Today our Club Championship Tournament started. My play was…not good. Let’s just say that if I manage to shoot ten under par tomorrow, nobody would accuse me of being a sandbagger.
Before we started, I asked about someone I hadn’t seen in some time–Billy Mills. Billy was diagnosed with cancer last summer, and wasn’t expected to survive past Christmas. He did far better than that, and died only a couple of weeks ago.
The last time I played golf with Billy was in a match play tournament. He and I were in our flight’s finals. Billy was a hustler. I understand he shot pool and made a few bucks doing that, also. He always had several side bets going in any round of golf. He also only played as well as he had to. No more, no less. Just well enough to win. That way he could keep his handicap as high as possible to fleece the unwary.
In our match, I had a 3-foot putt on the third hole for a birdie, and he conceded it. As we walked to the next tee, he asked, “You had a par, right?” When I told him that he had conceded a birdie putt to me, his face dropped. He won the next two holes.
Then, on the sixth hole, I outdrove him. He hit a nice shot to the green. I then hit mine, and it bounced, rolled, and went into the hole for an eagle. Now, understand, I have only had two eagles in my life before that. Once on a par five, then another with a hole in one. So it was a big surprise for me to hole out a shot from 130 yards.
The rest of the round went pretty much back and forth until we got to the 15th. I was down four holes, and he was looking to close out the match. I hit a nice drive and had about 170 yards to the hole. He hit his second shot on the green, and I followed. My shot hit the green, bounced twice, and rolled into the hole for another eagle. I thought Billy was going to cry. I made as many eagles in one round as I had made in my entire previous golfing career.
Billy was very quiet. He had me down three with three to play, and was determined to finish me off. I played the next hole badly, and he won it, along with the match. Only then did he get a smile, the first all day. “You can eagle the rest of the holes now for all I care!” Somehow, I won the side bet that day.
Nobody didn’t like Billy, and he will be missed.