was during a Nationwide event while I was hungover. People who know me laugh at this because I don’t drink, as I get in enough trouble sober.
The greens this particular week were as soft as I had ever played. You sunk into the green as you walked and the night before the first round all of the sprinklers went on for an unscheduled green drenching. That made the already soft greens downright quicksand like and footprints galore was an understatement.
I was the last group of the day and putting was hilarious. Well, it’s hilarious now, but that day I found it made me quite homicidal. I had one of the finest ball striking rounds of my career. I believe I hit 17 greens in regulation and three of the four par 5’s in two. I was also inside of 20 feet on most of the holes and inside 10 feet on around half.
To be kind to the course, the ball just wouldn’t stay on line and even on 18 inch putts you could hear the circus calliope.
With that fine ball striking, I was three over par after 3-putting the 17th green and proceeded to break my putter. 18 was a par five, I hit a poor tee shot, had to lay up, hit a terrible third shot and hooped in a 30 footer with my sand wedge…It made me even angrier.
My travel partner, who also played poorly, suggested we get drunk. I agreed. I woke up the next morning praying to God to be merciful and take my life in the most heinous manner possible.
I played 13 holes the next day so ambivalent, I wouldn’t have cared if I shot 90. I just wanted to survive without throwing up on the course in front of the few hundred people following me. Between better greens and not caring all that much, I was even par with five holes to play and I needed to go 4 under the last 5 to make the cut. There were two par 5’s and a drivable par 4, so I had a shot.
14 was one of the par 5’s and a long one, but I hit a really good drive in the fairway and had 250 left. I had a 1-iron in those days and that was the perfect 250 club. I took a back swing and lost consciousness at the top of my swing. I came back to reality about 5 seconds later and my caddy was laughing. I was standing there with a blank look on my face and asked what happened.
“You hit it a little right.”
A little right turned out to be on the green 3 holes over. You read that right, 3 holes over. I was almost pin high and about 150 yards right of the green and I was on another green. After dropping off the other green and guessing at the yardage, I hit the ball 30 feet from the hole I was on and three putted for a bogey.
Well, now I cared and I was angry. The next hole was supposed to be a layup at 380 yards and trouble everywhere. I swung as hard as I could, caught it and drove the green. I 2-putted for birdie, birdied 16 with a 10 footer, drove the 320 yard 17th and two putted for my third birdie in a row.
I now needed to eagle 18 to make the cut. I cut off the corner on the short par 5 and had a 7 or 8 iron in. The pin was front left, right behind the sand. My shot was at the pin but only just cleared the sand and rolled back in. My sand shot lipped out and finished a few inches away to miss the cut by a stoke.
The morals to the story. If you can’t hold your liquor, stick too root beer. If you can’t hold your liquor, don’t drink tequila. If you can’t hold your liquor, throw up. If you can’t hold your liquor, don’t play golf the next day…and if you are going to birdie the last 4 holes, try not to black out on 14.
Since this is a family oriented blog, I left out the part of the story of what I did while I was drunk, but all of the disgusting degenerates reading the blog would all be very proud of me.
Monte Scheinblum's Blog 