With Ben Griffin missing the cut last week, this is unofficially the worst prognosticating season in FGR history. In an effort to protect our readers, we're going to focus the writing elsewhere until further notice.
My club puts on an early season Wednesday evening two-man schmooze and booze which may have the most stupid golf format yet invented. It's flighted like a member-guest tournament and every week you play three 3-hole matches against another two-man team meaning that anytime one team wins the first two holes, the last one is meaningless. The obvious remedy for this would be to add a point for the overall 9-hole match winner so that every hole matters but apparently that's still being beta tested at the competition committee level with a possible rollout in 2031.
Last Wednesday we lost our first two holes (I sure hope you saw that coming) so we were a point down heading into the "middle three." After losing the 4th to a net birdie, I countered with a winning birdie on the 5th which meant that it all came down to the 6th hole, a 350 yard dogleg left par four with a wide layup area between 200 and 225 yards off the tee. There are trees surrounded by fescue on the left and out of bounds right so the architect's intention of setting you up for a 125-150 yard shot to a small diabolical green is quite obvious. At least it is to me.
I led off with a smooth 4-wood to the right center of the fairway so we had the momentum and a ball in play which I guess is why my partner decided to hit driver despite having no chance of reaching the green. He pulled it left into the shit.
Undaunted, I hit the kind of flighted three-quarter draw short iron to a back left pin that they write poems about. It curled to about five feet leaving me a tricky sidehill putt. My partner found his ball, hacked it around a bit and picked-up. My opponents made a par leaving me a putt to win the point. Cue my surliness and the golf gods.
As I lined it up, I asked my partner for help with the read stating that I was going to die it in. At this point it should be noted that I had already played my company golf outing in the morning so I had been drinking since breakfast. I've also been known to have a bit of a dark side which occasionally reveals itself on the course (we hadn't noticed).
The following exchange ensued:
Him: I wouldn't die it into the hole.
Me: Well I wouldn't have hit driver off the tee.
Him: OK then.
I then proceeded to hit the saddest putt you've ever seen. I mean this thing was like an abandoned puppy stranded in the rain. It barely got on line before the hill took it hard left. By the time it was done, I had gone from five feet to win the point to six feet to split the point. You can guess the rest.
The walk to the 7th tee and the wait to hit fourth after losing the honor was filled with about as much self-loathing as one man can generate in under five minutes. No one spoke so the only sounds were birds chirping and me murmuring.
The last three holes of the front nine are a bit of a gauntlet, especially when you suffer from aged induced diminishing distance. My approach shots were hit with a 4-wood, a hybrid and a cut 7-iron to clear the trees I drove left of on the 9th. However, I parred every one of those mutherfuckers including a 4-footer on the last to secure the point. Even my opponents might have been rooting for that putt to go in for the sake of anyone who crossed my path for the rest of the night.
I don't know what the moral or lesson is here. Maybe that three-putt was the turning point of my season or maybe it meant nothing. I will say that I played another match on Saturday where my partner hit driver on the 6th hole straight out of bounds on the right which felt like mild vindication. So I got that going for me. Which is nice.
As noted above, we will be offering no advice this week beyond the three required recommendations below. Aside from the fact that I've become a worse influence than the kid who started driving and smoking in 9th grade, this is only the second year at TPC Toronto so we have very little to go on besides Sam Burns finishing runner-up in 2025 so fuck it, we'll take him and some random Canadian as our sleeper. See you at Shinnecock.
One and Done Pick: Sam Burns
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| Might as well pick the MAGA guy playing in Canada. USA...USA...USA!!! |
Other Guy I'd Pick: Alex Fitzpatrick
Sleeper Pick: A.J. Ewart
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