I Shot a 112 and It's Still My Favorite Round

by Johnny
(golfeaser.com)

This is the first entry in a new series here on Golfeaser: real stories from real weekend golfers. Nobody's sent one in yet, so I'm kicking it off with one of mine.

I Shot a 112 and It's Still My Favorite Round of Golf — Here's Why the Score Never Was the Point

Every weekend golfer has a round he'd rather forget. Mine was a 112, on a course I'd broken 90 on twice that same summer, in front of the three guys who never let me forget anything.

For a long time I filed it under "rounds to never mention again." Then I noticed something: it's the only round from that whole year I can still describe hole by hole.

That should have told me something a lot sooner than it did.

Why Do We Remember the Bad Rounds Best?

Ask anyone in your regular four to describe their best round of the year and you'll get a number — a 78, an 84, whatever sits a few strokes under their handicap. Ask about their favorite round and you'll get a story.

Mine happens to be the same round. It just isn't the one with the good number attached to it.

Something happened that day. Something changed about how I think about why I actually show up to play.

The Day Everything Went Wrong on the Back Nine

It was a regular Saturday with Dave, Mike, and Jim — the same three I've played with most weekends for about fifteen years now. Nothing special planned. Just our usual tee time and our usual five-dollar side bet.

The front nine was fine. Unremarkable, even — a couple of pars, the standard quota of three-putts, nothing that suggested the day was about to come apart.

Then it started raining on the back nine. Not the kind of rain that sends you running for the clubhouse — the kind that just arrives and stays, until your golf shoes have quietly become two sponges you're dragging around the course.

By 14, I'd put two balls in the water, shanked one into the cart path hard enough that it nearly came back at me, and was sitting somewhere around fourteen-over for six holes — which, even by my standards, is an achievement.

Then on 17, soaked through and laughing at how bad we'd all gotten, Jim's foot went out from under him on the wet slope above the green and he sat down hard in about four inches of water.

I'm not totally sure why, but that was the exact moment none of us cared anymore what we were shooting. Dave couldn't get a word out, he was laughing so hard. Mike tried to help Jim up and nearly went in after him.

We finished the last two holes barely able to hit the ball straight, four soaked men posting the worst collective scores of the year — and somehow it became *the* round. The one someone brings up almost every time we play, usually right after somebody else has a bad hole. "At least you're not in the water like Jim."

What This Round Actually Taught Me

I couldn't tell you what I shot the week before that one, or the week after. I can tell you exactly what happened on 17.

That's the thing nobody really tells you about being a weekend golfer: the score fades fast. What stays is whatever happened around it — who you were with, what went wrong, and who laughed about it with you.

I used to think being a weekend golfer meant chasing a lower number. These days I think it means being the kind of player your group actually wants out there with them — on the good days and the 112 days both.

That round didn't make me a better golfer. It made our group's favorite story. Some days, that's the better trade.

You're always just one round away — not necessarily from your best score, but maybe from your best story.

That's story number one. If you've got a round like this — one that went sideways and somehow became the story your group still tells — I'd genuinely like to read it. Hit reply to any of my emails and tell me about it.

It's the kind of round that gets at principle six of the Golfeaser Manifesto better than any swing tip ever could — the idea that your presence is what actually makes a round better for everyone, no scorecard required. You can read more golf stories from people who get it while you wait for the next one.