Dead last is a good thing.

So the other day my buddy Matt McNair, a friend of mine from church, called me up to see if I wanted to go golfing. Does anyone ever really NOT want to go golfing? Because if I ever decide not to go golfing, it's not because I don't want to, but rather, because something else has precluded my opportunity. In this particular case, Matt wanted me to go golfing during a shift of mine at Starbucks, and I wasn't sure whether I could get it covered. Then he told me we'd be golfing for free. I've never gotten a shift covered so quickly in my life.

What Matty didn't tell me was that we were playing in a charity golf tournament at St. Ives Country Club, one of the nicer golf courses I've ever seen. Matt and some of the other church musicians had been given a foursome entry by someone at Perimeter who wanted to support the cause, WellSpring, a program that helps women who are victims of abuse. The ticket price: $1200 per group of four. Safe to say, this was a rare opportunity.

When we got to St. Ives that morning I noticed that everyone else on the driving range was much better at golf than we were. They were driving out of sight and I was still getting used to having free range balls.



We had a blast golfing, and I think I did pretty well for me, considering I was the only person at St. Ives who forgot their putter. I was lucky we were playing a variation of best ball where you get to play from the best drive, because I'm confident that I hit more houses than fairways (Houses 3, Fairways 2). I'm not sure why they live so close to the golf course anyway; just asking for trouble. House hunting has a whole new meaning at St. Ives.

So after our round we went into the clubhouse for lunch and the awards ceremony. They posted the scores for the 30 different foursomes, and we noticed ours was the only one in black, the rest listed in red. I soon discovered this was because our score was the only one over par. They also announced the awards for closest to the pin and longest drive holes. Apparently you can't win closest to the pin from a sand bunker, and when they say longest drive, they're not talking about the amount of time in the golf cart looking for your ball. I should've gotten an award for most balls donated to the local habitat...

So the Winners of the golf tournament got new Golf Bags, which looked amazing, and second and third place also received some amazing prizes, and then they decided to call up to the front the group that got dead last. I figured they had a right to have a chuckle at our expense, which they did in good fun, and then came the greatest part of all: Last place got a prize! To encourage us to improve our game, so as not to come in next year with such abysmal scores, we each got 6 free golf lessons!
I've never had a lesson, so I'm really excited to learn about all the things I'm doing wrong. I think it's safe to say this is the first time I've ever enjoyed being dead last.