Earlier this week, the MyGolfSpy team descended upon the Arizona desert to do battle at the Grass Clippings Open qualifier, the lead-in to the springtime jewel of Grass League, the high-stakes par-3 concept featuring fields of pros and elite amateurs.
This was an incredible opportunity for us at MGS. To skip ahead to the ending, it was an epic experience.
With the ability to field three two-man scramble teams in the qualifier, our staff held our own 18-hole shootout to see who would represent us. We got together in Williamsburg, Va., last month at The Shoe, Golden Horseshoe Golf Club’s par-3 course.
Andrew Zanzig (aka the Mayor of Carlsbad) took medalist honors while Chris Nickel, Adam Phillips, Rob Colella, Phil Bishop and myself rounded out the squad. We deliberated on teams and came to the conclusion that we would field these teams:
With UNRL uniforms in hand and an amazing support staff documenting our journey, we gathered in Tempe, Ariz., to see if we could hold our own against a remarkably deep field.
On Tuesday, we played a practice round and got acquainted with the friendly vibe of Grass Clippings Rolling Hills, highlighted by the otherworldly tacos at the Glenrosa Restaurant and the Church Music IPA at the outside bar as misting fans cooled us.
As for the course and the scale of the event, it got the energy flowing. For all of us single-digit handicaps, it had that feeling of the biggest event ever. Grandstands. A legitimate build-out. And the course immediately introduced itself as thorny—small greens, run-offs, wind, shots that required precision.
This was my first exposure to seeing Grass League and, by the end of Tuesday, I had this feeling building.
The event seemed to take the best parts of the traditional competitive golf experience and marry them with the new-age aspects of golf that we also love. Serious but not stuffy. A time to concentrate but a time for a few laughs, too.
Do you want to grind on the practice green doing drills? Go for it.
Do you want to drink a few beers while wearing gym shorts and a T-shirt? That works, too.
You could make it what you wanted it to be. We wanted a taste of both.
“It had that perfect mix—super fun, but with just enough pressure to get the competitive juices going,” Zanzig said.
The qualifier day finally arrives
All three of our teams were teeing off later in the afternoon on Wednesday. We spent the morning scoreboard watching—something none of us had ever really done at this level of golf—and figured that one of us would have to shoot around 6- or 7-under to make the cut.
The top 25 and ties among the 100 two-person teams were entered into a Thursday night draft where each of Grass League’s 11 franchises filled out their roster with two more teams each for the Grass Clippings Open, which takes place tonight and Saturday night with final-round coverage on Golf Channel (the tournament has a two-year deal with Golf Channel to broadcast the event).
Make sure to tune in Saturday night at 9 p.m. ET because it’s going to be spectacular theater.
This field is no joke. It’s littered with pros who have cut their teeth on the Korn Ferry Tour and elsewhere. The amateurs are mostly plus-handicaps. People come from all around the country just for the chance to qualify for the tournament.
To call this a David versus Goliath situation would be an understatement. We have some great players on our MGS staff but the level of golf the players in this field can reach is in a different stratosphere. And with the wind blowing strong in the afternoon, every weakness was going to get exposed that much more.
It would take our absolute best golf.
The Mayor and I are decent players but likely ranked dead-last or close to it in terms of handicap among all the teams. Andrew is around a 6 handicap and I’m about a 9.
Before I get into our round, here is the final leaderboard. These guys played some superb golf. Our playing partners, Micheal Visacki and Kaylor Steger, shot 10-under to tie for the lead. It was a true joy to watch them. At one point, they made eight consecutive birdies. Every putt they hit the entire day looked like it had a chance to drop (and most of them did).
They joined four other teams at the top. None of those five co-leading teams made a single bogey.
The cut, as expected, did fall at 6-under although it looked for a time like 5-under would have an outside chance of qualifying. There was no playoff this year—everyone who was T25 or better earned draft eligibility.
With our tee time at 2:06 p.m., Andrew and I headed off to the first tee knowing it was going to take an act of God for us to join the weekend party as players.
And, my goodness, the man upstairs was playing a little Church Music for us (but not the kind we could drink).
Playing golf in the competitive spotlight
I don’t play much competitive golf. I played junior golf and fuss around with men’s league but nothing where I’m going up against guys who are knocking on the door of the Korn Ferry Tour.
Tournament golf is a different beast. I wasn’t really prepared for that feeling.
During the practice round, I was dialed. My swing felt great and I naively thought our team had a fighting chance to survive and advance (shoutout, Jimmy V). We had decided on an Andrew-Sean batting order based on our chemistry during that round. Andrew would hit the middle of the green and I would go pin seeking.
During the actual qualifier, I was decidedly not dialed. My swing abandoned me and I, in turn, abandoned my very patient and encouraging partner on countless occasions. Writing this now, I still cringe thinking back to how many terrible shots I hit. It was the worst time to go cold.
You would assume that Andrew and I would both have to play out of our minds to even be sniffing the cutline.
Strangely, my limited but well-timed contributions and The Mayor’s fantastic ball-striking day somehow lined up for a round of golf that I will never forget.
This really speaks to the format and why Grass League is so cool. I could never be even remotely competitive playing my own ball in an individual tournament against this field. And if this was a two-player scramble on a regulation course, that would also hold true unless Scottie Scheffler was my partner.
But a two-person scramble on a par-3 course like Grass Clippings allows for some odd things to happen. It’s a great equalizer.
On the first hole, Andrew hit a shot to about 40 feet, leaving us a delicate, side-winding putt. After seeing his birdie putt break dramatically at the hole, I hit what might be, no exaggeration, the single best putt of my life. You could have given me a bucket of balls and I might not have made one.
This putt I hit would have gone into a thimble.
You can’t do better than -1 after the first. Even our partners, the future co-leaders of Visacki and Streger, made a par. We had the tee box honors on Nos. 2 and 3. We wouldn’t get it back until No. 17.
On the second, the Mayor almost went Vince Carter Slam Dunk Contest on the tee shot. I thought our 10-foot birdie try wouldn’t break much and that read proved correct as Andrew poured one home.
Now we’re starting to feel like UMBC versus Virginia. Hey, why not us?
That answer came loud and clear in the ensuing four holes where we went 2-over. I might as well have gone to the bar for drinks as the Mayor was essentially playing the front nine alone.
We bogeyed No. 4, which we later learned was the single easiest hole for the qualifier. That we also bogeyed the long and into-the-wind fifth hole—the single most difficult hole of the day—was not as hard to stomach.
At this point, the 16-seed was starting to look like a 16-seed. You remember UMBC clobbering Virginia but you don’t remember Northwest Arkansas State being down 38 at halftime to Kansas.
But, sometimes, just when everything seems lost, there is a little-known white dude who goes absolutely nuclear from beyond the arc. The threes start falling and momentum turns.
I was in a mental straitjacket but I had Andrew. And the Mayor was in his office. Unlike that little-known white dude making threes out of nowhere, the Mayor is highly known. He can’t walk 10 feet without saying hello to someone he knows. That’s why he’s the Mayor.
On No. 7, he stuffed the piñata and made a solo birdie to pull us out of wreckage. On No. 8, a pretty tough hole back into a stiff wind, he rolled home a 30-footer right in the jaws for another solo birdie.
After a solid par on the difficult ninth, we were headed to the back nine at 2-under. The dream was alive.
Trying to make a back-nine charge
The two nines used for the Grass Clippings Open are wildly different but played to nearly the same stroke average during the qualifier. The front nine is much longer (1,346 yards/1,206 yards) but you would be making a mistake to think the back nine is significantly easier. The margins are small.
The back nine is full of short wedge shots to diabolical greens that are tilted. Getting your distance right is hard. Surpsingly, the downwind tee shots can be even tougher than those into the wind.
We fell into a lull early on the back nine with a few sleepy pars. We could see the cutline hovering around 5-under. The wind, which was gusting ferociously at points, gave us a glimmer of hope that the line would stay there.
On No. 13, I finally awoke from my coma to hit a wedge shot tight. The Mayor asked if I wanted to go first to knock in my own solo birdie. What a gentleman. (However, I am terrified of putting.)
We missed a decent look on No. 14, which led us into the wicked 15th. This green is the size of my apartment bedroom. The hole was cut on a slope just begging for players to putt the ball off the green.
This was the third-toughest hole of the day, playing to a 2.98 stroke average. We were shocked to learn there were 15 birdies to just 13 bogeys. These guys and girls are good.
We missed the green short left, leaving an uphill sidewinder of a chip. The Mayor passed a bill stating that his pitch shot from this area would be certifiably nasty. The ball started some 15 feet right of the hole and kept dripping left along the slope for an eternity, settling a few inches from the cup.
We were 3-under but thought if we could get to 5-under, that would make the Church Music taste even better after the round. Maybe, just maybe. We could sit around watching the scoreboard—hey, look at us watching scoreboards like we’re pros.
The 16th is a tough hole. There is the mother of all false fronts but the hole being downwind means it’s hard to stop anything. We both hit good shots here and were left with a 20-footer down the hill, breaking hard to the right.
We had to have it. And we got it. One of my few contributions on the day was coaxing home that birdie putt that sent us to 4-under.
I gave a fist pump and Andrew slapped my hand so hard that I am still smarting almost two days later.
On the 17th tee, we decided we needed two more birdies. One wouldn’t be enough. Or how about an ace? That would be nice. The cut still sat at 5-under, T23 at the time, but we were eventually proved right in thinking that it would inevitably switch.
I wish I had a better ending to this story. On the 17th, our wedge shots got “Mutombo swatted” by the wind. Andrew almost drained a 70-footer that might have started in Glendale. I made a seven-foot comebacker just to keep us at 4-under heading to the last.
The 18th was not the hole to make a birdie, let alone an ace. There were only 11 birdies the entire day, and we’re talking about a couple of hundred fantastic golfers coming through there.
Andrew put us on the right side of the green while I was in someone’s tequila soda right of the grandstand. Before we hit the putt—which had to negotiate a huge hump—we agreed to leave the flag in and give it an honest run.
The Mayor gave a more reasonable approach to this and just didn’t quite play enough break. I took the strategy a little too literally and tried to laser beam my putt into the hole. In fairness, it did catch the lip and jump the hole.
We stood silently for a moment looking at our officially meaningless par putt, which Andrew made.
Maybe we could have pulled this thing off if we got a do-over on the fourth hole. What were we thinking? There was also a short-ish birdie miss on the sixth. Damn! And my wedge shot on the 12th looked perfect in the air until it took a soft bounce and stopped 20 feet short. Come on, man.
Never mind the several shots that had gone our way (a golfer never dwells too long on those).
Unfortunately, none of our other MGS brethren made the cut, either. We were the closest challengers, finishing in a tie for 50th, exactly middle of the pack, two strokes shy of playing the weekend.
Suddenly, our time as competitors was over.
One of my favorite days in golf
To be completely honest, my eyes were welling up a bit on the 18th green as the reality had set in that this experience was over.
It legitimately stung for a few hours. The Mayor—did I tell you he’s a great guy?—embraced me with a big hug and, while listening to some Church Music at the bar, we talked at length about how much fun the past two days had been.
Life-affirming. The kind of days you dream of as a golfer.
We’ll have a hangover from this, and it’s not just from the IPAs.
But why? Why had it felt that way? It’s just a qualifier for a golf tournament, one that we shouldn’t even be playing in based on our limited talents.
My feeling is that, for guys like us, this kind of golf has never really existed before.
Sure, you can go play club championships or men’s league or whatever else. But this is a real tournament with great players and no strokes being given … but it also isn’t totally unrealistic to compete. You can squint your eyes and see it. We had a path. I already envision practicing for next year if I’m able to represent MGS again.
We are two hackers who were semi-competitive with mini tour pros over the course of 18 holes. They were clearly better than us by lightyears but it didn’t feel like we were out of place. Oddly, it felt like we belonged on that stage with them.
And getting the chance to do that alongside a friend?
Man, that’s the good stuff.
Top Photo Caption: Andrew and Sean wait on the fifth tee. (Ingram Smart)