[Garland Bayley]

We get it. You dunked one!

Even though I had surgery in April, I played a lot of golf. I had many chances to be brilliant and had both success and failure.
I holed out twice from 100 yards +, but they weren't my best shots. Hole-outs are as much luck as skill.
Two shots stick out in my mind, and both came on golf trips.
The first was a driver off the deck on 18 at Lido. After a poor drive, my caddie handed me my driver. "Adam, I just hit a lousy shot with that club. What makes you think I can hit it off the deck?" He just said, "You got this shot." I hit it to ten feet.

I may know a guy that got video footage of that event.  If he were more tech savvy he might even post it here...


But in lieu of that suffice it to say it was majestic!!

What, no mention of your hole-in-one?

 I was right in the middle of a bunch of family stuff when I posted this and I didn't have time to elaborate on my own "shot of the year" but wanted to comment on yours. 


Now that I have a minute I will tell the tale... 


So people often ask me "how the heck can anyone have played over 2400 different golf courses?" well you gotta be half crazy, and committed (or worthy of being "committed").  This is how you do it.   On 1/19/23 I was driving home from Alabama and finished a conference call late in the day.  I was not planning to play specifically that day, but I knew I had 4+ hrs of driving to get home, and my wife would be long asleep by the time I get home, so might as well try to knock off another course on "The Quest".  I looked ahead on my GPS and saw a small town “Private” 9-hole course along the way that I had never played & I made the phone call.  The nice lady who answered said no problem when she heard about "the quest".


When I got to Pell City (AL) CC she told me I needed to have the cart back basically in a little over an hour.    So I headed out on a pretty quick pace.  On the 2nd hole I came upon a single young guy, whom you could tell was just learning.  I asked if I could play through and he said yes.  I quickly finished the hole & headed to the Par 3 - 3rd. 


When my tee shot seemed to disappear I was pretty confident that it had gone in for an Ace!  I asked the young guy who was still on the adjacent green would he mind hitting his teeshot and coming up to possibly witness for me? You can see video of the actual moment of truth with young Cooper as my witness on my Instagram post  https://www.instagram.com/p/CoepGe0JroN/ 


My third ever hole-in-one!  147yds with a 7-Iron! 


I continued on my way now intent on trying to finish my round at all cost since I had a card with a “1” on it and wanted to fill in every box.  I played until I caught several groups on the 8th hole & it was getting close to the time I was supposed to have the cart in.  The lady was so nice that I did not want to be late brining the cart back. So I took the cart in and asked if she would drive me back to 8th tee so I could walk the last couple holes and try to finish? She said "Yes!"


 So she drove me out to the 8th tee and I finished my round on Course #2297 at the time! 


2023 was an epic year overall, but that shot and round reminded me of why you never pass up a chance to play, especially a course you have never played before!  Pell City CC will never be on anyone "best of" anything list architecturally, but it has a warm spot in my heart!

[Jeff Schley]

Not that anyone cares but the golfer himself, but I golf right and batted left in baseball. At OFCC I was stuck behind a tree on #2 from 150. I couldn't swing right handed, so as it was a casual round with nothing to lose I turned over a 6 iron and tried to channel my old baseball swing of a low inside fastball. I don't recall the handful of times I have tried this ever working, but low and behold it caught the club solid and scooted up between the bunkers onto the middle of the green. I'm sure I three jacked from there, but you don't remember the bad ones.

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