Inside Comments by Steve Turcotte

Myrtle Beach World Amateur stories

I’ve been lucky enough to head to the Myrtle Beach World Amateur for years. And the good thing about this tournament is that nothing ever stays the same. Yes, the tournament is four days. But you always run into a different cast of characters. You are almost always fortunate enough to play different golf courses. And you always find a way to play either better or worse golf. And in my case – usually worse golf- which was seriously the case this year.

The Myrtle Beach World Amateur is an event that has been around for 43 years. It started with a handful of players and has grown to over 3,000 players. In fact, one year over 5,000 players took part. This year there were 49 states represented along with 17 countries. The tournament is so large that 55 golf courses are in play for the four days and that includes courses in both South Carolina and North Carolina.

I have seen plenty through the years in this tournament. This year we had an alligator stop play at a course (bottom photo). He decided to take a break on a cart path and no one could get through. And this guy was pretty big. One brave golfer in a cart got close and tried to scare the gator back in the water. Bad idea.

In another round there were two guys who did not get along and argued a few times about rules situations. It was fairly comical. One guy obviously didn’t know the rules and kept trying to give bad rules info. We finally told him to shut up because he had no idea what he was talking about. He didn’t say a word the rest of the round.

Then there was the guy who was three under par for the first four holes, I gave him a bad time about being a sand bagger. I was just joking. Whoops. Must have got in his head, He shot 94.

As for me? Not a good week of golf. Bad chipping. Bad putting. And it all le

d to bad scoring. There was one round that has three digits in it- I won’t say the score but it was not good. First time in triple figures in a long time – and drinking wasn’t involved. Handicap on the way up.

Steve Turcotte is editor of Inside Golf Newspaper. He can be reached at sdturcotte@comcast.net.