The Nip Out Nines
The Nip Out Nines
I collaborate with AI + a community-organising wizard to rapidly solve an age-old golfing pickle for me and like-minded blokes.
I love golf and I love my family. Unfortunately, right now I can’t do both, and that places my golf career on ice. 😔
A full round of golf takes about 4 hours.
Plus time to get there, warm up, wind down with a beer or six, get a taxi, jog in the next morning, retrieve the car and drive home…
That’s half a weekend, and for a man like me, who works during the week and tries to be a considerate, present spouse and parent, it’s unviable to play.
So I maintain my membership at Mattishall out of pure pride. It means I can cling onto my official, internationally recognised handicap. That’s the number that tells the world ‘I’m a practicing golfer'. Even when I’m really not.
My problem is one that faces a significant portion of the pro-golf world.
It’s actually not an expensive sport to play, but it does cost time. That’s why the most active age groups tend to be pre-and-post family/career. There’s a huge drop off of family-aged players. It’s a shame, because it’s such lovely way to experience fellowship with others. When I play, I stand shoulder to shoulder with people from walks of life I’d never otherwise encounter - a roofer and a shopkeeper, a chemical engineer and an army major, a duck farmer and pig farmer - just to name a recent few.
What I can play is 9-holes. That takes 2 hours.
I can play midweek of an evening (in the summer) and if I manage to play 6x 9-hole rounds a year I can maintain my handicap. But who can I play with? The seniors like to play midweek mornings. The weekend warriors are all about the weekend. So I need people like me - or sympathetic to my situation.
So, I come up with the idea of a 9-hole midweek summer league for people like me.
How to reach them? I run it past D- who’s easy to find in the clubhouse nursing a Guinness. He organises the extremely popular Wednesday Night Scramble. That’s another form of 9-hole comp that I can play regularly in the summer - but the format means it doesn’t count towards your handicap.
D- gets the concept immediately, and christens it off the top of his head:
The Nip-Out Nines.
Now we need a description to advertise it in the club’s weekly newsletter. D- tells me to get it to him as soon as I can. He expects me to come back to him in a few days. Instead, I open my mobile phone and prompt ChatGPT.
On reflection we change 'dads’ to ‘busy blokes’ to widen the net. Then I go to LogoAI.com and get this within seconds.
Out goes the notice in the Mattishall Newsletter. D- decides that the sign up sheet should be physical, and placed in the locker rooms. Not my digital native instinct - but fine. The man is a community-organising savant. A few days later his instincts + mine receive massive validation. We hope to attract 4 names, and a few days later I’m faced with this:
The draw’s being done today.
I’ll get my golf season after all.
I think this counts as wrighting a play. Don’t you?
Great idea! Do you have a little haggle too?
My spouse was a golfer, and a much happier person after a round. But it's not easy on the family; "Nip Out Nines" sounds like an excellent solution. Enjoy!