It finally happened: a full card without a zero. A point every hole. Sometimes more. If the achievement in Stableford has a name, I don’t know if it. And for me it came with asterisks.
Asterisk number one: The course is short, thrillingly so at 4300 yards from the whites. The slope is nearly flat. But the shots are legit and the greens are small and quirky. And the Park was set up with Sunday pins that Wednesday afternoon.
Asterisk number two: The great company. I’ve never had better company with the groupings and playing partners at any other course. The company on this round started behind me, driving a cart and with a dog in tow. A man drive the cart, and played two balls. A woman rode shotgun and stood up.
We met, backed up on maybe the scariest par three: a promontory of green hanging on the side of a hill, with tight lies left and severe slope right. He was a leftie and hit it to within three feet. From there, I was able to keep making fairways and missing greens, but missing close enough to get lots of 3-point putts, a few 2-point tap-ins, and of course a clutch of dirty points.
But it was on the par five, number 15, that the asterisk showed up. The course is so short that that is the name of the hole: the par five. Here my discipline wavered. Way off schedule and with a very long putt, the otherwise discontented company in the cart pronounced both putts to be good.
Is it a gimme if it comes from the gallery? We know Stableford has no gummies. Well, I took the point. And followed it with three legitimately crooked numbers to get home with a card free of zeros.
Just one of the games within the game.