The 4th hole of the South Suburban Par 3 is the longest, requiring all of a 5 wood shooting down from a hill to the green. My first shot was wide to the right, in the rough, though still in-bounds.
Second shot? Enh. I pitched it up about three feet short of the green. Dagnabbit.
Doyce, meanwhile, had a tee shot just short of the green, and his chip up was very nice, just three feet from the hole or something like that.
I pulled out my chipper, looked at where Doyce’s ball lay compared to mine, looked at my 25-foot or so shot from off the green, and suggested he mark his ball, to avoid it getting hit. “I mean, I know my ball will go unerringly into the hole, but you might want to mark it anyway, just to be safe.” Fact is, as it was in the vague area of the hole, I had a vague hope that I might land the ball somewhere in that region.
He smiled and marked it.
I chipped the ball up, and it rolled, unerringly, past Doyce’s ball marker (wouldn’t have hit it) and into the hole.
He looked at me and said, “I hate you.”
And that’s why we keep golfing. Because strokes of luck (so to speak) like that happen just often enough.