It Pays to Putt
Drive for show, putt for Pappy: Louisville basketball fan makes full-court putt to win bottle of 23-year-old Pappy Van Winkle
Across 49 great states of this vast nation, there is one universal adage that holds firm and true, as resolute as the desk that resides in the Oval Office: Drive for show, putt for dough. Even if you’ve never picked up a golf club, you get the broad strokes. It means the devil is in the details. It means slow and steady wins the race. It means genius is 1% inspiration, 99% percent perspiration. But you’ll notice we said “49." There is one little old place where the words go a bit different. That place is Kentucky, and in Kentucky you drive for show, and putt for Pappy.
We’ve seen this sort of thing 1,000 times now. A local hero drains 9a 6-foot bomb in front of thousands of screaming college basketball fans and ascends right there on the spot. Usually the reward is something like tuition, a new Nissan, or, um, U.S. Senior Open practice round tickets. But like we said, this is Kentucky. There isn’t an education on the line or a guy in a leprechaun suit jumping around trying to make Champions Tour practice round tickets seem like a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. Instead there’s just 750 milliliters of America’s finest bourbon shining like a light in the storm of life.
Sure, you can’t take a bottle of Pappy Van Winkle to the bank and cash it like a giant novelty check for three grand, but the life lesson it teaches is priceless: Unless you want to spend the rest of your life drinking Old Crow, you better start working on your short game.