Prelude

A tribute to all those golfers who have ever been on a golf trip or those golfers who are planning to go on a golf trip or those golfers who wish to do a golf trip.

Just a little background about myself, I’m 60 years old, 6’1″ and 225 pounds with a handicap between 13 to 15. I have a strong love and passion for golf, but I am only able to play once a week on Saturday mornings because I am still working full-time as a paper salesman for a privately held fine printing paper merchant called Bradner Smith and Company. Therefore, I can relate to Michael Scott of “the office” and to the Dunder Mifflin paper company.

I love setting up golf trips for myself and others and I am rewarded with the smiles on those golfers faces, as they reiterate to me the great and special times that they have just experienced. Even though it’s a lot of golf in a short period of time, it’s still worth all the effort that I put into making these trips successful.

This all started back in 1985 with just two of us heading to play golf in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina for 4 to 5 days. From there the yearly journey has taken us to Petoskey, Michigan, Kohler, Wisconsin, Orlando, Florida, Ireland and twice to Scotland. We have had many golfers come and go on these golf trips, a total of 55 players, with half of them being only one year wonders. The one-year wonders were those players who were not able to successfully play 36 holes per day for five or six days straight, hence, they only made it one year.

I have personally played over 60 courses in the Myrtle Beach area, 18 courses in Scotland, 14 courses in Ireland, three courses in Kohler, Wisconsin, six courses in Orlando, Florida and 10 courses in Petoskey, Michigan. The experiences have been remarkable and very memorable indeed.

We play certain money games on every round of golf towards achieving our goals of having fun and still being able to have a little wager on each round of golf. We are not out to subsidize each other’s golf trip with large amounts of money being wagered, instead we have a little jack on each of the rounds to make the golf more competitive and interesting.

I am the group leader, the grand organizer, the master sergeant, and the head guru for all of our golf trips. The reason I do this is for the love of the game, the love of setting up the trips, and the complete control that everything will be done right unto my satisfaction. I do this at the level of performance that I expect from myself, plus the fact that no one else wants to take the time to work out all the details to make the trip very successful. All of the players that have gone on the golf trips consider me extremely anal and they are absolutely correct. Hell, someone has to do it, so why not let it be me.

We take our golf trips in early fall because we figure that our golf swing has been grooved over the summer playing months, and that we should shoot lower scores having been playing all summer long, great in theory but not necessarily a truism. We figure that if we took trips in early spring our swings would be so rusty that it would not just be a waste of our money, but more importantly the fact that we would probably injure ourselves by throwing out our backs or pulling some muscle which would really screw up the upcoming golf season. The worst thing that I do not want to do is spend a lot of money and time to go on a golf trip and have it be miserable because I’m not able to break 90, or worse, not even break 100. Therefore, we do our swan song in mid September, plus the rates are slightly better at that time of the season.

Our golf trips started out with just two golfers and has gone to as many as 24 golfers at one time. I realized that 24 golfers was way too many to handle for one week of 36 holes day. The problem with 24 players is that they just cannot play with everyone on that golf trip, which is one of the reasons why we all go. Also, trying to get a dinner reservation for that large of a group is like trying to arrange for a bar mitzvah during Christmas day, “it just ain’t happening”. The ideal number is 16 players (4 foursomes), although 8 or 12 players will work out just as well. With this number we all get to play at least one or two rounds with everyone on the golf trip and we are all able to enjoy polite and sometimes not so polite conversations with everyone at the dinner table.

Our schedule is such that we play 18 holes on arrival day, if the airlines can get us to Myrtle Beach around noon time with all of our luggage and more importantly – our golf clubs. Then for the next two days we play 36 holes per day. On the fourth day we play 18 holes, to give those fellows of little breather; in the past we would just do 36 holes all the way through with 18 holes on the last day of  leaving Myrtle Beach. But since we have gotten older, we have all figured that we’ve got to have one 18 hole round during the middle of our golf trip just to be able to relax and refresh our bodies. Although on that 18 hole round in the middle of the week we do have some diehards or just plain golf sicko’s that do not want to just play 18, but want to keep on playing and therefore they will do 36 holes on that day, and I am one of them – never say die. We then go back to 36 holes on the fifth day and on the sixth day, which is the last day of our trip, we play 18 holes in the morning, shower, change our clothes, get some late lunch and then off to the airport to return home.

Over the many years of tweaking the golf trips I have determined that we can fly out early Monday morning and return late Saturday evening, that way all of us have Sunday to relax and recoup one day prior to all of us having to go back to work on Monday. The benefit is that you get to spend Sunday with your wife and/or the family prior to going to work the next day. And let me tell you that that brings in a lot of positive points with the wife, because she has one complete day to tell you how miserable her last week was while you were in Myrtle Beach enjoying the weather, relaxing, playing golf and just plain screwing around with the guys. It has always amazed me that the wives always have their worst week when you are on your golf trip and it’s always your fault because you’re having fun and they are not.

I have taken over the years many ideas and suggestions on just how to improve and tweak our yearly golf trips. All the way from the courses we play, the tee times, the vans that we rent, the restaurants that we go to, the money games and the resorts that we stay at. All ideas and suggestions are always welcome, harsh criticism just doesn’t fly with me, I take that personally and if it happens you just are not invited back the following year. This is where I, as the sole chairman of the golf trips become the benevolent dictator.

Hopefully, my experiences on setting up golf trips, and the courses we have played, the games we do and the places and restaurants that we have gone to will help other golfers on their quest to play golf for a week or so.

Without them knowing it both Bon Jovi, Rick Reilly, and the author Lee Child have inspired me to write these stories. Bon Jovi on seeing him on a “60 minute” segment about his career, stated that he did not want to be a “woulda, coulda, shoulda person”, therefore go ahead with your dreams and just do it. Sports writer and humorous, Rick Reilly, has given me the confidence to write about funny golf trips after reading 3 of his books, “Missing Links,” “Shanks for Nothing,” and “Who’s Your Caddy?” Author Lee Child of the Jack Reacher suspense novels, which I have read all of them, inspired me in an article that I read about him losing his job at the age of 40 and then starting to take up writing suspense novels to feed his family. All 3 of these fellows have given me the inspiration to write these golf stories and maybe, just maybe, one of these days I will be able to personally thank them for what they did for me. And of course there is my lovely wife who for over 40 years has also instilled complete and total confidence in my ability to do anything that I set my mind to do. She, like Bon Jovi , would say to me, ”just get out there and do it, share what you know with others and let them benefit from your experiences on all your golf trips”. Like the original Nike commercial says, ” Just do it”.

The following stories are humorous in nature and reflect the antics of sophomoric humor that only guys can relate to. Guys just say and do things on a golf trip with each other that they would never consider doing at their own home golf courses. All these trips and stories are the results of years of accumulation from all the fellows that have gone on these trips. All of them are extremely dear and very special to me, whom without the experiences of being with these golfers these stories would not have been possible. So I thank each and every one of them for their support and their love throughout this endeavor, because I am not a writer or journalist, I’m just a fine printing paper salesman who loves the game of golf.

The golf courses, restaurants, and resorts are all true and existing places. The golf stories are actual events that took place, although I may have altered some of the stories as poetic license to have them be more humorous and enjoyable in nature. The names of the golfers are all fictitious, so as to preserve their privacy and save them from divorce court. The stories are not necessarily in chronological order, but that’s ok, since I’m writing them, you wouldn’t know it anyway.

I’ll try to post two stories every month at two week intervals. Hopefully, you all will find them amusing and somewhat entertaining.