Playing For Money

Last week I played in a $61,000 Calcutta. Gulp. There were sixty-four teams of two playing alternating shots. Each team’s handicap had to total eighteen. For example, a one and seventeen could play together, or a nine and a nine and so on. The field was divided into four groups teeing off at hole number one, nine, ten or eighteen and half the field was eliminated on each hole until only one team remained out of each group. Ties were decided with a chip-off. The four remaining teams then played for all the cash with the first place team taking fifty percent of the pot, second place got twenty-five percent, third placed received fifteen percent and fourth place grabbed the final ten percent and sixty teams went home with zip, zilch, jack and a big zero.

It was total cutthroat rules with all kinds of heckling, loud music and craziness. You weren’t allowed to touch anyone or hit anyone with a thrown object but other than that it was open season. If you were lucky you teed off late after some of the antics lost their appeal. You also learned to not screw around on the tee-box. Too many practice swings brought down the wrath of both players and spectators alike. They made fun of your swing, your clubs, your legs, even your wife’s legs, anything to throw you off your game.

This particular game had no relationship to the gentleman’s game that we all love to play. It was crude and rude and the perfect game for an all male outing. And, if you were aware of the rules it was funny, if you were not, it was a disaster.

It was also nerve wracking because you didn’t want to let your partner down and you didn’t want to look foolish, and of course there was the money. Lots and lots of money; enough to make my hands sweat for sure, and the closer you got to the final hole the more nerve wracking it became.

At some point everyone in the field realized that it was a game of luck and dealing with the pressure and that the best golfers don’t always win. A couple of years ago we had a 18 handicap who had consumed no less than ten beers rip a four iron 175 yards over water into a twenty mile per hour wind and land the ball four feet from the hole with his partner yelling at him to lay-up. He could have stood out there with a bucket of balls and never hit that shot again. I can still hear him slurring something like, “I didn’t come here to lay up.”

Oh, well. As Rocky Balboa once said, “Freak luck is a strange thing.”

My partner and I had a plan, which was basically don’t do anything stupid early, and the plan worked like a charm as we pared the first and second holes to move on. One more hole and we were in the money. However, on the third hole my partner, who was a ten handicap, got a little pumped-up and hooked a five-iron over the green into rough leaving me with a very difficult shot.

Standing over the ball I couldn’t muster enough moisture in my mouth to spit. My breath quickened and my legs felt a little weak. All I needed was a twenty yard wedge shot out of the rough, over a trap and onto a narrow finger of the green that was not more than thirty feet wide. As the boom-box blared Mariachi music I picked the ball cleanly and watched it fly over the mound toward the top of the flag and heard the crowd cheer. As I run up to see the results I met my partner who was shouting, “Great shot.”

At the top of the hill I surveyed my mastery of the game and how I had left my partner a makable six-footer with our opponents buried in the trap. How should we play the final hole for all the money and what should I do with my share?

Yes, I am the greatest golfer who ever lived, I thought right up until the other guy put his bunker shot about six inches from the hole and my partner ran the six footer by the hole and I had a tap in to tie the hole.

Well, to make a long story only half long, we lost the chip-off and the other guys went on to win the whole thing. As we rode back to the clubhouse with the cheers of the final hole echoing off in the distance, we apologized to each other ten or fifteen times and pledged to do better next year.

Later on, while I was loading my clubs into my car, I thought about the greatness of my chip and the accompanying cheers, smiles and back-slapping I had experienced. Then I started thinking about how my partner had missed such an easy putt. It didn’t matter that given twenty chances I could never make that chip shot again. It didn’t matter that I had played completely over my head. It didn’t even matter that my partner had carried me on his back most of the time.

It must have been the way Tiger felt at the Ryder Cup.

Yes, I think I need a new partner to benefit from my 18-stroke handicap.