Bunker Mulligan "Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry." ~Mark Twain

My weekend golf group, the self-proclaimed Dewbusters, are wonderful playing partners. Most have been playing together for many years, and I feel it an honor to have been accepted into the group. We have, permanently reserved, the first two tee times every Saturday and Sunday morning. Our bunch can number anywhere between four and twelve each round, and we divide ourselves up as we hit range balls in the pre-dawn darkness. Bob Fox, who “owns” the tees times, makes up teams before we go, and then we all head for the first tee box when he determines we are “burning daylight.”

Within each group of four (or five) playing the round, we have our own games going. Often it is a simple round-robin four-ball. Sometimes we play Wolf. And sometimes there are games within games where two players have had a running Nassau for more than a decade. At the end of the round we each throw a five into the pot, and members of the winning team get their five back. The rest of the money is split up for birdies, skins, and greenies.

We play fast, which is how most of us like it. Nothing is as unsettling as being behind a slow group of golfers, especially one with players of little ability playing as if they were tour pros. We don’t have that problem within the group.

Ah, the Group Ahead®. How terrible it is to be the group behind. Always waiting. I am often amazed to watch golfers in the Group Ahead® wait for the Group Ahead® of them. As I stand on the tee box waiting for the Group Ahead® to play their second shots, I marvel at the player standing at his ball in the rough 200 yards off the tee waiting for the Group Ahead® of him to clear the green 250 yards further away. He could not hit the fairway on his drive, and anticipates hitting the green–from a bad lie. So, I wait for him. Then he slices it into worse trouble.

Of course, I can then tee off–and wait again as he searches for his ball. With any luck he finds it quickly and is soon putting. Well, at least he is now looking at his putt. From every angle. Three times. By this time I’ve become unsettled enough that there is no way my approach is going to hit the green, and no chance we’ll finish the hole quickly enough to press them to allow us to play through. So we wait. Every hole. Until the break finally happens and we are invited to play through as they search once again for that stray ball.

Now we are the Group Ahead®. Of course, we all hit terrible shots in our rush to get out of the way, trying to be polite to those who just gave up the next hole to us. It is a law of nature that this happens.

For me, being in the Group Ahead® is as unsettling as being the group behind. When someone in my group is playing slowly, I rush. I don’t want to be the Group Ahead®. I don’t want to be the group holding up play. I want to press forward quickly and get some space between us and the group we just played through. Only then can I relax and settle into my own game.

The real paradox of the whole thing is that once we’ve put some turf between us and the group behind, we generally end up pressing the next Group Ahead®. And we come full circle.

Which is one reason why golf is such a mental challenge. And why Bobby Jones said the most challenging part of golf is the the course between your ears.

The Dewbusters don’t have those worries. We tee off first, and send our fastest players out in the first group. We can concentrate on golf. And the side bets.