I turned down a free round at the best course in the world, twice, because I'm weird about golf

Golfpocalypse is a collection of words about golf (professional and otherwise) with very little in the way of a point, and the Surgeon General says it will make you a worse person. Reach out to The Golfpocalypse with your questions or comments on absolutely anything at shane.spr8@gmail.com. We'll publish the best emails here.

I should probably warn you that large parts of what you're about to read will make you hate me, and for various reasons. That's OK. I accept the risk, because I know my behavior looks weird and stupid from the outside, and if the price of confession is other people going, "this guy sucks," then maybe that's exactly what I deserve.

What I'm about to describe has been going on for years, but it came to a head when my colleague Joel called me ahead of the Open Championship at Portrush in Northern Ireland this summer and said, "if you can get here a day early, I got us on at Royal County Down."

Now, some people think of Royal County Down as the best course in the world, and it's near the top of various rankings. And it's not like I get many chances at this kind of thing. It will be a very long time, if ever, before I'm in Northern Ireland with a chance to play it again, much less for free. Sounds like a pretty good offer I should have accepted immediately, right? Well, when he finished speaking, these were the four thoughts that came instantly to my head:

1. I'll have to leave my family earlier on what's already a long trip, and I don't want to do that.
2. They'll find a way to screw up my flights and I'll probably miss it anyway.
3. Even if I get there, I'll be tired from travel, play like hell, and be miserable.
4. I can probably say no and blame my wife, even though I have a cool wife who would let me go.

Here's a thought that never came to my head:

1. Oh wow, a free round at Royal County Down! I'm so excited! I have to find a way to make this work!

This is a bizarre way to think about such an opportunity. It's the chance of a normal golfer's lifetime, and I didn't even have a good excuse to say no, but from the minute the words left his lips, my brain's entire capacity was used up working out the best way to opt out. Which I did. And then, when the week of the Open came, I got a second offer to play Royal County Down, also for free, and I said no again because the concept of playing it without my clubs held no appeal for me.

Now, you might read all that and think, this guy doesn't actually love golf, because nobody who loves golf would turn that down. But I do! I swear. I took the game up late, but now I play all the time, I think about my game all the time, and in the hours spent consumed by the sport I can out-junkie most people.

Here's my actual problem: My enjoyment of golf is based overwhelmingly in my own performance. I love feeling like I'm decent to good at this game, I love competing, I even love the grind of trying to get better (insofar as you can call it a "grind" when you're not doing this for a living). Breaking 100, then breaking 90, then breaking 80, then breaking 75 … these were some of the truly joyous moments of my life. And in theory, sure, I'd love to take a trip to Ireland or Scotland and play some beautiful links courses on my own time.

But if I'm going to be in a position where I'll be tired and a course will eat me alive? I'm not going to have fun. I learned that the hard way the first time I played overseas, last summer at the Open in Scotland, and I wrote about it here. My first international round came about an hour after stumbling into my AirBnB following a 48-hour travel nightmare, and though it was a beautiful course on beautiful land, it was totally wasted on me because I was exhausted and terrible. I would have preferred just walking the land.

My colleague Luke Kerr-Dineen was the first one who put it explicitly for me: The more you care about how you play, the less you care about where you play. Speaking more generally, he said, "the more obsessed you are with your own game, the less you care about course stuff." It's a spectrum, sure, but the truth is that most of us will definitively belong in one camp or the other. I'd rather shoot 75 at a dog track then 100 at St. Andrews. The response to this you sometimes get is "you're not good enough to care that much," but I've never bothered myself with what expectations people think I should have. I just have them, like it or not, and it colors my outlook on everything, including the specific ways I feel romantic about the game. I'm on the opposite side of the spectrum from someone who would say a sentence like, "a bad day on the course is better than a good day in the office."

What's funny is that I can become attached to a course, but again, it's dependent on how I play. I've played courses like Royal New Kent in Richmond, Va., and The Bog outside Milwaukee that I still think about fondly, and it's about the way those courses look and feel, but I also know in my heart that playing poorly would have made those feelings impossible. I am a very self-centered man.

But I also know myself, and my justification for saying no to Royal County Down is that I'm old enough not to base my decisions on what I should like, but instead on what I do like. So when the weekend came and I could have been on one of the world's greatest courses, I was instead at a local pool cursing the unrelenting North Carolina heat and telling my daughter for the thousandth time that no, she can't have a second ice cream sandwich from the snack bar. But though that may have looked like a bad decision, I didn't regret it for a minute.

• • •

At this point in the post I would usually transition to tour thoughts and picks and all the usual stuff, but frankly the reader email submissions this week, on the topic of "tell me the best golf offer you've ever turned down," were so good that I'm just going to run a bunch of those. Enjoy!

Landon:

35 years ago, While attending a Masters practice round as a patron, my dad was offered a spot as a Marshall for the tournament days. He declined bc of work pressure (felt he needed to travel home as planned), and missed his opportunity for a yearly tee time at Augusta.

Connor:

The regular guy I caddied for back in the day had an open spot in his group at Butler National that I was offered. All expenses covered. Only problem was that it was the same week as my graduate program orientation, and my long-distance girlfriend didn’t take too kindly to my idea of skipping the orientation (and visiting her) to play Butler National. So I had to turn down Butler. When I emailed my advisor to tell them I was coming to orientation, he was shocked that I was traveling in for the non-mandatory event. Said girlfriend and I are no longer together and 10 years later I still haven’t gotten an invite back to Butler.

Patrick:

My dad, who was within a year of retirement, was offered by a client to go to Cypress. He had to pass because he didn’t think it would be following the company’s Code of Conduct. When he told his boss a few months later, his boss said he was “a f***ing idiot."

Jonathan:

I play local competitive golf here in Michigan, and have been going to the same coach for 12+ years. Back in 2016, my ultimate LPGA crush was Suzann Pettersen. I was also just trying to start my career as a financial advisor. My coach asked me to play in an outing at a local, nondescript public course on a summer Monday. I had a standing Monday meeting with our Managing Director, and I had missed this a few times in recent weeks, so I said no. My coach sends me a picture of him with Suzann, while I was in the meeting! I was so pissed he didn't tell me she would be there! I could have played a round with my all time LPGA crush. You don't know what you don't know.

Wally:

In 2007 just prior to the U.S. Open at Oakmont, American Express held a card member event there. I had a spot to play, but had to back out because my wife was going through severe postpartum issues after the birth of my first child and I didn't think I could leave them. I found out a couple of days later that Tiger Woods showed up to the event, played a hole with each group, and hung around taking pictures afterwards. So, I not only missed out on a chance to play Oakmont, but also to both play a hole with Tiger and get my picture taken with him. Oh well, still the right call given the circumstances.

Trevor:

I turned down a chance to play Torrey Pines (in tournament conditions) because I didn’t have enough PTO. My dad through his work has made connections to play at some pretty nice courses and he got the opportunity through a work partner who was putting together groups to play Torrey to celebrate his retirement. My dad really wanted me to go but I just couldn’t do it cause I would have used all of my PTO for work and I already planned using some later in the year for a tournament. Still kind of regret it but my dad had a great time shooting 114 and making a 12 on the 18th.

Ken:

A wealthy golfing friend of mine grabs me and asks if I've ever heard of Pine Valley. Seems he was clueless on the prestige etc of PV. He'd been invited by his insurance company and knows nothing and wasn't sure if should go. I give him chapter and verse on PV. Now he's pretty interested. Asks if I want to join them. Took me 5 sec to accept. Now I'm all lathered up. Flying private, PV lodging, dinners, the whole gig. 2-3 weeks before our trip Hurricane Sandy plows through the NE and our trip got cancelled. Still waiting for that follow up visit.

ZB:

As a kid, I lived a few blocks from a nice golf course. My mom had a friend who worked at the clubhouse there and she was always offering me a job as a caddie. I'm not sure what her position was, but she insisted it was good money. I always turned her down because I'd rather have been skateboarding than carrying golf bags. Ten years later and 1,000 miles away, I realized that I had turned down the opportunity to caddie at Merion Golf Club. It still stings to think I could have been working there daily, and possibly even playing a round or two.

Lachlan:

I dated a girl years ago who said her Dad was a HUGE golfer. I didn't play at all at the time so it didn't mean anything to me. She kept asking "Do you want to play with him? He's a member at some fancy courses and could get you on." Me: "Nope. Thank you for the offer but I don't play."

We broke up and I started playing on a very casual level … I stink but know enough to appreciate a good course.I ended up asking her which courses she was talking about. She said he was President of Olympic Club and a member at Pine Valley. I could've played either/both and didn't even bother.

Sam:

Not my story but my stepdad got invited by the president of Furman to play Augusta in the 90s; his boss tells him no way or he gets fired, he calls and they reschedule. President passed away a week later.

Previously on Golfpocalypse:

I don't want your gimme putt, pal
I will no longer be entering nine-hole rounds, GHIN, and you can't make me
I will abandon my friends during a round. Does this make me a bad person?
Did I dishonor the game via handicap shenanigans?
Rory's Masters win was the ultimate "dudes crying" moment in golf
I want to be a draw alpha, not a fade beta
If you had to give up golf or sex for the rest of your life, which would it be?
I am the recent victim of golf snobbery, and I'm mad
Should the Tour just move to an F1 style schedule and be done with it?
I was the world's most annoying teenage golf maintenance worker
Can golf still be a spiritual experience in 2024?
There is nothing stranger than a golfer's brain...just ask us
I have the dumbest golf pet peeve, but I can't shake it
If you talk about politics on the course, please, for God's sake, stop
Loving Golf in 2024 is about finding where the money isn't
I believed in the magic of Tiger Woods when I was a kid, but I'm a cynic now
If you can enjoy playing golf alone, you have achieved Nirvana
I took 12 stitches to the head for golf before I even loved it
An annual 'Friends Ryder Cup' trip is the greatest thing in golf
Marshals at public golf courses need to get way meaner
I, and I alone, have the genius tweak to fix the Tour Championship
It cannot be fun to play golf when you're egregiously bad
Confession: I break clubs when I'm mad
Playing golf in bad weather makes me feel alive
Caring what other people think of your golf game is annoying to other people
Sympathize with Rory, because choking sucks