The Bad Warm Up

The Arrival

You roll into the parking lot exactly an hour and four minutes before your tee time. Your arrival time should afford you a full warm up, a coffee, and a resulting bathroom break, before your tee time.

Dylan, the broccoli-haired bag boy, comes cruising over in his EZ Go asking if you need a cart. You tell him you’re all set to avoid the awkward parking lot gratuity exchange.

The Check In

You head to the pro shop and drop your name and starting time without looking the assistant pro behind the desk in the eye. You grab a cart key and a handful of tees and brows the row of carts looking for number 69 because that’s what you’re shooting today. You settle on number 88, load up your weapons, and fire up the ignition.

As you drive off, you can feel Dylan’s piercing gen Z stare from the cart barn.

The Range Session

You get to the driving range and pull a carefully selected four clubs from your bag and head over to the tee with the confidence of Tiger before his 2pm Sunday tee time at Augusta with a 4 shot lead.

You start with your 56 degree wedge. A few half shots get the body loosened up. Flushed. Flushed. Chunked. Flushed. Should have tried for cart number 65.

Then you move to the full swings and things start to get dicey. The first one catches just enough hosel to get your attention. It goes right but seems manageable. You swung the next one with a confidence you had no business possessing, and went full hosel. Now we have a problem.

It didn’t get better from there. Pull hook, hosel, duff, pull hook, flush, hosel, toe hook. As if things couldn’t get any worse, Dylan comes rolling up with a fresh batch of range balls to top off your pyramid. No words are exchanged and you avoid eye contact, but you can feel his presence and his judgment of the atrocities you just committed with your wedge. He’s probably a scratch golfer with no friends.

You decide to skip the rest of your warm up clubs and go straight to driver. There isn’t really a hosel to hit on that one so you figure you, and all golfers to your right, are in the clear.

Duff, duff, pop up, smoked but 50 yards left, snap hook, further right than forward. It might be time to call it. Time for some chipping.

The Short Game

You head over to the chipping green with a few range balls. First one your clubhead gets stuck in the Bermuda and the ball goes 3 inches. That’s it for the chipping warm up. Time to roll a few putts.

You start off with a few 50 footers to dial in your speed. After leaving 3 putts a combined 45 feet from the hole, you switch to 12 footers. Miss the first three high. Second three low. Next two are low and last one is a power lip. Move in to 5 feet and similar results.

You check your watch. 10 minutes to tee time. You move up to 2 feet and brush a few in with the pin out just so you can see and feel the ball go in the hole. You take that visualization with you and decide it’s time to end the warm up.

The Pre Round Ritual

You grab some coffee, audible a drink order, and hit the bathroom. As you’re heading in, Dylan is coming out. You contemplate giving him a swirlie like a 1980s movie bully. But that’s not going to lower your score any, so you let it pass.

You grab your double screwdriver and head to the first tee, fully prepared to shoot the worst round of your life. Wondering if you should head to the pro shop and pick up a few dozen more balls.

The First Tee

Then you hit your drive and the worries melt away. Piped. You might want to bring a couple dozen balls back to your car after that shot.

Amazing what one good swing can do to a person’s memory. But the golf gods don’t forget.

As you ride off into the morning haze, Dylan looks on from the cart barn with a smirk on his face.

He’s seen this movie before and knows how it ends.

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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