Personal Best

You throw your clubs back in your trunk and head into the clubhouse with some extra pop in your step. You keep your eyes forward. Champions don’t need to make eye contact.

As you open both double doors, you can hear Jim Nantz in your head welcoming you to Butler Cabin. You give him a wry smile and keep walking, feeling every eye in the room upon you.

You saddle up on a barstool and give a nod and hand gesture.

They know the order just like they know that you just carded your personal best.

If you were making eye contact, you would have realized you were nodding at the barback while he restocked the cooler.

Your phone starts popping off with notifications. Already? Word travels fast around here.

You ignore the phone for right now. Act like you’ve been there before. Plus, this is good practice for when you do this again next Sunday. You didn’t ask for it, but this is who you are now.

Where is that drink?

You motion again to get someone’s attention behind the bar.

You still don’t tell him the order because he knows.

You make brief eye contact with Chet who is in the corner of the bar sipping his Modelo alone. Today’s his 68^th birthday and he just shot his age, but you would have fleeced him in a net match. He knows it too.

Golf is on the TV behind the bar and you lock in on it for a few minutes. You start shaking your head condescendingly at missed 8 footers. Muttering to yourself that you don’t know what he was thinking there. He shot 64 and is leader in the clubhouse. Should be leading by more though.

While you wait for your drink, you finally decide to check your phone.

Three notifications.

One Instagram reel of you missing a three-footer and throwing your putter onto the next tee box which had two groups waiting on it.

One text from your wife with a short list of things to pick up on the way home, and an additional reminder not to forget your hemorrhoid cream.

And a Venmo request for $150 from your buddy who also carded a personal best today. It came with a note that read, “Nice 82. You owe four skins and the match. Thanks for playing.”

You silence your phone and place it back on the bar, screen side down.

Where is that drink?

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.”