I’ll start this post with some golf and end it with some life perspective.

70 line items!

I spent this weekend on a golf trip with 7 other like minded bros. We traveled about 4+ hours to Deep Creek, Maryland where the rents are dirt cheap. Hafer, the spreadsheet aficionado, found us a $950,000 house that we rented for $1,500+ for the weekend. Getting 8 bros together to spend a weekend drinking and golfing in your 30’s is different than a rager in your 20’s. We are all relatively mature and got along the entire trip with literally 0 disagreements the entire time. Except for that one character…

We spent time shooting pool, playing pong, throwing bags, and watching sports while in the house. Essentially enjoying what life has to offer while drinking as many beers as possible. On Friday, we played a $29 course that was in the boonies to start our week. Kuratnick got us started by roping one down the middle while Hafer “birdied” 1 with a miracle shot that I wasn’t blessed to see, and can only imagine what it looked like. My game suffered early on until I rolled in a 12 foot par putt to take a double dot on 7. After that I started hitting the ball cleaner and finished with a respectable 99 (or 101 as I had it). My only bungle was calling lone wolf as Badgerow fired a tee shot into the woods only to have it strike a tree and roll back on the green and 10 feet from the hole.

John Daly statue

Day 2 was sweet livin’. We ventured 40 minutes to Nemacolin resort (rated #16 best course in PA by Golf Digest), specifically the Mystic Rock course. The round was $140 and came with a caddie. We hit some balls at their first class practice facility and then tee’d off. I wasn’t playing great by any means with 3 doubles in the first 4 holes but then I start pulling it together as I started drinking more. I used the caddie’s advice to make a par save on 5 and finished with a 46 on the front. Nothing special. I managed to birdie 11 and added another birdie on 16 (with more caddie help) to finish with a 41 back. Aside from one duffed drive, I was riding the fairway all day off the tee. The caddie also gave me a “tip” which will most likely save me hundreds of strokes throughout my life. Was it worth the pricey cost to play? Absolutely.

Here’s where this blog will get interesting. Having 7 other people together, you notice where they are in each stage of their life. 3 of the guys are married with kids and I’d remark that this is the biggest difference in a person’s life. One guy said to me, “I envy how you can spend money the way you do.” I replied, “I envy the fact you have a family”. What I mean by writing that is that you usually can’t have both. People who act the way I do don’t have responsibilities outside of themselves. What I learned, or already knew / further substantiated, is that no one knows exactly what to do in life. There isn’t a guaranteed path. You go through it the best way that YOU know how to and cross your fingers you are doing it right. Either way, I know that spending time on a weekend like this is living life.

I won’t forget almost smashing that jeep on hole 10 at the Oakland Club. Or the squad of Baker and myself being down 4 cups on our do or die to go to OT and then win the Beer Pong Tournament. Or Shmitt and Hafer’s hospitality for cooking for an entire group. This actually is a funny trait because if it was me, Evan and Kuratnick, we’d all be eating pizza. It’s weekends like this that don’t happen as often as they should. Until next time.