Greg Price

I’m prepping for the Taber Times Ticker Tee Off, knowing full well where I stand on the golf food chain of how I can contribute to my foursome.
That was made abundantly clear to me in an earlier links excursion when the Setoguchi family held a fun scramble involving family and friends, in which I was lucky enough to be invited.
There I was situated with three golfers in Jordan Scheuerman, Jared Bell and Kyle Sargeant, who were unfortunately paired up with moi, your garden variety weekend hacker.
Now as far as weekend hackers go, I’m not that bad, being able to strike a solid ball on regular occasion, sink your odd birdie putt and hit drives that are not always having adjacent landowners to the golf course up their insurance rates.
But my ego was put in check relatively early on the second hole when I shot a majestic drive off the tee box. As the ball fluttered through the air you could almost see it being aided by angels’ wings and I could swear harps were playing in the background as it stuck approximately nine feet to the cup.
Just as I was getting ready to put my iron back in the bag and pat myself on the back, there was Bell with his patented fade, hook, slice, squeeze bunt, advancing the runner or whatever you call it in golf, sticking his drive within six feet of the cup. I learned very quickly that these guys had skills.
It would mark the beginning of a total of 18 holes where I cannot recall our team using one of my drives in the format in which there were no rules of how many drives for each person you had to use.
That is not to say I didn’t hit my fare share of solid drives, it just meant it was painfully obvious who were the superior golfers on the links for our team.
It’s like that feeling of a long-distance runner missing even the bronze medal by a couple of seconds because you spent too much time admiring the refreshment woman slowing down at one of the aid stations.
We used some of my chips and my putts, but I felt emasculated that none of my long irons were being used. It’s like Scheuerman, Bell and Sargeant were doing all the heavy lifting with about the only lifting I was doing was another cold, frosty beer to my mouth.
Maybe it’s just ego men possess when it comes to athletic endeavours, but I want to feel you contribute something to the team besides blinding white legs and the odd witty quip every third hole before I start slurring them after my seventh beer. I’d like to contribute some of the athletic relief along with the comedy relief.
It was still a blast golfing with those guys, but my bruised ego on the links was treated like a red-headed stepchild.
Luckily, the law of averages say in the Ticker Tee Off format that one of my drives will likely be used rolling the die, in which each player is assigned a number with five and six being wildcards in which any drive can be used. Hopefully, in the immortal words of Cleetus off of the Simpsons, when it’s “My time to shine,” my drive will not be one of those that barely make it past the women’s tee box.
Whatever happens though, I hope I have (almost) as much fun as I had in that scramble and one of the prizes I win is an air raid siren to locate my lost keys... but that’s another story altogether... a story I’m sure players at that scramble will continue to love to tell.