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Dude, Where’s My Driver? – Part Two
Twelve weeks after I paid for a new driver and with my contact having disappeared off the face of the earth, I had had enough of waiting for him to call and tell me what the hell was going on. I was going to do some calling of my own. The options I had to chase him down boiled down to phoning the club he said that he belonged to, calling the police and getting them involved or phoning everybody in the phone book with his surname.
Phoning someone’s club is different from phoning a persons employer. Personal phone calls at work may be frowned on but they are not a source of embarrassment. If you are there 9-5 (at least!), 5 days a week, sometimes the only place to catch you is at work. Phone calls to someone’s golf club could be hugely embarrassing especially if they want to know the reason why you are trying to get in contact with their member. If there were a reasonable explanation for what was happening– no matter how less and less likely this was becoming – I did not want to be the cause of someone’s reputation being tarnished unfairly.
I wanted to keep phoning the cops as my last resort and anyway I figured that the phone book would be the easiest option, especially as I could use a website that gave the address and telephone number together, That way I could use Google maps to restrict the list of people who I would phone but starting with those that lived closed to the golf courses he mentioned. Typing in his name and town gave me 60 hits. Not a huge amount of people but I didn’t relish wasting that many peoples’ time hunting this guy down. Matching the most likely location for each brought it down to the slightly little more manageable number of 14.
I felt like a bad private eye in a cheap novel – obviously minus the trilby and trench coat and equally unfortunately without the busty blonde out front in reception, but with a steely eyed determination that this guy was not going to elude my grasp. So I sat down with the list and started phoning.
‘Hello can I speak to Victor*.’
‘I’m sorry no one of that name lives here.’
…
‘Hello can I speak to Victor.”
‘Sorry mate you must have the wrong number.’
…
And so on. My hopes were starting to fade as the call after call went to the wrong house. Again, and again…..and again.
And then it happened…lucky number 13.
‘Hello can I speak to Victor.’
‘Oh I’m sorry he’s not in,’ the lady replied ‘can I ask who’s calling?’
Great, this tells me I’ve found someone with the same name. While it might not definitely be him, his unusual surname made it pretty likely.
‘It’s Martin from the golf club” – not strictly a lie as I didn’t say which golf club – ‘Do you know when he’ll be back?’
‘Well he’s at football training so he won’t be back ‘til late.’
That sealed it. In one of our conversations he had said that he played football on a Thursday (a fact which I had completely forgotten) so this was his home number. Sounding as breezy as I could, I told her thanks and not to worry and that I would catch him some other time. If he’s out at football training then he can’t have fallen under a train or been in a horrendous accident and been unable to call me from his hospital bed.
So a couple of days later, I rang the number again.
‘Hello?’ This time a guy answered and I recognised the voice, it was Victor. Sam Spade eat your heart out!
‘Victor, it’s Martin from Golfwrx. How are you?’
There was a short pause. “I’m fine thanks”. His voice shook a little. He certainly wasn’t expecting me to call especially as he had never given me his home number. ‘Um…how did you get my number?’
‘There are 14 people with your surname in your area, and 12 of them are pissed at me for phoning them up trying to find you.’
‘Why? Did you not get the driver?’
Now this just pissed me off. I had paid him nearly 200 pounds for a club nearly 3 months ago and not received it. It had been a farce from the start and here he was, claiming innocence and wondering why I had phoned him up. If I was in his position, where there had been problems from the start I would have made sure to call and check, just as a matter of course.
It was kind of fun listening to him desperately flapping around when I asked him for a shipping number… at least for the first 5 minutes. After that I got bored. I decided to be nice and told him that he could email it to me tomorrow morning, making it pretty obvious that I was seriously annoyed and if he didn’t there would be ‘repercussions’ – I had no idea what this would be but more importantly, neither did he. Remember, I had his telephone number and also knew where he lived now. That he couldn’t find the shipping number didn’t surprise me in the slightest. On past performance he would be hard pressed to find his arse with both hands, a map, a bright torch and a tour guide.
The next day I spend most of the morning waiting for the email wondering if this time he would actually do what he said he would. His email eventually dropped into my inbox at about 5 minutes to midday. The problem was simple he cried! His mate at the shop had the wrong address for me all along, so if I send him my address again, it could all be sorted out!
Great! It was all just some cosmic misunderstanding due to the misalignment of Jupiter’s moons or some such rubbish but seriously, how could this happen? I’d texted and emailed my address numerous times and if his friend had the wrong address surely the club would have come back undelivered which would raise questions. You’d have to be some sort of moron to screw that up and not think ‘Maybe I should check this out?’. At that point I realised that I was dealing with someone who probably wore his underpants on his head and I wearily resent my address.
But if his friend at the shop was going to be sending the club, why hadn’t he told me this when he was scrabbling around for the shipping number? Surely he would have just told me then? Again, for the sake of the club, I was going to play along with what sounded like a bit of a fib and wait the 5 days that I had been told it would take. How much longer would 5 days seem after all this time?
A surprisingly long time as, of course, it didn’t turn up yet again. So I emailed him, yet again, to find out if I had anything more than a snowballs chance in hell of this thing actually turning up.
If there’s one thing you don’t joke about, it’s serious health problems. So when he told me that his old man had had a heart attack and that he was going away to see him for the next 10 days, I didn’t think that there was anything that I could say or do. At this point, I really didn’t believe him as I felt I had been lied to (or at least deliberately misled) so may times that I had no trust in him whatsoever but then again, it was only a golf club. Just some titanium and carbon and not that big a deal in the great scheme of things, especially compared to a serious illness.
‘No probs’, I said. ‘Just let me know when you get back and we can pick this up then.’ I’m a softy when it comes to people being ill – a side-effect of working in a hospital for a large part of my twenties – but while I would treat this guy as if he was my best buddy until he knew that his Dad was going to be alright, I wasn’t going to go away.
So a couple more weeks pass and he emails me saying that his dad was fine and that he had an update from the shop. Apparently his friend had left the shop and the staff who now worked there had no idea where the club was and in fact thought that they had sold it. The irony when he described these guys as ‘muppets’ was almost too much, considering that his actions over the past 3 months made Bonzo the clown look like a hard working, dynamic, goal-orientated executive primed for the cut and thrust of the business world.
After much honking of his red nose and putting custard pies down his trousers, he finally decided that he too had had enough of the situation (and my phone calls and emails) and that it might be best for him to return my money.
About 10 days later, the money appeared in my account. Maybe it was guilt or just the interest earned in the prolonged period that my money had been in his account but the amount was slightly more than I had given him at the start. That the money was eventually returned to me on the first day of the month and was paid in as cash raised a few more questions about whether or not he had the money all the while he was promising to give it to me or had to wait for pay day but after all that had gone before, I just couldn’t find it in me to care. I had my money back.
Did I have any confidence that the money would be there if I hadn’t chased and harried him – no, not really. While,if you choose to believe him, he appeared to have gone through a tough time while this farce was going on with a serious illness in the family and a change of job. I can’t imagine any situation where I would be happy to take hundreds of pounds from someone and at least keep them updated. How much effort does it take to make a phone call or write an email? Especially when you know that the other person has no way of getting in contact with you, and you have enough time on your hands to go football training! The discrepancy on the shipping where he said that he had a shipping number, then said that his friend had sent it, then said that he had the wrong address, then that he hadn’t sent it and then no longer could all pointed towards a man who while probably wasn’t actively criminal certainly didn’t appear to be a bit of a dreamer/half-wit who wasn’t too bothered about keeping my money if I never managed to get hold of him again
So what did I learn from this? Dealing with private parties on the internet is always going to be fraught compared to dealing with companies but it shouldn’t be too problematic if you stick to a couple of rules: ‘only pay for things that actually exist’ and ‘if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is’. I will keep buying on the web, but in future I will be a lot more upfront and a lot more demanding about how I expect a transaction to be handled.
*Names have been changed to protect the (maybe, just maybe) innocent.
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Morning 9: Scheffler repeats at Players | Monday PIF meeting | McIlroy takes another shot at Norman
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Tour Rundown: Matching luggage for Scheffler
For those of us from another generation, the disruption of the golf world that we knew well is both exciting and unsettling. The two most potent disruptors are rival golf leagues, not unlike the turmoil seen in the NCAA, and the Anchorman-style gangs of golf reporters. Reconciled to a past era are the dominance of the U.S. PGA Tour and the monthly golf magazines. One element that will not change, at any time in the foreseeable future, however, is the sanctity of the grand slam and golf’s four male major championships. While the LPGA and the PGA Tour Champions have seen a light and added fifth and sixth power titles, the men’s game remains staunchly in the 20th century.
This last topic surges in pertinence each March, just before the playing of The Players Championship. Two camps stake tents and run banners up the poll. One cries out for elevation of the PC to major status, while the other digs a trench around its impregnable quadrilateral. My personal take is this: Every four years since 2016, golf is played at the Olympics. Is Olympic Gold the equivalent of a major title? Yes, it is. It comes around every 1,500 days and brings elite golfers together in competition at the most important athletic event and venue. In my mind, Justin Rose and Xander Schauffele earned major titles in Brazil and Japan, as did Inbee Park and Nelly Korda. As for the Players Championship, why not? The field is stronger by ranking than any major event, and the golf course demands every shot that golfers can create.
The Players Championship is so important to the U.S. PGA Tour that all other tours under its umbrella take the week off. No Korn Ferry, no Tour Champions. The LPGA and the DP World Tour follow suit, which shrinks the amount of watchable golf to two events. On that sour note, let’s run down this week’s play, beginning with the Players Championship and ending with the Asian Tour in Macau.
PGA Tour @ Players Championship: matching luggage for Scheffler
Scottie Scheffler is making a bid to be the player of his generation. From the previous one, a fair number have taken leave from traditional competition. The Johnsons, Koepkas, and Reeds from the 1980s no longer play the events that stand the test of time. The born-in-the-90s generation had its first great champion in Jordan Spieth until he took leave of the senses that brought him to golf’s pinnacle. Spieth’s descent ran opposite Scheffler’s rise.
Scottie Scheffler had won nothing on the PGA Tour until February 13th of 2022. He won on that day in Phoenix, then won three more times by the middle of April. One of those wins was the API at Bay Hill. Last week, Scheffler won for a second time at the Orlando course. Last March, Scheffler won his first Players Championship, by five shots over Tyrrell Hatton. On Sunday, Scheffler dived headfirst into a cauldron of fierce competition. Facing challenges from Olympic champion Schauffele, Open champion Brian Harmon, and U.S. Open champion Wyndham Clark, Scheffler breathed. As the only man to reach 20 under par, he earned a second consecutive title at Sawgrass and reminded us that it has been two years since he won the Masters and that he is on a tear.
It all began at the fourth on Sunday for Scheffler. After pars at the opening three holes, Scheffler’s driving wedge from 92 yards landed 20 feet shy of the hole, took one large bounce, then spun left, trickling into the hole for eagle. He followed that incantation with another birdie, then two pars. The stretch from 8 to 12 was where the champion made a statement. His quartet of birdies over that run, brought him to 19-under par and let the pursuing pack know that even lower than the winning 17 under in 2023 would be necessary.
And the trio was game. Harman and Clark both dipped below 70, to reach 19 under at the final pole. Schauffele could not find a similar gear and closed with 70 — 69 would have earned him a playoff with Scheffler. It was the extra gear, the ability to go low when all things mattered, that eleveated the now two-time champion to the top of the podium. In five of his eight tour wins, Scheffler has posted a sub-70 round on day four, and four of those have been 67 or lower.
With elegant precision, Scheffler applied the final thrust at the par-5 16th. He played safely away from Pete’s Pond on the right, into the left greenside bunker at the back of the putting surface. His bunker shot was thing of exquisite accuracy, trickling to a planned stop about 20 inches from the hole. The birdie concluded matters and rang the sort of bell that Dye courses tend to display.
The greenside bunker is not a problem for the defending champ.
Scottie Scheffler’s birdie at 16 moves him back into a share of the lead @THEPLAYERS. pic.twitter.com/aEi7onLZPE
— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) March 17, 2024
Asian Tour @ International Series Macau: Catlin earns playoff victory
There are two sorts of golfers that compete on the Asian Tour, which makes no secret of its alliance with the LIV. The first are the AT stalwarts, the ones who play as golfers have always played, with little guarantee and much pride. The others are the ones who compete on the LIV, eschewing both risk and pride for the guaranteed payday. Their deal costs them world ranking points, so they play in AT events, hoping to qualify for golf’s major events.
This week in Macau, one of those LIV golfers shot 60 on Sunday and did not win the tournament. Hard to believe, you say? Aye, but when another golfer shoots 59 in the third round, follows it up with a 65 on day four, then makes overtime birdie twice at the par-five closer, the razor’s edge of great golf is sharpened. Thus did it happen with American John Catlin and Spaniard David Puig.
It was Catlin who signed for 59, and it took a twisting, eagle putt at the last to enshrine the first-ever, sub-60 on the Asian Tour. It was Puig who closed the gap on Sunday with a 60 of his own, which featured a bogey at the lengthy fifth hole, but was followed by seven birdies and an eagle over the next 13 holes. Catlin had a six-feet putt for the regulation win, but missed. In extra time, Puig nearly holed for eagle at 18, then tapped in for birdie. Catlin’s second danced along the OOB perimeter, before ending on an access road. His drop and pitch left him another six feet to remain alive, and this time, he converted.
At the second go-round of the par-5 finisher, Puig found the green in two, but took three putts from nearly 50 feet. Catlin confronted another challenging pitch for his third, and once again, his wedge game won the day. He tapped in for birdie and the win.
5??9?? ? @JohnCatlin59 eagles the 18th to shoot the first 59 on the Asian Tour ?? #whereitsAT #ThisISEverything #InternationalSeries @intseriesgolf pic.twitter.com/RV9gYy1SIp
— Asian Tour (@asiantourgolf) March 16, 2024
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Morning 9: Rory, Xander, Clark share Players lead | Rory on controversial drop | AK misses Macau cut
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Sofa King Great
Oct 25, 2007 at 8:24 am
Glad that everything worked out as a positive albeit a bit longwinded.
Just call the police next time. Who cares about his reputation once the blowoffs started. That is why you pay taxes -USE the police to do your dirty work. They dislike perps and you may help out another buyer from headaches.
JD
Oct 18, 2007 at 3:57 am
Have to disagree with your comments regarding ebay in the previous post. I have had great experiences. That’s what the whole feedback system is for. Just make it a rule to never purchase from someone with less than 100 feedback comments and 99.5% positive rating. You’ll end up dealing mostly with shops and get a good deal.