My regular group of players like to participate in Men’s Night and Senior Men’s morning. It was a fun way to talk to other member’s of Osprey Links Golf Course and it offers an opportunity to play games for small prizes. The challenge to playing these games is finding ones that are fair to all the players of different playing levels. The toughest game is the ‘dog fight’, which we played last Thursday for Senior Men’s. We played great, but did not gain any ground on the top team.

The format for this (there are different variations) the ‘dog fight’ is pretty simple. On each hole, one player plays best ball and the other three players play a scramble. Over the course of 18 holes, each player had to play a par 3, 4, and 5 independently. On each hole we added the best ball and scramble scores together! This is a very challenging format, especially if your team has a large variation of handicaps.

To make things fair for the prizes, the organizers flight the scores and in the case of last Thursday, we had the third best overall score, but were flighted out of the prizes. Our combined score of 4 over, 146, was our best to date. However, we still finished 5 strokes back from the winners. Congrats to them and better luck to us next time.

Interestingly, we scored very well because our approach shots were the best of the year. We hit many balls within 10 feet and converted the putt. So, as the scramble portion of each hole gained a stroke, the best ball portion usually lost a stroke. Overall, we shot 10 birdies and 12 bogies and a double; the rest were pars. I have to give an honourable mention to Rick who came to within 2 inches from hitting a hole in one. He did, however, win closest to the hole! At least that is something.

We were very happy with our performance over the 18 holes. We played our best as a team all year and yet could not climb our way to the top of the leaderboard. This happens and to be fair to the winning team, they are stronger golfers than us on a day to day basis. We begrudge them for winning, but we will that this as inspiration to try and play better next time.

Golf is an interesting sport. On most days, our best round would have resulted in winning a prize, but alas it was not so last Thursday. We cannot complain because in the past we have played terribly and walked away with a prize. It really is the nature of the beast.

Regardless if we win a prize or not, we want to thank the organizers of Men’s Night and Senior Men’s and Osprey Links Golf Course for putting in the time to make golf fun. We look forward to playing in these events each week and who knows, maybe this upcoming week will be our turn to win.

I am a grateful golfer! See you on the links!