Max’s explicit directions in the Yardage Book for the drive off the tee box on the 1st hole : Aim at right fairway bunker.
Playing partners 1 and 2 put perfect drives directly in the direction we too intend to take as per above.
Rob tees it up and sends it screaming low and left to a watery grave. This is hardly how you want a round to start. Drop. Beautifully struck Hybrid follows but almost into the lake on the other side of the fairway. 9 iron out of the muddy rough there over the green and under a tree …….
By hole 3 he informs me that I have already screwed up 5 times.
We ground and scraped and scrambled and stressed from rough to rough hoping for lucky breaks off cart paths and out of trees, seldom receiving them.
His magical short game, at times downright miraculous, was his saving grace throughout the tournament.
By the end of hole 6 when another “make sure to keep it left out of trouble” went right and right into the water, I was not enjoying myself at all. How do you keep your kid’s spirits up when you can’t yourself ? So I make a conscious attempt to lighten the mood on the tee box. We smile and joke and look at beautiful Cormorants drying their wings. The drive darts left into the rough. It is followed left into the water. The drop is chunked into the sand. Daddy Caddies, whose kids are both playing pretty flawless golf, must think I’m the biggest bitch ever as I lose my tightly held composure and shout : Right! That was an easy shot. What part of ‘right’ don’t you understand? We end the hole with our only triple of the tournament.
It is a long, humid Florida day. Realistically this is Rob’s 3rd Regional tournament. He has played golf for less than a year. He has just birdied hole 16 and if he can keep it on the fairway we always have a fighting chance for par. And there it is, we are finishing strong. Rob sinks his ball with a monster putt and forgets or neglects to take it out of the cup before the other boy finishes the hole.
Daddy Caddies confer briefly, approach me and let me know that would be a 2 point penalty – not that they are calling it on Rob “because no one is in contention here anyway”. Frankly I have never heard of the rule but I put an asterix next to Rob’s score for the hole and tell him to ask the rules official at the end of the round.
Rob dutifully lets the scorer know that he left a ball in the cup after he putted. The scorer looked a little bewildered but called a rules official over to the table. The rules official told Daddy Caddies that such a rule does not exist, which did not stop them arguing the point long after the score cards were signed.