Name That Golf Score
Trying out a new way to play an ancient game
To hear the related 5-minute audio file that I uploaded today as my Morning Journal flash briefing for Alexa devices, please click on the play button:
Invented in Sanibel
Today was my first round of golf since I invented a new way of keeping score.
I played nine holes with Josh, my son-in-law from Cambridge, Mass. He is a terrific player who made more than a few magic shots with a rented set of Calloway clubs.
My score was a 6.
By that I mean I had six shots which made me happy. They felt sublimely right. The ball went precisely where I wanted it to go. I felt like a golfer and not someone pretending to know how to play the game.
In my red pocket notebook, I wrote down each of the six shots, as shown in the photo above.
Josh and I had a great time out there on the links. We each plopped a significant number of golf balls into the course’s ubiquitous water hazards. But no matter.
As I write about this historic round of golf untethered from handicaps, bogies or birdies, and the prison of expectations, I’d like to come up with a snappy name for my new system.
I put ChatGPT, aka PD, on the project, with mixed results. Here are some of the best ones:
Golforia Score
The Joy Card Score
The Awescore
Red Score (for the color of the pocket notebook)
My Joy of Golf Score
I texted my friend Gil Peters for his suggestions, because he was there when I invented the new system, and he’s also a talented wordsmith. I haven’t heard back from him yet. This feels like John Henry versus the steam-powered rail driver. Will my friend Gil come up with a better name than ChatGPT?
PD is a generous competitor, as it turns out. Here is how he suggested I describe my pitting of him against Gil in the Name Game:
It’s man vs. machine — a friendly naming duel for what I’ve started calling my Joy of Golf Score.
Gil’s name ideas are still under consideration. PD, of course, had dozens in seconds — clever, poetic, and perfectly formatted. But Gil has soul. He walks barefoot on the fairway, after all. He understands that sometimes a good name comes not from language models or logic, but from the way it feels when a ball leaves the clubface just right and you look up into a cloudless Sanibel sky.
So who will win? I don’t know. But I know this: the hammer — or the 7-iron — is still in our hands.
And the winner is: My Greatest Hits (MGH)
I chose this to name my new scoring system, because it has a musical reference. Also, the initials are shared by the greatest hospital in the world, Mass General in Boston.
Fore!
[Added on April 25, 2025]