Gardeniaville Golf: May 21-23

Solid qualifying rounds earn a first round bye in TGA event:

Haggard and Three-Putt Willie ousted by tournament favorites

The Stone Creek, Stone Cold, Muni Miracle

Tips get Torched

Above: That tiny figure 200 ft up the mountain is actually Haggard looking for his tee ball.

With a soggy , debris filled, cart path only golf course ahead of us on Saturday there was only one logical set of tees to play from. That's right, tip it out boys! Everyone was pretty bummed out about the Stroke Play Club Championship being tornadoed out this weekend so we made a decision to play even if it meant driving away from the weather. A quick call from Hobie to Pepper Friday night at 10 pm settled it...Oakwood in Enid at 9am. It certainly seemed like a good idea at the time to everybody but Pepper. Fortunately for Pepper, when I showed up to Cedar at 6am to pick up the clubs they were open for play.

We threw the balls up to decide partners for a game of bridge. William and Haggards' balls must have some sort of magnets in them because they landed next to each other for the second week in a row. I actually think Haggard sits around in his living room practicing throwing golf balls up. Has anyone ever seen someone get the swing so many times? Hobie, KJ, and myself decide that with his double digit handicap KJ should captain our team. He is the best 10 in the country by the way.

William knocks his tee shot off of a house right on # 3 and lands it right in the middle of the fairway somehow. This was all of the omen we needed to never roll the drums for the entire day. William and Haggard got down somewhere along the way and got the points from 2 to 4 on KJ/Hob and then to 6 on KJ/Park. We certainly were not going to roll them the way Willy and Hag were striking it. At the turn William was 1 over, Hag 2 over, myself 3 over, KJ 4 over, and Hobie was playing with his nuts somewhere around 6 or 7 over.

We could never gain any ground on the back nine. William was still on fire and Haggard is the best golfer on the planet from 90 yards out of his own fairway. If he ever figures out his driver we are in big trouble. It is hard to time that swing wild ass swing up though! William rolled in a birdie on 18 to come in at 1 over. I don't care who you are, one over on that wet ass course from the tips is about as hard as finding a happy wife after an Emergency Nine. I finished with a 77 playing the par threes five over. Haggard shot a 78 from the wrong fairway. KJ played well enough in the middle of Hobie and I to keep us from losing a fortune. Hobie scraped around in the low-mid eighties with a far cry from his 'A' game.

With limited drum rolling nobody got hurt too bad. Although we would have loved to see Pepper D, it was a pretty damned good day in Gardeniaville.

Side bar: Apparently our boy Whitworth played a round with Tony Romo today. Thank God none of Whit's fraternity brothers were there. It would have been embarrassing when they started with Whit's flag football MVP stories. I can hear Hobie now, " Our boy Whitworth here took his team to the Championship game ten years in a row! What the hell is your problem Tony?"

Sandbagger Title for Gardeniaville

Above: Stitt launches one towards water hazard


This Saturday was the annual Sandbagger tournament at at Cedar. The format was a pure scramble with handicaps. The sum of the four handicaps divided by four was the number of shots each team would get. Team Flegler/Walker/Haggard/Park won 1st place gross. There were a few points at stake after some side betting broke out. Gardeniaville residents Keith Stitt and Hobie Higgins teamed up with Pastor Bill Scheer and comedian/actor Rodney Carrington. The results were in fact comical. Park and Haggard wagered a few points with Stitt and Hobie. It was clear after a few holes that the only way for Stitt and Hobie to avoid surrendering points was for a rainstorm to wash out the tournament. No such luck. After a early clutch putts from Haggard and Walker and overall great ball striking from Flegler, Park was able to hole his approach shot for eagle on 18th ( 5th hole of the day). Haggard bombed a drive to 70 yards on and Park used skills learned at the Dave Pelz short game school to do the rest. They were able to carry this momentem for several holes giving themselves a lead that would be unable to squander.



Keith, Hobie, Bill and Rodney did play well enough to come in T4 in the Gross Division. They would have most likely contended for the title if not for two of their members having trouble getting to bed at a reasonable time Friday evening. Any guesses who those two may be?

Kentucky Derby Saturday at Cedar

Does anybody want to get together on Saturday to watch the race? We are going to Cedar to watch in the bar. The race is scheduled for 5:25. Maybe Haggard and Keith will hit a big trifecta again. It will be good for the rest of Gardeniaville if they do. Any outside money they can win will surely find its way into the Gardeniaville economy through ill advised golf bets!

TSC Charity Golf Tournament

Yesterday was the annual Tulsa Sports Charity Golf Tournament. Gardeniaville was represented by Keith, Haggard, Walker and myself. Keith was kind enough to get our team entered in the tournament. In typical Keith style, he had our team pay almost double the normal entry fee to allow us access to the pre-tournament celebrity party. The problem was that nobody could attend this party due to prior engagements. However, since it was for charity I will let him off of the hook for this one.

The format for the tournament was a 6 man scramble with each team having a couple of famous former athletes on their team. We only had five people on our team, but we did get a couple of ex Oklahoma Sooner stars on our team...Paul Thompson and Chris Haggard. The only difference between Paul and Haggard was that Haggard had to pay to enter the tournament. I believe he only devalued about 20 pieces of OU memorabilia with his autograph before a tournament official asked him who the hell he was and if he would please stop signing shit.

The weather didn't cooperate for the first few holes and it was a cold and rainy start. Paul was probably wondering what in the hell he had gotten himself into. He was freezing his ass off out in the rain playing golf with the only team in the field that was actively rooting against one another. We decide to play a side game amongst the four of us. We left Paul out of this game because it was obvious that he was much more proficient at throwing a football than hitting a golf ball. The game was simple. The furthest away from the hole on each approach shot owed those closer to hole 20 points each. Well, as we all know nothing that Keith is involved in is ever simple. On the sixth hole par three I hit first to about twenty five feet. Keith followed my shot with a shank that seemed to be a lock for furthest from the hole. Walker steps up and hits a decent shot to the middle of the green. Haggard follows with a miserable chunked six iron that looks every bit as bad as Keith's shank. It was going to be close. After twenty five minutes of pacing each ball to hole, Keith is convinced that we are all taking baby steps to his ball while long striding the journey out to Haggard's ball. Out comes the range finder of course! After another ten minutes of dialing in the Bushnell the results finally came in. They were both exactly 41 yards from the hole! Keep in mind that the hole was only playing about 165 yards. It is pretty hard to miss a 165 yarder by 41 yards but these clowns did it for sure! I was there. Most people that hit such horrible shots would step up and show some balls and split the bill for the two balls that hit the green. Not the case here with Haggard and Stitt. They refused to pay on grounds that...well I am not sure what grounds they refused to pay but they didn't. Stitt then had the nerve to call me spineless on the next tee box. He is a very delusional man.

After this fiasco I am sure that Thompson is convinced that he got the unluckiest draw of any of the athletes. He was kicking himself for not winning the Heisman which would have allowed him to play with a better class of people. Do you think Jason White was having to deal with this shit? Seriously Paul is a great guy and it was a fun day for all. By the time we rolled around to the 15th hole he broke out the I-pod, hooked it to Keith's cart speaker, and we were teeing off while listening to Usher. Haggard bombed a drive and immediately bit his lower lip and started bobbing his head proclaiming that he "Felt like dancing!". I thought for a minute that we might have a reenactment of the scene in the movie Hitch where Will Smith is having to teach Kevin James how to dance. Somehow we got off the tee box with no further dancing, eliminating embarrassing the shit out of Paul by having four overweight middle aged white boys hip hop dancing around him on the 15th tee. It was a close call though!

By the time we rolled around to the last hole I was surprisingly down the most points at -140 The guys graciously accepted my press to 40 points on the final hole. Keith and Walker hit great shots to a few feet after Haggard chunked his shot into the creek (#3 was our finishing hole). All I had to do was advance the ball over the creek to avoid losing the hole. Chunk! Creek! We decide to re hit to determine the loser. Haggard hits to about 15 feet and I somehow lay one to about 6 avoiding total disaster.

Walker was the only winner of the four at +140. I lost the most at a smooth 100. Hag and Keith lost 20 each. Our team ended up in 3rd place.

It was a very fun tournament with lots of great food, drinks, and people. I believe they said that there were 7 former Heisman winners there. I encourage everybody to try to play next year. It was a good day!

William Loses Putter, Points, and Mind

Saturdays matchup between Buergler/ Hawk vs. Haggard/ Park was a fairly tame Vegas match considering the presence of Haggard. It basically worked out where he was up most of the round thus eliminating the every hole rolling of the drums. Buergler and Hawk had a little trouble feeling out who was supposes to be the "A" player in their group. Especially after William barely gets past the ladies tees on two and Hawk procceds to go fishing in Little Haikey. William makes a brilliant up and down to save par which would become the highlight of his round. Anybody who knows this game is very aware of the fact that it is much better to have your highlights on 16 or 17, not 2.

Williams putting became an issue early on and he would never get it together. After a three putt on eight, he actually lost control of one of his famous fake club tosses. The weather could have been an issue. William is not known for playing his best in anythng but warm and fast conditions.

Haggard and Park ham and egged it fairly well. They made 176 points in the match and earned another 100 points having the swing. Park did almost miss his tee shot on 16. The ball barely cleared the creek and did not make the ladies tees. It was a horrble driving day for him, but Haggard covered him well.

Hobie had to take a preround dump, thus putting him the group behind the Vegas game and saving him many points.

DAY ONE: THE NIGHT

Round 2 Recap will come later... Maybe. In the meantime the following account is the best I can do.

Time 8:00pm - 3:00am PST

After getting drilled for 18 holes at the Stadium Course by Park/Jennings, Keith and I were distraught. It is tough to lose to Jennings on any occasion, but it is made especially worse when you are verbally abused. Everyone knows the details by now, details would be redundant. What you can take away from this is how much more difficult it made a loss to him to handle.

I was sick, I had to drown my sorrows. I chose to do so with a couple double Goose and Sodas (maybe more than a couple). The group headed to Palmer's Restaurant. A putting green behind the bar made the 2 hour wait for a table seem like 5 minutes. In my drunken stupor I managed to win $100 in a putting contest from less drunk but still much worse golfers.

We sit down and enjoyed a wonderful dinner. William was canned. I mean canned. Not many people get to enjoy William as drunk as he was this night. Sipping vino, legs crossed, hair hanging over his eye, mustache in full force, and the patented, "I'm so much smarter (pretty sure I'm better) than you", smirk all over his face.

I thought I would take advantage of Will in his numbed state. Whit and I challenged Will/Green to $20 Vegas for the following morning. They accepted. I ordered Will several more glasses of the House Cab he was drinking. It backfired. He quit drinking which forced me to down about 2 bottles of some Greg Norman shit. It was good at 11pm, but not so good at 2am.

We stumbled out of the bar, and I remember nothing else until 2am. This is vague, but again to the best of my knowledge. Green gets woke out of bed because they are about to tow his car. It wakes me up too. Green gets up to move his car, I tell him he is a dumbshit and to keep it down. Next thing I know... PUKE! PUKE! and more PUKE! Did not make it to the bathroom, trashcan or even out of my bed. I puked Shitty Norman Cab/Arnie Filet all over the bed. Threw the sheets onto the front porch and went back to bed.

Proceeded to not break 90 the next day, and lost about 3000 points to anyone who was smart enough to bet me. The only good thing about that night was that William had to pick up the tab.