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August 16, 2010 was the day I proved to the world that I’m an idiot. It was also the day that started me down the path to creating PlayThru.
Four years prior, we held the inaugural Atwood Open. My family likes to golf, and we decided to add some gravitas to the round of golf we play every year on vacation.
The winner of the Atwood Open gets the Augustonian, a trophy with a golfer on it who has a clenched buttock and aggressive wedgie. My brother won that first event and inexplicably started the tradition of kissing the wedgied buttock.
Fast forward to the 2010 Atwood Open. At the turn, we manually added everyone’s scorecards and put those with the lowest scores in the last group. I added half the scorecards and my cousin added the other half (more on why he’s also an idiot later).
Well, the 2010 Atwood Open came down to the 18th hole. My brother started the hole with a three-stroke lead. My Dad carded a par, which put him in a good position should my brother royally screw up the hole.
I then sunk a miraculous 20-foot putt for birdie, giving me a one-stroke lead over my Dad.
The stage was set for an exciting finish.
My brother hit his tee shot directly into the trees on the right.
Can he handle the pressure?
He then meandered his way down the fairway—by all accounts forgetting what end of the club to hold—finally landing under a bush short of the green.
Is he really going to blow this lead?
He needed to get up and down from way under the bush to win. Otherwise, he’d tie me, and we’d have a playoff hole.
With a shot that defied at least two laws of physics, he hit his bush shot to within a foot of the hole and made the putt.
Tournament over. Wedgied buttock kissed. What a finish!
Back at home, when entering everyone’s scores into a spreadsheet for record-keeping (yes, we’re that hardcore), my scorecard math and Excel’s math weren’t aligning.
Turned out that my basic math skills failed me that day. I added my own scorecard wrong, and not in a good way.
My brother and I should have tied!
This is a picture my then girlfriend (now wife) took of me after I realized what I’d done. I laid like that for hours, not wanting her to see me cry.
Everyone who played in the 2010 Atwood Open then spent the next 12 months enduring my brother’s snide taunts.
I’m usually pretty good at math. In second grade, we played math around-the-world with flashcards, and I was damn near unstoppable.
But when trying to add quickly with people watching while eating a hot dog, mistakes happen.
This was the golf tournament that led me to create PlayThru. PlayThru now handles the scoring, and I haven’t been an idiot since.
So, it turns out I wasn’t the only idiot that day. We found out several years later that my cousin, who was adding up the other scorecards, mixed up my Dad and brother’s scorecards.
My Dad and I should have tied, not my brother.
Save your friends and family the embarrassment of sucking at math, and create a free PlayThru account.