Most Embarrassing Single Moment On The Course

I've had a quite a few embarrassing moments. My golf "career" started in high school when I joined the golf team having never played golf before in my life. Talk about a character building decision... The golf coach was kind enough to allow me to remain on the team despite my obvious inability to play any sort of sensible golf. I joined the team with a few buddies. We didn't even know if we needed our own clubs. Day one I showed up with a set of JR clubs having had one "practice round" and maybe 2 "practice sessions" at the local park. My buddy had his moms old set of women's clubs. I knew nothing about golf. When we arrived at the first practice session we almost immediately walked away and called it quits. Most players had their own leather tour bags and high end golf clubs. At least I didn't show up empty handed.

The first drill the coach had us attempt was hitting pitch shots into range buckets at about 20 yards away. There were a decent number of really good players that obviously had no issues with this. My buddies and I would wait for the coach to turn around before attempting our shots. I managed to shank a shot so bad it went dead right and bounced behind every golfer on the team. As it passed each player they would turn around and pick their heads up and look down the line to find the culprit. I tried desperately to play it off and was more concerned with whether my coach saw it or not.

One of my first tournaments I teed up with a driver (despite my coaches advice to hit an iron) on the first hole with about 15-20 people standing around. I hit a pulled sky ball that landed about 150 yards away in the golf course parking lot; luckily without doing any damage. I could not get away from that tee box and down the fairway fast enough. Back in those days we picked up after double par and I barely managed to score under double par after 9 holes.

I got my letter in golf though!