So I was off on vacation last week, and decided it was past-due that I spend some quality time on a golf course at some point.
Better yet, thought I, why don’t I – a mediocre golfer at best – challenge a certified golf professional to a round of golf, film the entire thing and put it on the Internet for all to see?
That could be entertaining, right?
So that’s exactly what I did.
I got in touch with Jason Tchir, head professional and general manager of Quadra Golf and asked him if he’d be up for having me over for a match on camera. We’ve played together once before, so he knows my level of (in)competence at this game and agreed to give me a stroke per hole and we settled on a time and day for him to meet me as I got off the ferry at the terminal in Quathiaski Cove.
“So, what exactly are we going to do here?” he asked as I got in the van.
And I explained my plan to him.
We would play an 18-hole match – with him giving me one stroke per hole (so if I somehow got a par it would be classed a birdie, a bogey counted as par, etc.) – and I’d record the game to put up on our website at campbellrivermirror.com in instalments purely for the entertainment value.
Now that I don’t have television, one of the main places I get my golf fix is by watching regular everyday people like me playing golf on YouTube. One of the people I subscribe to has over 200,000 other subscribers to his channel, so it’s obviously not just me who finds that kind of thing entertaining.
Now, I’m not claiming that my match against the Quadra golf pro is going to be as entertaining as the rounds I watch on YouTube. Nor will I claim that my camera work doesn’t leave something to be desired and you won’t be (virtually) jostled around a little bit while you’re watching.
But we certainly had some fun out there last week, and I think it will come across in the upcoming Campbell River Mirror series entitled “Davies Versus the Pro.”
My plan is to release the series of videos (one for each hole, because who wants or has time to watch 20 minutes of two guys hacking their way around a local course at one sitting?) a couple of times a week for the next while, until they’re all out there. You can watch them as they come out or wait for them to all be released and binge watch them like I do with shows on Netflix.
Was a stroke a hole enough for Davies to actually make a match of it, or did Tchir still wipe the proverbial floor with him?
Did someone throw a club into the trees in frustration after over-drawing yet another tee shot into an area from which he will never recover, conceding yet another hole before either player has even made it to the green?
How many times will someone ask the rhetorical question, “Why do I even play this game?”
Tune in to find out.