The Guy You Avoid On The Tee Sheet

I think we can all agree that golf is fun. It’s fun to be outside. It’s fun to hit good shots. It’s fun to hang out with our friends.

But like anything else, it also comes with its downsides. It’s not fun to sweat profusely or battle the weather for five hours. It’s not fun to hit terrible shots and get angry. And it’s not fun to play with Gary.

The first time I played with him, all seemed well at the first tee introduction. Nice guy. Mid-sixties. Not a great golfer, but who is, honestly?

That perception lasted about one fairway length.

On the first green, I had a chip from a lie nestled in the Bermuda. Not an easy one, but I’m pretty handy around the greens.

Not here, though. I bladed it clear over the other side of the green and into a bunker. Before my chip, with an eighteen-inch apex, even hit the ground, I heard an audible “whoa!” from Gary.

To clarify: Gary, the twenty-index who was putting for bogey from thirty feet away, was disgusted by the chip of the six-index. Much like my lie on that chip, this didn’t sit right with me. But I put it out of my mind and hit the next shot.

Later on the front nine, Gary started talking to his ball. Not the normal Jordan Spieth “go hard!” stuff, full conversations. He’d roll a putt and, before it was two feet off the clubface, start muttering, “Come on, that’s for par,” as if anyone cared.

We didn’t. I would have started giving him twenty-footers if he could’ve gone an entire hole without talking.

Then came the par-three thirteenth. It was playing about 160 to a front pin. The two-tiered green is a brute, with everything sloping considerably back to front. I caught my shot somewhere between heavy and quite heavy, and it came up a club short. Gary then hit the best shot of his life, straight over the pin, leaving himself about fifteen feet down the hill.

But hitting the shot wasn’t good enough. As he climbed into his cart and started driving up to the green, he had a lot to say. “That’s how you hit an iron, baby!” Damn electric carts. What I wouldn’t have given for something to muffle the sound at that point.

Sure enough, he gets up there, races the putt almost off the green en route to a three-putt. I acted disappointed, because that’s what you do, then proceeded to get mine up and down from below the hole.

At this point, I was wondering what the penalty would be for putting Gary into the penalty area. Probably two strokes and a night in jail. Worth it.

Just let me finish the round first because I’ve got a good one going.

Two Inches Short is a place where amateur golfers can unapologetically be themselves. It’s where we can all relate to the greatest game ever played at a level we can all understand.

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“Making triple bogey from the middle of the fairway isn’t just about skill, it’s a lifestyle.”