Taking a beating at Troon North Golf Club in Scottsdale, Arizona

I wrote a blog a couple of weeks ago about how nobody cares about what you shoot on the golf course, and today I got a note from colleague Brandon Tucker about a recent round I had. Apparently, your golf performances don’t make the billboards, but they do make the Internet.

It seems that the whipping my partner and me took on the Troon North Pinnacle Course last Friday made it back to Tucker and my boss, Mark Nessmith, who wrote: “I smell a blog post.”

So I’m obliging. I must.

Here’s what went down: I mistakenly asked my new friends on our recent Phoenix/Scottsdale area press trip if they wanted to play a little Nassau cart game. Figuring we were pretty evenly matched, we went straight up: Tom Bedell and I vs. Brian Weis and one of our hosts, Brett Brooks of Troon Golf.

Brian, a video/internet/entreprenuer guy from the Milwaukee area, shows up wanting a breakfast ball because he just went through the torturous Foremax 90-minute workout that morning at the Westin Kierland Resort & Spa in Scottsdale. We gave it to him, which was just the first of many things we kept giving him as the day wore on.

I was feeling pretty good about my game before the match ? not so good afterwards. Tom, a funny guy and writer/publisher from Vermont, was a lousy partner. And so was I. We couldn’t brother-in-law worth a darn, and neither one of us could putt that day.

The other guys? Brett was a pretty rotten host. If his partner had a bad hole ? and there weren’t many ? he made birdie or par. Then Brian had the audacity to hole out a pitch shot on the long par-5 14th for eagle to put his team up 2-up on the back nine (they had already won the front 2-up).

We never won a hole. Not one, which meant we were teeing off last all day. We eventually lost four bets, including a press. I wound up helping Brian buy a commemorative flag in the golf shop.

Can’t wait for the rematch.