An Awkward Position! (Part 3)

Fast forward 24 hours and I’m alerted by Neil that the club we had played had posted on their Facebook page that they lost by some “Unsportsmanlike tactics”!!! How is playing by the rules “Unsportsmanlike”? Surely that would mean that we cheated, which we certainly did not! What was even more disappointing was to see that a member of our club, who had absolutely nothing to do with the match, had taken it upon himself to comment on the post, apologizing on behalf of our club and offering to pay for a round of golf and lunch for the two guys we had played, one of his friends, another member of our club, then commented offering to make up a four ball and split the cost! For the next week, every post I read on Facebook from him had some comment about playing the game in the correct “spirit”. I felt terrible, I’d played the game by the rules but felt like the bad guy. What was even more upsetting for me was, on the odd occasion I’d played golf with them, I’d really enjoyed myself and felt like I got on really well with both of them and would never shy away from putting my name down on the competition signup sheet alongside them. They’re both well known members at my club and both very interesting and likeable characters, but how can I now go out and spend 4 hours with people who I know, don’t support me and probably have a negative opinion of me? Were they right to do what they did? That’s up to them, but to put it on a public page was upsetting for me and I’m yet to speak to either of them about it, and probably won’t as I really don’t want any confrontation. Whether our opponents will take them up on their offer, I don’t know, and I hope I never find out if I’m honest. The whole situation was blown way out of proportion and far too many people had heard about it and had an opinion on it, although on a more positive note, pretty much everyone else backed us up and had the same notion on it as us, we’d played by the rules. End of.

I was the spearhead for the whole ordeal, and will openly admit that, although Neil always says, “Enter as team, win and lose as a team”, I feel like I bared the brunt of the negative comments, maybe that’s my anxiety rearing its ugly head though. Neil and I have decided that going forward, he deals with all situations that occur, I don’t feel like I approached the problem in a brash or harsh way on the day but if he has another way of dealing with those kinds of issues, then he is more than welcome to take the lead.

I’m sure this blog post will probably divide opinion; in some respects, I really wish I hadn’t bothered “pulling out the rules book” but like I said earlier, what’s the point in playing a game if you aren’t going to play by the rules. It would be great to hear some comments, positive or negative.

Happy golfing!