The Cheaper the Better
What were they made of?
They couldn’t be plastic—not at a tournament paying out $20 million to its competitors. I don’t know why I was transfixed by these little black boxes serving as tee markers with Genesis Invitational pasted across them.
Were they padded like the yoga blocks I bought during my overzealous month of following Yoga with Adriene on YouTube, that I haven’t used since? Maybe too apt for this high-end area of Los Angeles.
Then I heard it. Clink! A club collided with it after being drop kicked by Grayson Murray as his shot on the par-three 16th hole flared right into a gallery of white-barked, leafless sycamore trees.
They were metal.
My Friday at Riviera Country Club started the previous Friday at Soule Park, a municipal course in the Ojai Valley north of Los Angeles. I was randomly paired up with three LA natives—Ashton, Matt, and Bailey. Ashton kindly offered me a grounds pass to the Genesis. This has always been my favorite non-major event, but I was oddly hesitant to accept.
Two years ago I took my sprinter van to all 50 states playing in exclusively random pairings at municipal golf courses. From golf with strangers under the midnight sun in Alaska to dew-sweeping rounds at scruffy Florida munis and everything in between permanently changed my relationship with golf, unveiling the professional game as such a tiny fraction of golf in America. Plus, the obnoxious greed amongst players fracturing the pro game disillusioned me altogether.
After a year back home, I just left my job again—ditching money and comfort—moved back into my van in pursuit of a more fulfilling life. I couldn’t feel less aligned on a deep level with professional golfers. But I tiptoed down from my moral high ground for an afternoon and accepted the ticket.
As someone with more food allergies than career aces, I scanned the tournament’s website the night before to see what food I was allowed to bring. I scrolled and scrolled through pages of luxury suite offerings, each more expensive and promising a better time than the previous, before finding what I needed. Spotty service in the Planet Fitness parking lot was partially to blame for how long it took.
Crossing through the gates the next morning I was hit with even more chances to upgrade my grounds pass to a suite while I dodged the offer like avoiding a perfume salesperson at a mall kiosk. Finally, I was on the course.
Within the first hour I watched Rory McIlroy, Max Homa, Collin Morikawa, Wyndham Clark, Tommy Fleetwood, and Xander Schauffle all hit shots from an arm’s length away. Uncomfortably close at times, making accidental eye contact, then abruptly looking away as if I wasn’t staring at them like zoo animals.
The back corner of the property became my favorite spot. I was enamored with the multi-layered fifth hole, which feeds right into the par-3 sixth. I watched groups come through there while over my right shoulder was a perfect view of 16 green and 17 tee.
I saw world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler chip in from the right side of No. 5 in the morning, and Jordan Spieth do the same under the afternoon sun. I saw Tiger limp to the restroom by the sixth tee when it was his turn to putt on five—one hole before he withdrew.
All of this action hundreds of yards from the expensive suites.
On my way to throw away the rest of my gluten/dairy/soy-free packed lunch, a ball rattled in the eucalyptus trees high above my head, falling two yards in front of my tired feet on No. 12. Minutes later the taller-than-I-thought world No. 1 player approached, and I listened to his caddie over-discuss the best strategy.
A realization clattered in my mind louder than a drop-kicked club head to a metal tee marker. The cheapest ticket in professional golf awards you the closest access. It runs counter to everything the game at-large professes.
Filtering my Seat Geek search from lowest price to highest for a Lakers game and I might as well watch from the International Space Station. Same goes for football, hockey, baseball, and tennis. But in golf, the less you spend on the ticket the better.
Watching Scheffler hack out of the rough from close enough to catch his divot will stick in my memory longer than it takes for the umpteenth free cocktail to exit the system of those in luxury suites elevated from the action.
I spend every day thinking and writing about my municipal golf tour, and the places that stick to my soul weren’t where I spent hundreds of dollars—Torrey Pines, Bethpage, Chambers, Memorial Park—but rather ones like the cash-only, one-employee-run muni in Marfa, Texas, or Sioux City, Iowa, where I paid $20 and met a retired firefighter on his last round before a surgery to remove a cancerous mass.
The newest, priciest technology isn’t the author of great memories either. Most of my clubs are over a decade old. My eight iron is chipped from desert waste areas in Arizona and New Mexico. There’s a large dent in the bottom of my sun-faded golf bag. But if saving thousands of dollars on those upgrades allows more opportunities to meet strangers like Ashton at a course that costs less than $40 to play, then I’ll carry outdated equipment for life.
I hiked up to the elevated first tee box on my way out, taking in one of the best views on the PGA Tour. In front of me, volunteers packed away the metal tee markers, clinking them together in a stack.
My day at the Riviera joined forces with my 50-state muni tour to teach me the same lesson: the cheapest experiences in golf are often the most memorable. I wish the industry at large would catch up to this reality.
