Day 2:
There really aren’t words to describe this day. It was truly magical. 36 holes at Chambers on a perfect day in near perfect conditioning as the overcast first couple hours kept the greens from being a perfect speed in the morning.
If you haven’t seen the photos, scroll up or go look at attendees’ instagram pages. It might be the closest thing to @Tron’s “This might be too good” coming true.
Both @Tron and @sundaybag asked me if I called the sailboat to come sit behind the 15th green for this photo
And here you’ll see the last group out in our afternoon wave on 17 green with the sun already set. We were playing an 18 hole, 8 man, 4 team/ball alt-shot. It was @leric90 and myself vs. @JohnP and @OTPLefty vs. Squid and @Tron vs. @catshannon and @sundaybag. Yes, there were some strokes given out.
After @leric90 drove the ball way left on 5 and we never found it, me putting @leric90 on a horrendous lie on the side of a dune on 6, and @leric90 shanking a flop on 6, we were out of the overall match pretty quickly.
However…
we did have a side game going with @JohnP and @OTPLefty. They easily won the front and the 18, but the back 9 and our press were close. We happened to be 1 down thru 7 on the back. On 17, we made the comfiest of three putt bogies to win the hole after @JohnP and @OTPLefty made a sloppy double.
AS on the back and the press standing on 18 tee.
@leric90 hooks it into the first bunker on the left. Damn near jail. I splash it down the fairway to about the DJ spot. I don’t remember the route @OTPLefty and @JohnP took, but they were halfway to the 1st tee box, about 150 out after 2 shots.
@leric90 makes up for all our wrongs. He LACES his 5 wood from 230. I said, “oh that’s gonna be so good” when it took off. When it landed on the front right corner of the green, I followed up with “oh that’s gonna be REALLY good.”
What it did on the green, we couldn’t see from the where we were with the elevation and the fading light. But from the ever-growing cheers/“Oohs,” I’m gonna guess it took the same path as Spieth’s in the final round of the US Open, coming off the back right corner of the backstop. It was about 5 feet away (as much as @leric90 tries to say it was closer than that)
@JohnP and @OTPLefty hit the green with their third, about 20-25 feet away, so I know that I have to make this to have no blood in our side game cause while @OTPLefty didn’t make anything, he had the speed down all afternoon.
That’s me crouching, reading the putt. It took a long time for me to be able to hit it. @Tron blade/shanked a chip, so he and Squid played ping-pong on the green for a bit. The thought that crossed my mind cause it was taking so long… “don’t DJ it.” I had swiped a few putts that afternoon, and I could see myself missing low like DJ so easily from the same spot.
I RAMMED it in. There was no doubt that it was going in unless I swiped it.
I scanned the crowd for @leric90, which was bigger than this photo and enjoying the (shoutout) New Belgium beer, dropped the putter, ran up, and hugged him. All the mediocre golf was wiped away. We ended up only losing $20 each for the overall 8 person alt shot match.
I want to say thank you to anyone that said thank you to me for that magical day. Trust me, it does mean something to the organizer. 36 holes at Chambers is physically and mentally exhausting. Doing it with a fair amount of money on the line in the afternoon is even more so. Doing it with a lack of sleep and everything that happened on Day 1 is mind and body-numbing. So, if I didn’t seem thankful in the moment, I’m not sure what I was doing for a time until I was in the parking lot. I was pretty out of it. So many people gave me hugs and thanks that I completely lost track of who did. I do know that I hugged @I_have_the_yips for a really long time cause he paid for my entire day at Chambers, and for that, I am forever thankful. Thank you so, so much Sam.
I sat on my bumper/in my trunk trying to take in everything that happened. I watched the sky turn to night. I watched all the cars climb the hill out of Chambers. Just myself and @bmasters, who stuck around to see if everything was ok.
I was in complete shock… until I wasn’t. I hugged @bmasters goodbye for the night, closed the trunk, sat in my car and shed some tears.
I knew that the pizza at the house was delivered and getting cold. I knew everyone was there debriefing their days and where they’d rank Chambers on their lists of favorites…
But letting out those few tears of joy were so… cathartic? That’s probably not the right word. It was so necessary. I was able to finally able to open my mind and soul and eternalize all of it. That feeling is the reason I love to host. To make everyone have as much fun as possible in this short, chaotic time we have. Thank you to everyone who attended. You just being there was enough to be honest haha.