It was the last golf competition of the season and I wanted to finish the year like I started. Kicking ass (sort of) and taking names (politely).
I had started the year with a solid win in the 1st annual Porsche Trophy, and I (stupidly) had high hopes for the rest of the season. But a few lessons later and my head was all over the place. It’s taken most of the year to come back to some good golf, and to end on a high I wanted to win the last tournament of the year. It was a team event (myself and Phil) so it wouldn’t be all down to me, but I wanted to beat the shit out of the course anyway.
The format for the End of Season Salomon-Wilson Tournament was Greensome. Both team members hit their tee shot, you choose which of the two balls is less shit and begin to alternate shots on the chosen ball from there like a Foursome. It’s basically a Foursome, only you get two tries at a good tee shot. It sounds like there would be some good scores, seeing as you have two tries at your tee shot, but unless both players are 100% on, it can get very shite very quickly.
It was a ridiculously cold start. Frost EVERYWHERE, and puffy coats on every body. It was all we could do to keep our hands from going numb. We did our best and surprised the shit out of ourselves when we parred our first hole and we were obviously feeling pretty smug. Until we had a double on the second. Hmm. We quickly realized it was easy to fuck it all up while sharing shots and feeling pressure to perform. But that was the reality check we needed so we moved on making sure to be more careful. Two holes later and we’d had our first team birdie. Phil sunk a massive putt from off the green so we did our celebratory, shameless high-five and walked to the next hole where we made par, then proceeded to birdie the following three holes, mostly down to just solid shots on the fairway and onto the green, followed by TV-worthy shit-hot putts for birdie.
This went on for the rest of the round. We had a couple more unavoidable bogies but kept our cool, and we ended up with five birdies at the end of the round. Team play was the key. When Phil messed up his tee shot I’d concentrate and put one in play, and vice versa. We kept our alternating shots in play and down the middle, and it all just came together. We were two under par at one point but ended up with a score of one over par gross (brut). A pretty damn good score considering I’m a 7.9 handicap and Phil is 5.8. We both played out of our skin. Turns out we would have won without any birdies, as we won by 8 strokes. It was a great way to end our Chamonix competition season.
Looking back this year’s golf has been up and down. I’ve managed to pull out quite a few wins, some with better golf than others. And despite a streak of terrible golf toward the end of the season, I managed to bring my handicap to an all-time low of 7.9. Before that weekend of golf I was just hoping to drop my handicap by any amount this year, and I’d told myself that would have made me happy. Stoked to have gotten down to a new low though. Even better to have started the year with a good win in the 1st annual Porsche Trophy, and finish with some excellent golf in the final tournament. We’ll be on to winter greens in Chamonix soon, if this rain EVER STOPS. But I don’t really mind as we’re off to Hawaii in two weeks, where we’ll kick off our traditional PAR WARS competition. Stay tuned.