Zebrahead lead singer Matty Lewis and others bring the fun to the golf course

I had a day of golf on Saturday that reminded me again why I love the game so much. We were in Norfolk, Virginia for a wedding, and the father of the bride set up a scramble on Saturday morning at Sewells Point Golf Club. The leading group went off at 7:00 am, and the temperature was better suited for skiing than for golf. The first ball in my group was in the air at about 7:10, roughly 3 minutes after the first beer had been opened.

Out of the twenty-two men participating in the scramble, we had some good players, some guys who play occasionally, some beginners, and some guys who had never picked up a club. We had an Admiral, a General, a Colonel, a Captain, guys in the construction business, guys in the insurance business, guys in the computer business, a former teacher who became a caddie only to become an aspiring golf writer, and a rock star. And I don’t mean one of our friends who we call a rock star because he gets crazy sometimes- I mean a true rock star.

Matty Lewis, lead singer of Zebrahead (look for their newest album’s release in the near future) decided to tee it up with us. I think he had only played once in his life, so he was a little unsure about how it was going to go. However, as our eyebrows had begun to thaw on the third hole, he turned to us and said, “I get how this could be relaxing when it’s warm outside.” By the 9th hole, we had used a few of his shots, and he dropped a 30-foot birdie putt to put us back to even for the front. On the back the beer took over (we all thought we were rock stars at this point) and although the golf got progressively worse, we couldn’t have had more fun.

There are very few things that could bring such an eclectic group of people together (especially in the bitter cold at 7 am)- golf managed to do it. I used to always prefer a regular round of golf to a scramble, no matter what the occasion. After this weekend, I would say that there is no better format to play if the only goal is to have fun. Had we just been playing a regular round of golf, we wouldn’t have gotten half of the people to participate, and spirits wouldn’t have been nearly as high when the best score in the group was something like 92 because of the conditions. A scramble puts the focus on the people playing rather than on the quality of golf that is being played; it reminds us of all the good things about the game (most likely because our bad shots don’t really hurt us), and it serves as a reminder that golf truly is the best game in the world, especially when you’re playing it with great people.