swapped out my 8 iron. I scrapped the hat and mittens idea, grabbed the club and fleece, and walked out to the cart expecting to shoot my highest round in a decade.

“I think it’s just us,” my dad said as we drove to the first tee, but soon we noticed another cart near the tee box.

Herb and Jill

A couple in their early 70’s, Herb and Jill, were waiting for us by the first tee. Herb wore a red FootJoy windbreaker, and Jill donned a black, full-length parka with the hood up and draw strings pulled tightly around her face like the kid from A Christmas Story. Her chin and eyebrows never saw the light of day during our 5-hour round. If I bumped into Jill with her hood off in the hotel immediately afterwards I wouldn’t be able to recognize her.

“Took you long enough!” were the words Herb decided to use as his introduction to two total strangers. Herb wasn’t one for subtly or nuance.

With the group in front of us still in the fairway, we had a few minutes to chat before teeing off. This is where I first learned about Herb’s communication style: up close and physical. 80% of Herb’s conversation with you happened a foot inside of your personal space and with a hand or two on your shoulder – kind of uncomfortable for a friend to do, and especially uncomfortable for someone I met 30-seconds ago. I pretended to get something out of my bag by unzipping random pockets just to get a little breathing room. Meanwhile, Jill sat quietly in the cart, arms crossed, hood pulled tight.

When playing with strangers, the first conversation topic usually swirls around assessing everyone’s game to see what we can expect for the next few hours. Herb mentioned that he and Jill were members at a club back home in Denver. He asked about my golf background, and I said that I used to be an assistant at a club in Chicago, and now I just play a fair amount where I live in Nashville. But what Herb heard was this: I am a die-hard Chicago sports fan, so please ask me a lot about Chicago sports.

He asked if I was excited about the Cubs finally winning the World Series, and I said, “Sure – I mean I’m not a Cubs fan, but like anyone, I was glad to see them win.” Then he insulted the Bears a couple of times, and I said, “Oh, I’m not a Bears fan. I only lived in Chicago for like two golf seasons. I’m actually from Florida and have now lived in Tennessee for about 10 years total.” That didn’t matter – he was going to keep making Chicago sports jokes all day.

After opening instructions from the starter, we tee’d up our first tee shots. I hit a 5-wood that I thought was a 3-wood, but with the high altitude and the freezing-cold wind I was too shook by the elements to even notice the misclub until a few holes later. My dad and I recorded each other’s opening tee shots as Herb and Jill waited up by a forward tee. On our way back to the cart, Herb asked why I took a video, and I told him it was just for fun. He seemed perplexed.

You don’t have to be a professional photographer to have the constant urge to get your camera out at this golf course. I like taking pictures, but not compared to my dad. Guess how many photos he took in our week in Banff. If you guessed 1,219 then you would be one thousand photos too low. So on number two, the first of the gorgeous mountain backgrounds – and my current phone background – we took a few photos while teeing off. Again, Herb asked why, and I told him I thought the background was gorgeous. Then ahead on the green, I rolled in a long birdie putt, followed by Herb yelling, “You should’ve gotten a video of that!” I laughed and sarcastically said, “I don’t really like taking videos,” to try and lighten the mood.

We drove up the hill to the signature fourth hole, Devil’s Cauldron, and I was excited to see the view in person from what I had seen countless photos of online. Herb was waiting on the tee for the group in front of us to clear, and as I walked up with my phone out, Herb came over and put his hand on my shoulder saying, “I guess you’re going to want some pictures of this hole too, huh?” I moved over a few feet and told him I’d be happy to send some his way after the round, but he said he’d take some himself if he wants any. We were officially under his skin.

To change the subject, I asked Herb and Jill what their plans were this week in Banff – maybe trips to different lakes, hikes, or drives to any glaciers – and Herb said, “Nah, our only plans are to play here today and Silvertip Golf Course on Thursday. Other than that, no plans really.” A weeklong international vacation with no plans? I thought my dad was going to faint, but that wasn’t in his itinerary.

Storm’s a-Brewin’

The round continued, and our picture taking lessened as the sun disappeared and the sky darkened. Ahead on the ninth fairway, two storms were about to hit us at once.

I hit my drive up the right side of the par five, and Herb hit his over to the left. When we approached my ball, my dad looked to our right and saw that the hole runs along the Bow River, and just beyond the river was another view of a mountain that was disappearing into a fog, or so we thought. As you might guess, he got his camera out and walked to the shoreline while the group ahead was on the green. That’s when, from across the fairway, we heard, “What are you gonna do with all those damn pictures?!” Herb had reached his boiling point.

No sooner than his words were yelled across the fairway, the fog to our right turned out to be a storm cloud, and rain came blowing off of the mountain at 30+mph. When the wind is howling at that rate, even the lightest sprinkle feels like an eye-wall of a hurricane. We all slugged through the ninth, and drove to the clubhouse for warmth, while rain pelted our windshield. I couldn’t help but believe deep down that Herb’s disposition brought the rain.

At the turn, our group had a little pow wow to see if we wanted keep going, which we all voted yes. While I grabbed a coffee and a beanie, hoping to regain feeling in my hands and ears, Jill leaned over to me and said, “Don’t let Herb bother you – I told him he needs to cool it.” Maybe it was her comment, or the frigid wind and rain, but Herb was much more subdued the rest of the day.

We drove over to the 10th hole, where the weather had only worsened. Instead of continuing to describe how insane the wind/rain/temperature combo was, I’ll let this video of my tee shot on the 11th hole serve as an explanation.

By the 11th green, the storm blew away as quickly as it appeared, and on the 12th hole the sun was shining like a mid-summer’s day. The only reminders of the storm were our wet clothes and the tumultuous wind, which intensified as the day carried on.

My favorite part of the property was the 15th tee box, an elevated platform at the foot of the Wes Andersen-looking Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel. I sat on the left side of an empty bench to take in the view, and Herb plopped down right in the middle, violating every socially agreed upon law of bench sitting, and asked me if I made it to many Bulls games. I smiled and said yes, but not in the past five years.

Approaching the 18th green we were sad that the round was over, but happy about getting indoors to heat and a change of clothes. We glanced back towards the tee and saw another stunning mountain view. My dad looked at me and said, “We haven’t had a picture of just the two of us today, so let’s ask them if they’ll take one for us.”

“I’m not about to ask Herb for a picture,” I responded, thinking Herb might bash my phone to pieces with his putter.

“Fine, I’ll ask him,” my dad said, showing no fear.

Finals putts were holed, we shook their hands, and as soon as Herb turned his back to walk off the green, my dad discreetly tapped Jill on the shoulder and whispered, “Jill, would you mind taking a picture of us real quick.” He chickened out, and I don’t blame him.

After the Round

Over beers back at the hotel with my mom and sister, we told them about the wild day we had on the golf course with the mountain views, the insane wind and rain that gusted across the course, and then we mentioned a couple things about Herb and Jill, followed by more about the weather. Regardless of what we had to say about the day, they only wanted to hear more about Herb and Jill.

That’s when it hit me. It doesn’t matter how crazy the conditions, how distinctive the course was designed, or what you shot. The most interesting part of each round is the people you play with. Golf attracts people from all walks of life, and along with their clubs they also carry their stories – stories that I have been avoiding by dodging random pairings left and right.

This round in Banff opened my eyes to how much more fun golf is as an act of exploration. What you shoot is the least of your concerns, and instead you are exploring a new city, country, or corner of the world, walking miles through a massive piece of land.

Better yet, when you’re paired up with a stranger, you get to see this exploration through their eyes too, taking a much-needed break from the lens you look through 24/7. Plus, for me, this resulted in playing better golf. When this clicked, even rounds back home at my local muni became infinitely more interesting.

They were no longer the same boring holes I’ve played countless times. Now they were a 90-minute walk with Sam, the eccentric owner of a local pizza shop, or James, a guy working his way up the ladder at Dell – and their stories are fascinating if I just take the time to listen, to understand one simple truth of each conversation: there’s more going on here.

So that’s what I’m setting out to do with Paired Up. Instead of ignoring my fellow golfers, I’m going to seek them out, whether it’s a random pairing or planned, and I’m going to share their fascinating stories – stories that go far beyond any scorecard.

My goal is to show you that the most unique feature of every golf course is the people who inhabit it – even if your picture taking bothers them to their core.

(Here’s a photo gallery of some of my favorite’s from Banff Springs. Click on the photo to scroll through them.)

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“I’m sorry, we have a lot of money riding on this match”

“Now calling the Wilson twosome at 10:27am. Please report to the first tee.”

Yes, we did it!

My dad and I hopped in the cart, took off to the first tee – excited to be playing with just the two of us – but when we curled around the corner of large evergreens, there stood our playing partners, Herb and Jill, an older couple from Denver.

Damn, we thought we were in the clear for a father-son round in the Canadian Rockies.

I hate getting paired up. I always have.

Every time I show up to a public course I fear having a promising day of golf spoiled by Bob, who is out for his bi-annual round of golf.

Do I have anything against Bi-annual Bob or his golf acumen? Absolutely not. I used to be an assistant pro at a club in Chicago, and that line of work will teach you to play with golfers of all ability levels. The issue is that who I came to the course with that day is precisely who I wanted to play with.

Sometimes it’s a group of friends that I haven’t seen in a while, other times it’s my dad and brother out for a family round, or maybe the last couple hours of daylight where I want to walk my local muni with headphones in. Regardless of the scenario, I will avoid a random pairing like a discounted sleeve of Volviks at a Golf Galaxy checkout counter.

Due to this way of thinking, I could teach a Master Class video series on how to get out of potential random pairings at golf courses. Could it be a Ted Talk? Maybe, but only if I’m moved to tears by a data point on a graph.

How do Random Pairings Happen?

Before I share my (in hindsight, embarrassing) list of ways I have avoided random pairings, let me explain how these pairings come about for my non-golfing brothers and sisters.

Golf courses, especially public, want to send every group out with four players. If every group has four players, then they are to their max capacity, which earns their maximum amount of money, and the pace of play should be consistent. When you arrive to a golf course with less than four players, you open up the possibility of being paired with random players to fill up a foursome.

Pairing up can happen in several ways once you are on the property, with the most common way being told by the pro shop while checking in that they have found players for your foursome. Next would be from the starter – a retired man who takes his role as seriously as a soldier storming the beaches of Normandy – looking at his tee sheet and finding another pair to put with your twosome. I’d feel less pressure chipping off a putting green under a flood light for $9 million than I would messing with a starter and his tee sheet. The final most common way is having a group behind you catch up to your group, or vice versa, where the combination of groups equals four or less players.

How do you avoid that? Well, to use a phrase out of place, fortune favors the bold. Also, it’s important that you know that I know these are downright shameful –that’s why there’s a part two coming.

Here *were* my seven favorite ways to escape getting paired up:

one:

My absolute go-to, foolproof way to avoid a random pairing is booking a tee time for four players, showing up with two or three, and telling the pro shop/starter that your other players are running late and are going to meet us on number two or three.

Think of a number between 50 and 80. Got it? Ok, well I have used this excuse more times than that number. The golf staff doesn’t want to run the risk of more than four guys in a group, so they let you go, and by the time you are making the turn back near the clubhouse, they will have completely forgotten about the whole thing. It’s the golf-equivalent of “saving a seat for someone” next to you on a Southwest flight – everyone forgets once the plane takes off, leaving you with extra legroom and three random mid-season episodes of The Blacklist with no context.

Two:

In college, my group of friends would always play this well-below-average public course in Knoxville. It was the kind of place that we played so many times to the point where we were just nostalgia blind to its shortcomings. We still to this day know every break on every green, where the yardages are mismarked, and where to find the coveted “speed slots.” However, we don’t know what happened to the sketchy pro shop worker once we left school, because when we asked about him on a reunion trip weekend, the staff got weird and didn’t want to tell us. But… this isn’t a true crimes blog.

Anyway, this course had an unbelievable amount of play, so being approached at the first tee by someone wanting to pair up was almost guaranteed. But when I would play with my friends Steven and William, they would shoo away potential playing partners by saying, “Sorry, we have a lot of money riding on this match.”

How ridiculous must that have looked? It’s not just that we were in college, but we all had that private school, Chick-Fil-A cashier look – where everyone looks five-years younger than their actual age. The only thing I could’ve wagered back then were my on-campus dining dollars. But, it always worked.

Three:

With a lot of these excuses, it’s not what you say but how you say it – and that’s maybe more true with this one then any others. Years ago I was playing with a friend I hadn’t seen in a while who was in from out of town. A random guy approached us on the first tee asking to join us. When this happens, you have to respond immediately. If you hesitate, you’re toast.

I turned to him and immediately said, “Normally I would, but I haven’t seen my friend here in a really long time, and we’d like to play together and catch up if that’s ok with you.” If you say it correctly then they’ll immediately back off and let you go.

After it worked that first time, it became a regular, even when I’m playing with my regular group. When you add, “If that’s ok with you,” no one has the guts to defy that – besides Patrick Reed, and you’re better off letting him play through anyway.

I’ll roll through these last four quickly, but first I need to tell you about the setup at my local muni. The closest golf course to my house in Nashville is a city course that has 27 holes, and during the summer months I’ll walk nine holes before dark, often finishing in complete darkness.

Two of the three first tee boxes are viewable from the pro shop, with the third requiring a blind four-minute walk. If one of the nearby tees is open, I’ll peak down both fairways to see if it’s crowded ahead, and then hop on one of those and go. If they’re packed, I’ll take the blind leap of faith and walk to the far nine, hoping that there’s not a crowd when I get there.

With three separate nines and the most crowded place in town, I have to get creative. I’ll rank these on the shame meter – 10 being the most shameful, 1 being a regular human capable of empathy.

Four:

One time I really wanted to listen to a certain podcast while I walked nine, so I had my headphones in on the first tee. Someone walked up and asked if they could join, and I told him, “Man, I’m sorry but I have to listen to this thing for work tomorrow, so I’m going to be no fun to play with.”

He asked what it was, and I said, “It’s a keynote from a sales conference that I missed, and I have to write a report about it tonight.” He looked confused, so I said, “Hit em well,” and walked my lying-ass down the first hole with an NBA podcast in my ears. Shame level: 6.7/10

Five:

After seeing the first two nines were crowded on every hole, I walked to the far nine hoping to see an empty tee box. Number one had two groups waiting on the first tee and a group in the fairway, so I cut through 30 yards of thorny woods like I was Leo in The Revenant looking for my son’s killer, and threw a ball down on the second fairway just to avoid the terror of playing with strangers. Shame level: 7.2/10. Scraped-up ankles level: 8/10.

Six:

In the same vein as the last, I was walking to the first tee box one evening when I saw a guy about 60 yards behind me that I kind of knew back in college, but haven’t seen in years. He’s the level of friend that if I saw him at Whole Foods I’d give a we-know-each-other head nod, but not a stop-and-chat friend – much like a group-project friend. Knowing he would for sure catch me on the first tee, I walked right past the tee box, down the first fairway, and tossed a ball down at the 150-yard marker and played from there while he waited back on the tee. Disgraceful, but avoiding the ceremonial, “Hey, do you have the same number? We should hang out,” conversation was worth the walk of shame. Shame Level: 8.5/10.

Seven:

Lastly, even times where I tee off alone, I still run the risk of being caught up to by the group behind or catching up to the group ahead. If I’m on the green with a group behind me in the fairway, I will “read a putt” for three or four minutes like I’m Tiger trying to force an 18-hole playoff with Rocco, just to buy time for the group ahead of me to tee off. If I need more time, I’ll intentionally blow the first putt way past the hole, and then start the whole reading process over. Avoiding a random pairing takes commitment, even if it means sacrificing a stroke to the golfing gods. Shame Level: 9.3/10.

It’s best that I stop this list at seven before a) you lose any remaining ounce of respect for me, and b) I break the shame meter.

In the end, what have my Malcolm Gladwell 10,000-hours of pairing dodging done for me? They have stolen the joy out of an evening walk at sunset and replaced it with stress and constant worry. They have made booking a tee time much more difficult. Most importantly, they have closed my eyes to the most unique feature of any golf course, and that’s the people who inhabit the place.

Without a wild round in the Canadian Rockies this summer, I’d still be stuck in pairing-avoidance mode. As we drove to the first tee, I couldn’t figure a way out of this pairing.

What changed my mind? A 30mph sustained wind, driving rain, a camera, and a retired couple from Denver. More in part two tomorrow.

If you’ll excuse me, I missed another sales conference that I have to write a report on. I’m sure you understand.