The Longest Closest to the Pin Ever

My golf buddy Jen invited me to the annual GBBR Golf Outing at Piney Branch. It was a fun day in the sun, and they served both lunch and dinner. The 1pm shotgun start meant I didn’t have to get up at the crack of dawn, too. The format was supposed to be “best ball,” where everyone plays their own ball and records the lowest player’s score for each hole as the team score, but the starter announced something about everyone hitting their tee shots, choosing the best position, then playing their own ball from there. That sounded awfully familiar to the “bramble” format I had played recently, but I had just eaten a hot dog and was still savoring the aftertaste, so my mind was elsewhere.

Turns out that Jen and I did play the wrong format – everyone else played the “scramble” format, where each player on the team moves their ball to the best position on each stroke till everyone holes out, but they were calling this format “best ball.” Really, it should have just been “prison rules” for the tournament, with all the confusion. But that didn’t stop us from winning both women’s prizes. Jen won women's “longest drive” by blasting a 200-plus yard bullet on a long rollercoaster fairway. And I won women's “closest to the pin” with a much less impressive shot that landed 47 feet and 9 inches from the pin on a par 3. It was so far from the flag that at first I wondered if I should even mark it, but I did, mainly because I had never used one of those funky, old-school tape measuring devices that they’d left on the side of the green, and I was curious to see how it worked.

At the awards dinner, I was truly surprised when they announced my name. Jen and I both won gift certificates at the pro shop for our efforts. The toughest part was finding merch to spend it on. I must have tried on every cute top in the shop, and finally found an Under Armor sleeveless polo that fit me.

But even though I won a prize, the shot I was really proud of that day involved hitting my 7-utility hybrid brazenly through a stand of trees:

My ball shot like a rocket through two trees and skipped onto the green, rolling just a few feet over and into the rough. It was a risky shot, but it felt sublime to see my ball go just where I aimed it. And that was its own reward.