Afternoon golf is pure fun. The majority of golfers who participate in afternoon leagues have just finished their work day, or cut it short to arrive on time. The fact that you’ve had to toil away at work all day just makes the time to play golf all that much sweeter.
In years past our local muni had a much enjoyed and heavily played Twilight League. Unfortunately a change in administration caused the league to collapse for a few seasons. Last year we managed to resurrect the league with a grass roots effort, so to speak. We still play a similar format to the old league but organization is kind of fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants each week. In stark contrast to most handicapped and heavily organized golf events our A-B-C-D pairings are completely simplistic, yet somehow it all works. The goal is simple: everyone has fun.
The buzz about this season’s Twilight League started about a week ago. It is gratifying to know that a lot of players are happy to have the league back on track and anxious for the spring start up. With little fanfare we spread the word, or so we thought, and set a date for last Thursday.
Despite optimum weather conditions apparently the word didn’t spread as expected. Four o’clock found just five of us hanging around looking for a game. Not to be deterred, our fearless leader (known far and wide as a golfing machine) came up with a format we could still enjoy. I know, fivesomes are generally off limits, but the course was deserted except for two lonely singles and the tee was wide open. Two vs. three, we stepped to the tee as a group. There was a little bit of trash talking, a couple changes in format to make it more interesting and plenty of laughs. I even scored an ad-hoc, on course chipping lesson before we were done. And aside from a single on the ninth hole, we never saw another soul. We couldn’t have asked for a better start to the season.
Golf is an amazing game, when five players, handicaps spread from scratch to twenty-something, can throw together a match and compete on equal ground. Someone that evening called it right off the bat: that our little fivesome would be more fun than a mid-season league with a full field. He was right.
