"Poor Joanna tried to do a ‘Fit Check‘ after the 10th hole. I was in a dark place." - An Oral History of the 2022 Channels Cup

"The real friends we made were the friends along the way"

During the pandemic, with all of society shutting down, I found a beautiful little community of people from (almost) all over North America. I had actually been a part of it for a while, as its genesis (I think?) is a college football pool going back a decade or so. At Paste, I had become friends with Shane, the pool’s creator, as he was my editor, and we would work closely day in and day out throughout the Trump Administration. After I got caught up in the wave of cuts going through journalism in late 2019, I was invited to a Slack started by Shane and another pool stalwart, Kyle. At first it was just a handful of us, mostly talking about sports and politics, but the community grew over the course of the pandemic and today the Slack has 107 members.

In 2021, we decided to stage a Ryder Cup-style golf tournament. Given that seemingly half the Slack is based in the Carolinas, a Carolina versus the World format quickly became an obvious one. I was a vice captain of Team World, and we lost 13-7 at Hillandale Golf Course in Durham, North Carolina. The Canadians could not make the 2021 Cup, but all systems were a go for 2022, so after a brief debate about where to place them, it made sense to rename it Team Carolinas and Canada.

Below is the oral history of the 2022 Channels Cup and the social events weaved between it. The only background uninitiated readers need to know is that Joanna served as media/Team World mom for the event, filming interviews, fit checks where we detailed our outfits and snippets of golf highlights for the Cup’s YouTube channel OWN+, and each team had a really good golfer with the ability to break par every time they stepped on the course: Jamieson for Team World and Colin for Team C&C. Everyone else’s average score ranged from the low 80s to the low 100s-110s, and team captains Shane and Jamieson tried to match everyone up as best they could to both ensure competitive matches and competitive advantages for each team. Everything else you need to know, my excellent storytellers will tell you all about below, as they made my copy/paste job here incredibly easy.

I sent a Google form out to everyone with the questions listed at the top of each section below, and each match is listed in chronological order, with Team World members on the left versus Team C&C on the right. You’ll occasionally see me jump in after the fact to clarify something with an Editor’s Note, but everything else with my name on it was submitted along with the rest of the crew before I saw anyone else’s responses.

This is the story of the 2022 Channels Cup from the Falmouth Country Club (hosting Friday Fourball and Alternate Shot) and Bass River golf courses (hosting Saturday Scrambles and Singles) from Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

(fair warning: this is a LOT of words — 31,979 in fact—but I promise it’s worth it and it’s the fastest 31,979 words you’ve ever read with some truly great golf and party stories embedded below).

What do you remember about the Friday a.m. Fourball matches?

Jamieson: First, shoutout to Joanna for making us breakfast sandwiches from goddamn scratch. When she told me how early she was going to have to get up to make them I was convinced she was insane, but she really put a wind in our sails.

Jacob: I know I talked a lot of shit about being MVP, but I don’t mount the case for it without Joanna’s incredible homemade breakfast sandwich fueling me through my two toughest Channels Cup matches. She was Team World’s MVP.

Joanna: Team World was in way better shape than CnC due to the high quality breakfast I provided. There was an electricity in the air, with palpable tension, and a real sense that this could be anyone's game. It was very exciting.

Damon: I credit much of my win to the breakfast sandwiches on biscuits MADE FROM SCRATCH by Joanna.

Chris & Jacob (won 3&2) vs. Drew & Lawton

Lawton (AKA Noodles): We were there early to hit a few balls on the range to warm up. It's a big match. The Vice Captains match, we'd talked about it for a year and here it was.

Shane: We knew the first session was going to be hugely important, and that in order to give ourselves a fighting chance, we had to rattle them early and put an end to any notion that they were going to roll over us.

Chris: This match wasn't just Friday morning. This match was an entire year in the making, more so for my teammate Jake than for me. I knew how much it meant to him.

Jacob (AKA Jake): Considering the stakes, my 39 to open the 2022 Channels Cup is the best nine-hole stretch of my life.

Shane: A few times, I even said out loud that the winner of that match would win the Cup, and not because one point on Friday morning would make the difference, but because of what it would say about the teams.

Jacob: I was already feeling the pressure after putting up an 0-4 record last year (with 3 dramatic near-comebacks), but I placed a lot of additional pressure on myself in this vice-captains match because it was clear that this would be one of the pivot points of The Channels Cup. Whichever side won this match was likely favored to win the whole thing, and we all knew it.

Shane: When the lineup meeting was over, we thought we had given ourselves a decent chance not just to hold serve in the first session, but maybe even to win. Of course, we identified the very first match as a potential bellwether.

Chris: We had to go up against a very, very tough team in Lawton and Drew. Keep in mind, this was well before Lawton would be hospitalized. At this point he was very sober, very healthy.

Shane: What we wanted was to take the steam out of their two emotional leaders immediately like Ivan and I had at Hillandale in the first match of the first Cup.

Jacob: Given that I played a practice round the day before at Falmouth and my teammate hadn’t, I knew the front 9 was where I really had to shine so I could buy Chris some time to get a feel for this very narrow course.

Chris: Before the match, while on the driving range, I was able to reveal the first of our crucial psychological victories over Team C&C. Shane came over to warm up, and it was then that I could announce that Team World had chosen to wear green for the Fourball matches, where ham & egging it it so crucial. "Green ham and egg," I confidently said to Shane. Even in the tense focus of the morning, he had to laugh, and could only muster, "One nothing, Team World" in response. It was then that we won The Channels Cup.

Drew (AKA: Andrew): Jake and Chris did a great job of ham and egging it early in the match.

Lawton: First tee, wide open fairway, nice big slice off into the adjacent fairway and we're off. After a back and forth start, it was all square and we felt pretty good. We hadn't played our best and were right there. This turned out to be a dangerous thought.

Jacob: The best part of my game is chipping in and around the green, and this was my best day ever on that front. If had a wedge in my hand 50 yards or less from the pin, that ball was getting to within 5-10 feet, and I wasn’t missing those putts.

Drew: Both guys short games were off the charts saving par after par, or earning a tie/win with great chips from tough spots. Jake made a good number of clutch putts.

Chris: The Colorabros were ready to go.

Lawton: From holes 4-7, it was all Team World. Jake and Chris were playing off each other very well and Drew and I just couldn't hit the big shot when we need it.

Jacob: I think I “two-putted” with one wedge and one putt like four or five times on that front 9. I even had a chip I was so certain was going in for birdie on #6 that I yelled “BANG!” when it was a few inches from the cup, and it immediately took a left turn and settled 3 feet away from the hole. Drew laughed at me. I deserved it.

Lawton: Hole #7 was especially painful. It's a short par 4 with a sharp dogleg left where you can drive the green (or so Jake claimed happened in the practice round). Jacob or Chris goes for it. I can't remember which as will soon become clear. Suffice it to say, whoever it was shanked it in the opposite direction and into the trees.

Editor’s Note: It was me, I drove the green the previous day in a practice round with Shane who can vouch for me on that, and then I shanked it when it mattered.

Lawton: One down one to go. The next one steps up knowing his partner is dead and proceeds to slice his into the forest too. We're three down and Jacob and Chris are dead off the tee. Drew and I step up and put both our tee shots in A1 position. Couldn't have dropped them better.

Jacob: It’s hard to feel like any singular hole was a turning point in this match given the hot ham and egg start Chris and I got off to, but if I had to pick one, it was #7. Drew and Noodles should have won that hole.

Lawton: As was the story of the day, Jacob finds his ball and has some sort of pathway forward, truly an absurd turn of luck. He punches it out and gets it short of the green. Chris hits a decent out, but he's playing a lost ball (I think) so he's pretty much out of the hole. Drew and I are licking our chops and let me tell you, we should have kept our tongues in our mouths. I hit mine over the green by a good ten yards and found it near a tree on the back side of the green. Pin is in the front, so I've at least missed on the right side of the green (Thanks Dr. Santagelo for the work on positive self thoughts). Drew then steps up and absolutely chunks it. He then hits his next shot over the green on the other side.

We've now completely given away our advantage. I think Chris ends up in a bunker and Jake gets it up close. The details are fuzzy at this point. I don't get my next shot to the green and then I 3-putt for a 7. Jake gets it up and down for a 6 and wins the hole, and basically the match. We played them even the rest of the day and I truly believe if that hole goes differently, the whole Cup changes.

Shane: The problem was, nothing was going according to plan anywhere else on the course. The big question for Team C&C was how the Colorado boys would play, and whether the impressive scorecards they were posting throughout the summer actually meant anything.

Jacob: My driver updates in the Slack all summer long were a psyop to make Team C&C forget that my best skill is 100 and in, and the driver was just my pet project on getting me more of those opportunities.

Drew: They outplayed Noodles and I bigly from 100 yards in.

Shane: Our vice captains never led, and though I couldn't see the exact details of what was happening, it was clear that either Jake or Chris or both were bringing it in a big way.

Jacob: Once Chris got a good feel for this very narrow course when we were 3 up, it was over. I cooled off and he heated up around the turn, so I decided to put away my driver, then grabbed my hybrid to inflict a form of psychological warfare on Team C&C’s vice captains. If I was always plodding along ~200 yards at a time in the fairway, and Chris was almost always in the fairway ~100 yards ahead of me, how could Drew and Lawton ever come back?

The answer is simple: They couldn’t.

Shane: As the score ran to 4-up for Team World after ten holes, we pretty much knew this was bad news for the whole event. Not a killer blow, but our big plan to knock the wind out of their sails early wasn't happening, and Team World was about to get a huge confidence boost.

Jacob: It would be nice if the notable highlights from this match ended here, but we could not author a tale of my clutch performance without a dash of humble pie. I am 1,000% certain that I hit the worst shot of the tournament. Hooking is too kind of a word for what I did to my tee shot on #14 (and this isn’t the shot I’m talking about). I sent a bullet on a 45 degree angle into the woods. Miraculously, it came back down into play, settling on a downslope. I then took a practice swing far too close to the ball with my hybrid, and a clump of dirt burst up from the ground as I watched in horror as my ball rolled a good few feet away from me. Lawton tried to be nice and suggest that I may not actually be as stupid as that just made me look and maybe it shouldn’t count, but Drew correctly pointed out that I was fucked and that was an actual golf shot taken by a real human being. I took 3 steps away from the ball on all my practice swings for the rest of the tournament.

Jamieson & Zac (won 6&5) vs. Shane & Jim

Shane: Colin, Drew, Noodles, and I put a ton of thought into lineups before we met with the Team World captains, and we left that meeting pretty thrilled with how we'd done. We knew we had a potentially big problem in Cape Cod, which was simply that we were outgunned. We had gained some good players, Colin especially, but where I had been able to plug the gaps with native North Carolina players at Hillandale in 2021, in Cape Cod we'd be playing without guys like Galen and Ivan who couldn't make the trip.

Jim (AKA: Sweepmonkey): They clearly had the best golfer of the four of us and maybe the second best too, so we were just trying to drag it out.

Shane: Both sides had just enough numbers to have a full team, thanks to the late addition of Gary for Team World, but overall they just seemed to have a deeper team, which put the onus on us to be very smart with how we negotiated the lineups. We had pulled what I thought was a pretty significant coup in getting Jamieson to pair with Zac, another good player, and the hope was that they'd use too much strength against us in that second spot, and we'd take the other matches for a 3-1 lead.

Jamieson: I remember hitting a great drive off the first tee, a solid approach shot to the green, and two-putting, putting pressure on Shane and Jim, who were in trouble right away and lost the hole.

Shane: As it happened, we came to the group consensus that one of us was going to have to be sacrificed to Jamieson on the first day, and that someone was me—I ended up slotted to face him twice, and the first time came in the morning fourball with Jim.

Zac (AKA: Red Rascal): Just pure Domination from me and Jamieson, mainly fueled by Jamieson.

Shane: Jim and I couldn't really get anything going, but it didn't matter, because it was almost a foregone conclusion that we would lose. It's an interesting way to start The Channels Cup—it takes off some of the pressure, but also diminishes the intensity of that first morning. It was a strategic sacrifice, and it went how it was supposed to go.

Jamieson: On the second hole, I slightly tugged a wedge and ended up plugged in the back bunker, against the back lip. Everyone else also missed the green, but I seemed to be in the worst position. I took a big swing and popped the ball straight up, right at the flag, and into tap-in range. I made par, everyone else bogeyed, and I think we felt at that point like the tone had been set.

Jim: Zac played with a chip on his shoulder because the prop bet on how many holes he would win outright was O/U 1.5.

Zac: I also beat the prop bet of 1.5 holes that my score counted towards as a win for our team, one on a really nice birdie on a par 5.

Jim: He was pretty thrilled.

Jamieson: On the 8th, with us up 3 but merely treading water, Zac - who apparently does not feel fear - gave us some energy by pulling off an impossible tee shot, somehow bending his driver over, around, and past the waiting water hazard. He made the green in two and finished with a birdie 4, providing us with a commanding 4-up lead.

Zac: I loved that Jamieson and I wore the exact same Under Amour shirt, except mine had a hole in it because they sent me one with the security tag still on, and when i filed a claim for a replacement they sent ANOTHER with a security tag on it. I think the same shirt had a huge effect on the game. Also, them underestimating me.

Jamieson: The 9th hole was a fitting microcosm for the round that showed the many skills of Shane Ryan. I played a conservative 4-iron off the tee, as I would for all three rounds at Falmouth, giving me a simple 9-iron approach. Shane laid slightly further back, giving himself a long iron in with the pin perched at the top of a very small plateau in the back of the green. He hit maybe his best shot of the round, sticking it to about 10 feet, but I snuck just inside of him. We both viciously missed birdie putts, and then Shane showed off his impressive and borderline-cancellable accent work.

Anthony & Gary vs. Kyle & Colin (won 5&3)

Anthony: I was excited about meeting the Canadians more than anything.

Shane: Kyle and Colin formed the first ever all-Canadian team in the third spot, and we knew we had the best player on the course in their match against Anthony and Gary.

Kyle: I had slept terribly Thursday night on the fold out couch (<shakes fist> at metal bar that dug into my back all night) and, as is always the case when I have to get up early, was paranoid that I would not wake up on time. One delicious breakfast sandwich later, I was good to head off with Jim and Colin to Falmouth, except, I was missing, in ascending order of importance: my wallet (someone would spot me), my sunscreen (we don’t fuck around with this shit in Canada), and my sunglasses (which I wear 99.9% of the time I am outside during the day). Three frantic mad dashes around the places in the house I had been the night before later, I found them (Carrie had–thoughtfully, albeit frustratingly in the moment–tucked them away in a tote bag) and, slightly delayed, we were off.

Anthony: Once I gave them all a big hug, I realized I was up against Colin and Kyle, who were only there to see when I would break out into the Touré chant with Gary's name. I struggled all round to keep myself in check, especially after Gary chipped in for birdie on #4 to get us back to A-S. The pressure to suppress the chant proved to be too much and I let my team down with a sub-par performance.

Kyle: After a relatively strong start to my year, including winning my annual weekend long 100-or-so-hole extravaganza earlier in the summer (FOUR GUYS ONE CUP TENTH ANNIVERSARY!!), my game had gone off a cliff, and I was incredibly nervous coming into Cape Cod.

Colin: Channels Cup nerves were real. 

Kyle: Colin played beautifully and I was…also there. Hit a decent tee ball on the par 3 2nd and actually made par, so we counted my score there (even though I’m pretty sure Colin made par too) and that was it. Colin had, I believe, six birdies on the round (five during the match itself) and was basically a stripe show from start to finish.

Colin: I missed about an 18 inch putt that would have won #1. By the time Gary chipped in on #4, I was really starting to worry. This is when Kyle and I started drinking, which was probably the right call.

Anthony: For his part, Colin declared he would start drinking if he hit a fat wedge into #4, and sure enough a beer was immediately opened, but apparently so was entry into the world's smallest bladder, as he proceeded to take roughly 30 bathroom breaks over the next 12 holes.

Kyle: Gary holed out for birdie from just off the green on #4 to square the match and then Colin and I immediately did our fit check with Joanna for OWN+. Haven’t watched that clip in several months but I would hazard a guess that it looked an awful lot like an active hostage situation. I think we cracked our first beer then, so that would be about 8:30 a.m.

Canadians gotta represent.

Anthony: Colin reached every par 5 in 2, it seemed, in just an awesome display of power and dehydration.

Kyle: Colin hit his tee shot wayyyy left on the par four 11th. He was basically on #12, but–as was typical for the round–I think I was already in my pocket so we needed to play his ball from the woods. Colin proceeded to punch a five-iron through the trees, which just kept going and going…and going before landing on the green. A two-putt par halved the hole. An outrageously good shot and the second sickest shot of the entire weekend (more on that later).

Colin: One other note that will mostly be lost to history (but maybe Kyle at least remembers it) is that I did hit my best shot of the entire event in this round. After driving the ball WAY left on #11 (the short par 4) - my drive was really more on #12 (the little par 3 with the big bunker in front) - I hit a punch shot through about a 2 foot window that crawled all the way onto the front edge of the green. This was probably their last chance to get back in the match and it closed the door.

Kyle: Mannnnnn we drank a lot that morning.

Damon & Bobby (won 5&3) vs. Johnny & Heath

Damon: I was glad to start off Friday morning with Bobby as my partner. The man was 4-0 in Channels Cup history and my partner for my lone win from 2021.

Shane: From a captain's perspective, Damon and Bobby's win was a little deflating, but not because we'd lost the point. It signified a couple things.

Bobby: I will never forget how sore my arm was. Do not play golf right after getting a tattoo. It is a really, really bad idea.

Shane: First off, Bobby was still undefeated, which was a definite thorn in our side after Hillandale. Second, it was just more momentum going against us on a morning when all our strategic plans seemed to be blowing up. Third, as I said, it was a definite sign that something was different with Damon this year.

Damon: We played against Heath and Johnny and the match was pretty tight at first, but we were able to lock it up after the 15th hole.

Shane: Like some of the other matches that morning, this was a theme that was going to repeat over the weekend. When we met up to talk about the matches, it became clear that Damon had played better than expected. We probably all had the same thought running through our heads, which is that Damon becoming a threat was exactly what we didn't need. It was another example of how some narratives from Hillandale were shifting underneath our feet. That match in particular rocked us a little, and between it and the vice captains match, I'm not sure we really recovered. We fought hard and gave ourselves a chance, but even if our confidence and fighting spirit weren't gone, it meant that we were fighting an uphill battle the rest of the weekend. As a captain, it was a helpless feeling watching it all play out.

What do you remember about the Friday p.m. Alternate Shot matches?

Joanna: I was joined by one of the OWN+ anchors and producers, Rachael, i.e. Mrs. Noodles herself, who provided expert commentary and asked insightful questions to both teams, really getting to the essence of each individual player with their fit checks.

Jamieson & Jacob (won 4&3) vs. Shane & Lawton

Lawton: Heading to the first tee in the afternoon, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't still thinking about Hole #7 from the morning.

Shane: Noodles and I teamed up to give them our best shot, and unlike fourball, we thought there might be a prayer due to the variability of alternate shot.

Lawton: Sometimes I call my middle child Hole #7 when he can't remember to put his shoes where they belong. Sorry sorry I'm getting off track.

Shane: It turned out to be at least partially right; Jake hit a few unbelievable drives, and Jamieson was his usual self. The crazy thing is, we gave them a game.

Lawton: This was another big match to me. Drew and I had defeated the unbeatable Jamieson in alternate shot at Hillandale, so I knew this was a good chance to steal a point. I'm partnered with my captain, my idol, Mr. Shane Ryan. He wrote a book about the Ryder Cup if you haven't heard. Pick it up, it's worth it. We had agreed that Shane has the better approach game than I do, so I teed off on #1 so he'd get the majority of the approach shots.

Jacob: I hate alternate shot so much.

Jamieson: Jake hit maybe the worst drive of his life off the first tee, with a vicious duck hook into the trees.

Lawton: I hit a decent drive on #1 and it's off to the right hand side of the fairway in the first cut. Jacob tees off and forgets that there are trees near the tee box, and it goes like 20 feet. It's a dream start for us.

Jacob: I’ll never forget the horrified look on Chris’s face in the group behind us waiting to tee off, as you could see him recoiling in agony, wondering if he had just watched me blow the entire Channels Cup for Team World.

Jamieson: I could only advance the ball barely out of the trees and up the fairway.

Lawton: Jamieson gets it out there but his stance is awful and leaves Jacob 200+ to the pin for their third shot.

Jacob: I’m a streaky golfer, so long waits in between swings is the recipe to throw me off rhythm and rattle my confidence. That’s why I was both relieved and concerned that I was paired with Jamieson for alternate shot. With his greatness all I needed to do was not screw up BUT OH MY GOD WHAT IF I SCREWED UP??? THEN I COST US A JAMIESON MATCH!!! That’s a worse reputation than an 0-4 record.

Shane: Here again, I was the sacrificial lamb to Jamieson, and again I thought we had pulled off a coup by drawing the Jamieson-Jake partnership, which felt in negotiations like their two best players.

Jacob: Thankfully, my 4-hybrid was FUCKING ON that day, as Lawton had already learned on the tortuous back 9 Chris and I put him through in the morning. Jamieson chipped out and gave me a shot at redemption, and hoo-boy did I take it—hitting my 2nd best shot of the weekend from about 210 out (it was the best one that mattered).

Jamieson: Jake smashed a hybrid to tap-in range.

Lawton: They're up next and Jacob hits an absolutely incredible shot to inside 5 feet to possibly save their par.

Jacob: It was really funny running into Chris later on the course and having him incredulously ask me “how the fuck did you halve the first hole?” after only seeing the disaster I created for us.

Jamieson: Noodles, though, matched us, hitting a skillful chip to give Shane a par putt he wouldn’t miss.

Lawton: Shane leaves the approach about 10 yards short. I hit a nice chip (which happened again on hole 2), and then Shane/Jamieson made putts for a half.

Jacob: Jamieson’s steadying presence was key to navigating us through a very tough matchup against an extremely scrappy Shane and Lawton team. Don’t let the scoreboard fool you, we were quite worried very late in the match.

Lawton: Hole #2 was another half and that's the last time we'd be even with them in the match.

Jamieson: With the other group in trouble on #3, Jake and I managed to win our first hole with a bogey. We’d win the fifth as well to go two-up, and while waiting on the 6th tee box, our group pulled off the first four-man simultaneous urination in Channels Cup history. With empty bladders but full hearts, Team World was buoyed, and took a four-up lead into the turn after a par on #8 and a bogey on #9 to steal both holes.

Jacob: I was living that sweet hybrid life, a club I was now calling my Lead Protector™, giving Jamieson average to good shots, but around the 10th I lost it. Baseball players know what I’m talking about. You move your arms and they just don’t seem like they’re in sync with your eyes or your brain and now you start questioning all your fine motor skills. I spent the next few holes either hooking or slicing nearly all my shots into the trees, and as the kids say, going through it. The fear after my first shot in this match came back with a vengeance, and I spent the start of the back 9 utterly terrified that I was going to blow it for us.

Lawton: My one positive memory was on #10 when Shane hit the second shot off the left into the trees. I managed to hook an 8 iron and get it out and move it way forward, giving us the chance to win that hole.

Jamieson: Shane and Lawton battled back though, taking advantage of our passivity on the par-5 10th to reduce the lead to 3 before a wild scene commenced on #11. With our drive in the pond, team CnC hit a similarly poor drive, and used the stroke and distance provision allowed by the unplayable ball rule to re-tee. Stymied by the pond and only able to advance the ball up the fairway, Team World was in similar trouble. we ended up tying the hole with double bogeys.

Shane: With a win on the 13th hole, we reduced the deficit to 2-down, and you could tell they were a bit nervous.

Jacob: At the same time I was forgetting how to swing a golf club, Jamieson’s game wavered a bit and we got spooked. I can confirm he is in fact mortal, as he sailed a shot well over the green on #13 that we never found, and our 4-hole lead at the turn shrunk to 2 going into #14 where we were backed up on the course, with another group being diverted in front of us from the other 9-hole course, causing an extra delay.

Lawton: Shane and I were feeling it, we finally had some momentum.

Jacob: Jamieson gave me a nice little pep talk to steady my nerves, and I retired to the back of the tee box to take roughly 1,000 practice swings with my hybrid. In retrospect, this delay was exactly what I needed even though in this moment, my nerves were at their peak all weekend.

Shane: I had a big decision to make on the par-5 14th in whether to hit a safe iron off the tee—I'd finally found my stroke with the 4-iron—or to take more of a risk and hit the 3-wood.

Lawton: Shane was hesitating about what to do on #14. He could hit a lower club and play for the fairway or get it out there and set a mark for them to try to beat. I told him "Do what's in your heart".

Shane: After some thought, I chose the 3-wood, and yanked it into the woods.

Lawton: In hindsight, his heart is a fucking liar.

Jacob: Jamieson absolutely obliterated a great drive in the perfect spot up the right side on #14 with hundreds and hundreds of yards of wide open space in front of it, and my moment of simple redemption arrived next. With Shane and Lawton in trouble, all I needed to do was not fuck up and we would reclaim our 3-shot lead with 4 holes to play. Had I fucked up, you likely wouldn’t be reading this as I might have just drowned myself in the stream running between #14 and #15, but dear reader, I did not fuck up.

Jamieson: Team World was able to take advantage of our length advantage on the par-5 14th and 15th.

Jacob: I struck it perfectly, the Lead Protector™ did its job, and we made par before winning it on the next hole when Noodles and Shane both basically ended it right off the bat with one shot very far into the woods and another that barely got off the tee (the tee, not the tee box).

Lawton: Then on hole #15, not to be outdone, I hit my drive approximately 8 feet and that was all she wrote.

Shane: Noodles hit his drive on #15 about seven inches, and just like that, we were done.

Jamieson: We headed out to watch the teams ahead of us finish up, and after watching the last few holes of some stellar and not-so-stellar play, Team World ended Friday with the lead.

Chris & Zac vs. Colin & Jim (win 5&4)

Shane: Colin and Jim were brilliant in beating Chris and Zac.

Chris: I remember getting absolutely blitzed on the back 9 by Colin and Jim, but I also remember shotgunning a beer with Zac, defiant, even in defeat.

Colin: I think this is the session where tales of my prodigious pissing powers started to be noticed. The secret is that I don’t remotely trust myself to not drink too much beer on the course and so I force myself to also drink an ungodly amount of water.

Jim: Colin was teeing off on the even holes, so he has #4; the uphill dogleg right with the big tree in the right side of the fairway at the corner. He puts it over the tree to ~80 yards out. Chris slices into the woods so Zac hits a provisional - also into the woods about 40 yards short of where we think Chris is.

The hunt is on... Zac's ball is found and then I find Chris's ball nestled between two dead branches about 20 yards off the fairway. To me it looks unplayable and I think Team World feels that way too. Colin comes in, tosses the branches away and it's a miracle - the ball doesn't move!

So we're both lying one - they hack it out to the left side of the fairway - of course they're still away - and get on the green about 15-20 feet away. Now par is in the picture for them and we may need a birdie to win a hole where we had serious control. All I need is a good chip; nope. Colin gets us on in 3 also and both teams 2-putt to halve the hole. I worried about that hole costing us for about (checks scorecard) 9 more holes.

Zac: I remember alternate shot was the hardest damn round - not because of our opponents but because of the pressure we were under to not let your partner down.

Colin: The biggest spot in this match was probably #5. Par 4 with a pond on the right side very much in play off the tee. Rascal stepped up and slammed driver - the only club in his bag that brought the water into play - for reasons that are still mostly unclear to me. I remember thinking how insane of a decision this was, and was very confident it was a mistake. But he couldn’t have cared less and hit it perfectly into about an 8 yard wide window. Jim hit his tee shot well left and I had to pitch out. We were right next to them, but a shot behind. Jim then hit a great wedge to about 10 feet, while Chris hit it to 30 feet. They 3-putted, I made the 10-footer, and we were suddenly 2 up instead of AS.

Zac: We felt great being all square going into hole #9, but some really bad luck off the tee on #10 hurt us and we just spiraled from there. Regardless, team Chrac will BE BACK.

Colin: That was pretty crucial since they won #6 and #8.  Had we lost the 5th, this match could have been very different.

Jim: Also memorable: Chris and Zac shotgunning beers.

Chris: It was then that we won The Channels Cup.

Anthony & Damon vs. Drew & Heath (won 7&6)

Drew: This was my best match in some regards and worst as well.

Damon: Friday afternoon didn't go so well. I was paired up with Anthony against Drew and Heath (again).

Anthony: I was teamed up with Damon against my nemesis, Drew.

Damon: I was really hoping to play well this round because I felt that I owed it to Anthony after Channels Cup 1. Especially after seeing a video from last year of my nice drive on #18 at Hillandale and hearing Anthony in the background saying "where the fuck was that yesterday?"

Editor’s Note: I was paired with Damon for that scramble and that drive on #18 was one of the best, most clutch shots of the entire weekend and I also wondered “where the fuck was that all day?” after he hit it.

Damon: Well, wherever it was on that Friday in 2021 must have been the same place it was this Friday afternoon, because Drew and Heath were just too much for us.

Anthony: I absolutely screwed Damon over with some terrible leaves on the green, and we got crushed as I ended up without a point on Friday, making it two Channels Cups in a row with that awesome distinction.

Shane: Heath came up massive in partnering with Drew to take the anchor match against Anthony and Damon.

Drew: Heath played great, he not only kept things in play, he made some good shots. Unfortunately for Anthony/Damon, they weren't as consistent and they suffered a number of penalties.

Anthony: I was the only Team World player to go 0-2 on Friday, a fact which was actually comforting as we raced out to a 5-3 lead. The highlight of the weekend came next when all eight carts met up to watch the conclusion of Gary/Bobby vs Johnny/Kyle. Our cart was dying by this point too.

Bobby & Gary (won 2&1) vs. Kyle & Johnny

Shane: We had a really good chance to tie The Channels Cup with the final match at Falmouth, between Kyle and Johnny on our side and Bobby and Gary for Team World.

Jim: Shit there's more! One match was left on the course, Kyle/Johnny vs Bobby/Gary. The other 3 groups were done, so we all followed the last match in from the 15th green until it was over on 17. Carrie made a beer run for the golfers/spectators.

Mary Anne: I remember squeezing 3 ladies into 1 golf cart lol (Carrie, Shannon, me)

Colin: Naturally, as many will tell you, the highlight of this session was riding in with the Kyle/Johnny v. Bobby/Gary match. The chaos of all of the carts, Kyle and Johnny trying to chip on #16, the car horn, uploading videos to the Slack. It was perfect, aside from the outcome.

Lawton: After our round ended, everyone started to gather for the epic Bobby/Gary vs Kyle/Johnny finish.

Jacob: Shane, Lawton, Jamieson and I shook hands on the 15th green, Jamieson and I looked at each other and breathed a sigh of relief, then we joined the entire Channels Cup as we arrived in an armada to #16 to watch Bobby, Gary, Kyle and Johnny author one of the defining moments of the weekend.

Jim: Carts were racing up the 16th fairway like salmon spawning.

Gary: Team World was one up on the 14th hole as folks from completed matches started to show up.

Kyle: We halved #13 and they won #14 (don’t remember how). I think it was around this time that we noticed that all the other matches were done, so the rest of the players began following us.

Gary: It’s off to hole #15 and more folks join the gallery, which at this point includes at least Colin, Chris, Anthony, Shane, Jamieson, and Jake, and Joanna from OWN+.

Kyle: I distinctly remember suggesting on more than one occasion that maybe everyone would have more fun hanging out at the clubhouse and we’d update them just as soon as we were finished out here, but there were no takers.

Shane: This, I think, may have been the turning point of the entire Cup.

Drew: In the hooplah of the final match in front of us, I lost my putter which would plague me Saturday when I needed it most.

Kyle: At first there were two extra carts, then four, then six, and then I think eight by the time it was all said and done (the ladies were out on the course reporting). I won’t lie, initially, I was extremely nervous, but it ended up being a lot of fun (result notwithstanding).

Shane: On one hand, it was a beautiful example of what makes the event so great.

Kyle: I think it was around this time that Carrie took drink orders (still can’t believe the shoddy beer cart situation out there), went to the clubhouse in her cart, and came back with, like, ten drinks. Good times.

Shane: With the sun setting and the match coming to the last holes, every cart rolled up to watch the conclusion. As early as the night before, I knew this whole thing was going to be a massive success on the social front, because everyone was having such a great time, but this cemented it, and it's one of the really special memories for me from the weekend. Even at the time, I looked around at everyone on both teams circled behind the last foursome, and thought just how cool it was.

Kyle: Well, we knew we were down 3-1 and we knew some of our teammates had very tough matches. We also knew that Bobby had never lost a Channels Cup match, and I had witnessed Gary play very well that morning, so Johnny and I were well aware that the match was important. We also knew we were playing alternate shot–my absolute favorite format. I barely had a chance to speak to Johnny the night before, so it was nice getting to know him over the course of the afternoon. I don’t even think I was aware he was Heath’s soon-to-be-brother-in-law until partway through the round. What a sweet guy! It was a great bonding experience. By the end of the round, we were legitimately trying to figure out a way that I could officiate Johnny’s wedding (in retrospect, that might’ve been alcohol-fueled).

Shane: From a playing side, though, it was nightmarish.

Kyle: We started out poorly, losing #1, but then we bounced back to win #2, so things seemed promising. This turned out not to be the case, as we found ourselves down 3 after #7 (including a gutting short miss to tie that hole). Johnny and I had a heart-to-heart on the way back to the cart, and we both agreed we were going to grind our way back into the match, which is exactly what we did. We won #8 and #9, then dropped #10, but won #11 and #12 to even things up. Nothing flashy, just steady golf. I was hitting irons off the tee to put something in play for Johnny and Johnny hit some gorgeous iron shots from long range. We were both putting well from what I recall.

I can’t remember the hole–mighta been #12, mighta been #13—but, when it was over, Bobby got frustrated and tossed his putter. In what I can only describe as some serious Zapruder shit, the grip end of Bobby’s putter hit the cart path and the club veered wildly towards us, smacking directly into the driver side front wheel of our golf cart and knocking our hub cap clear off.

Johnny and I were stunned. We had never seen anything like that. I didn’t even know golf carts had hub caps! But we had to move on to the next hole so we were frantically trying to fix the tire like **ASK PRIME FOR A TOPICAL NASCAR PIT CREW NAME**. So here I am, laying on the ground behind the green trying to affix the hub cap to our cart, even though our opponent had done the deed. It was like some sort of sick PSYOP from Bobby. Full credit to him.

Shane: We should have won the 15th hole, to square the match, but blew it on the greens.

Kyle: We had a chance on #15 to square the match, but we couldn’t.

Gary: After hitting a few shots on #15, Bobby and I lied four while short of the green and Jonny/Kyle lied three while left of the green. I chipped the ball to around 9-10 feet from the pin, Kyle chipped the ball onto the green around 18 feet away, while Johnny putted the ball and it ended up around 4 feet from the cup. Bobby then stepped up and drained his putt for a bogey six and I let out a roar of approval as the gallery politely applauded. With the tension mounting, to avoid going dormie, Kyle calmly drained his critical four footer to halve the hole. Again, the gallery applauded loudly and the competitors and entourage headed to the 16th tee as Bobby and I were 1 up.

Shane: We really, really should have won the 16th hole after two great shots to get greenside while Bobby and Gary were hunting for their ball in a bush close to the out-of-bounds line.

Gary: Before I stepped up to the tee, several members of the gallery lined up next to the tee for a group piss into the nearby brush (I think this happened and there maybe photographic evidence, and if didn’t it should have).

Kyle: On #16, they were in a lot of trouble and we were to the right of the green in very good shape.

Gary: I made solid contact with the ball on my tee shot, but it flew well to the right beyond the tree line dividing hole #16 from hole #3. Kyle, with his trusty iron, hit his drive down the middle though not long. Bobby hit a hybrid for his 2nd shot from the rough on hole three all the way across the 16th fairway. Johnny stepped up and hit his shot well, but left it to the right of the green in two.

Kyle: The rough on #16 seemed thick but I’d been hitting my 60-degree beautifully most of the round. I felt so comfortable over the shot that I didn’t even take a practice swing. Walked up, hit it, and….chunk. My heart sank.

Gary: Bobby and I drove up to our ball, only to find out that it rolled into the brush.

Jacob: I still can’t believe we found that ball (barely) in play. The image of everyone on Team World circling around this group of brush and trees trying to find the ball is one of my more vivid memories of this weekend.

Gary: Realizing we did not have much of a shot and could easily fuck it up, Bobby and I decided to take an unplayable lie and drop the ball. Lying three and approximately 70 yards out, I hit a wedge which looked to be a decent shot. It landed on the right side of the green, but rolled off into the rough on the back right side of the green.

Shane: I'm still shocked when I think about how we failed to win that hole, because Team World didn't make any kind of grand rescue from their tough position.

Gary: Still away and now lying three, Johnny hit his chip thin, and the ball came out very hot and rolled across the green and into the rough.

Kyle: Anything on the green and we win that hole and maybe the match. I had–to put it mildly–a lotta bad swings this weekend, but the chip on #16 is the one I regret the most.

Gary: A muffled gasp of shock was let out by the gallery realizing that we were now back in the hole.

Shane: It was just the short game killing us.

Gary: Bobby, facing a difficult downhill chip from the back of the green, hit a nice shot which ended up about 8 feet away below the hole. Kyle, wanting to make sure they remain in the hole, hit his fifth shot onto the green, which ended up slightly farther away than us and above the hole.

Shane: We made something like a 7 after being greenside in two—and when we walked away with a halved hole, still 1-down, it was one of those moments where it felt like destiny was against us.

Gary: Both teams were sitting five on this par 4 and it looked most likely that both could end up with triple bogey 7s. The crowd, which now included all the other competitors, sensed the tension, and despite various states of inebriation, managed to quietly observe the shitshow taking place right before their eyes. Taking a sixth shot, Jonny hit a very good downhill putt close to the hole, which we conceded. With a chance to win the match, I struck a decent putt which was close, but ended up short. Bobby’s putt was conceded and the hole was tied with both teams carding triples.

Shane: The details of the 17th escape me—

Bobby: That fucking car horn.

Gary: The match headed to the par 3 17th with us 1 up and a cart parade in tow. To no one’s surprise, Colin headed to the brush to water some wildflowers.

Kyle: So, ok, we’re still down 1 with 2 to play on the Par 3 17th. Team World has honours and Bobby is up.

Bobby: I had my tee shot lined up on 17. It was a tight match, and we needed the hole. Then right in the middle of my backswing,

Gary: In his backswing

Kyle: A fucking truck honks and it’s a big miss.

Bobby: A car honked, and I stood up and pulled the ball dead left.

Gary: Speculation was rampant that the car’s driver was on the Team C&C payroll.

Kyle: (Best $500 Team C&C ever spent, though I wish we hadn’t agreed to distribute all those anti-vax brochures for him).

Editor’s Note: Uploading this to YouTube caused a bit of an audio delay, but you can tell the honk occurred in Bobby’s backswing by all the yelling at the asshole truck driver

Kyle: Johnny then tugs his tee shot a bit right into the bunker but, still, seems like a big advantage for Team C&C. Pretty sure I was in that same bunker Friday morning and hit a rare good shot at that point. The plan was to do the same thing again except, nope, another fatball. Johnny put the ball on the green for us with our third.

Jacob: Chris and I had engineered the first key turning point in the morning, and this felt like the next big moment in the Cup that Team C&C just had to have after getting the classic “lots of assholes exist” break.

Kyle: Genuinely don’t recall Gary’s second shot or Bobby’s third.

Gary: From under the tree about 40 yards away, I pitched the ball about five feet short of the green in the rough.

Bobby: Thankfully, Gary managed to make a great second shot and saved the hole, and the match, for us.

Gary: Bobby chipped his third shot five feet past the hole, leaving a tricky downhiller.

Kyle: I remember Gary having a downhill breaking putt to close us out….and that everyone knew it was good the second he contacted the ball (in my mind, Gary drops the putter and walks away without actually seeing it go in, but I could be imagining that).

Gary: Knowing I could two-putt to win the hole and the match, I tapped the putt. It started rolling down the hill, and before it reached the hole, I started walking off as the putt dropped and the gallery erupted as we won the match 2&1.

Kyle: We were beyond frustrated to lose and felt (rightly, in my opinion) that we’d let the team down, but it was a crazy fun match.

Jacob: I knew we were going to win the Cup after those last two holes.

Lawton: I imagine this has been told a million times, but I left this match thinking Bobby has a horseshoe up his ass and Team C&C was in trouble. It was the difference between 4-4 and 5-3.

Shane: In memory, I think Gary made a very competent bunker shot—but I knew we lost the hole and the match, and instead of a 4-4 tie heading into Saturday, and a whole heap of momentum after a rough morning, Team World had salvaged a 2-2 afternoon session to lead 5-3.

Jacob: One of the more fun, less-intense memories of the weekend was the 18th hole. We all decided to play it in groups of 8. The sheer chaos of 4 golf carts and 8 balls spread across the fairway is another indelible image burned into my memory, and if I recall correctly most of us either made par or bogey to close the day out, although I could be misremembering given how chaotic the green was as practically all eight of us were putting at the same time.

Shane: The plan, as with the morning, was to force them to commit their resources to one match while we cleaned up in the rest, and it almost worked. The assessment after that day was rough. We didn't think scramble was a particularly wonderful session for us, and singles seemed even tougher, and it was apparent that while our sacrifices were probably good ideas in theory, they didn't pan out with the results we wanted. This wasn't mission impossible, but getting to 10-10 was going to be a massive task at Bass River.

What do you remember about dinner at Team C&C's house on Friday night?

Jim: The Team World desecration of a Neil Diamond classic.

Mary Anne: Fine rendition of Fuck Carolina ... to the tune of Sweet Caroline. Sorry Mr. Diamond.

Jacob: Chris’s Grammy-winning singer/songwriter performance.

Chris: Listen. When Team World booked a rental house that was called "Suite Caroline" it took approximately 4 seconds for me to decide that we were going to write a song called "Fuck Carolina."

Kyle: Oh, fuck, I forgot all about the song.

Chris: For the next month it's basically all I thought about. For a while, the plan was that I was going to learn the song on piano, and play/perform the whole thing live with the rest of Team World. Those plans fell through when we couldn't reasonably rent a piano on the Cape.

Colin: I’ll leave the slanderous abomination of a song to someone else’s description.

Chris: The question then became, how are we going to do this? I had sent the words and music to the whole team in the week leading up to the Cup, and I knew everyone would be ready to perform, we just needed the right time, the right venue, to do it. I thought about singing it at Team World’s house, on video, and then posting the video before the matches kicked off Friday morning. But no, we all realized that we needed to do this live for Team C&C to witness.

Kyle: We’d had our press conference and were feeling pretty satisfied about ourselves when we were called into the family room for Team World’s press conference which, of course, wasn’t a press conference at all but just a four and a half minute repeated dunk on our heads. I get why they did it but I don’t get why my wife was clapping so much.

Chris: Could it be Thursday night? Maybe, but arrival times were all over the place. Anthony wasn't going to be there. No, it couldn't be Thursday. Friday it would have to be. The dinner that night was really quite fun, a great spirit being enjoyed by all, but I knew. I knew what we had in store.

Lawton: The rest of the night's a blur until Team World tried to show us up by having their press conference in front of the group instead of the designated press room.

Chris: When OWN+ wanted to do a group press conference, I knew we had the perfect platform for the performance. Team World arranged the plan while Team C&C did their press conference. We cajoled Joanna into doing ours out in the living room. The rest is history.

Anthony: Sorry, Chris, for not learning the song beforehand.

Jamieson: I will never forget the anticipation we had going into the press conference, knowing that Team CnC was playing it straight while we had the song prepared. As someone who … uhhh … doesn’t sing in front of people often, I was initially very nervous, but it’s tough to feel too self-conscious when song parody maestro Chris is singing his ass off.

Damon: The highlight of the evening had to be Team World's singing of "F*** Carolina (and Canada)." Between that and the recruitment song that convinced Gary to complete Team World, this event might be a full blown musical some day.

Jacob: I hear there was a Team C&C press conference or something, but no one remembers what was said since we were all that anyone could talk about.

Lawton: Holy shit, what a moment. They break into song, a parody of Neil Diamond. Line after line, I never knew what was coming and each one was more brilliant than the next. A moment I'll remember the rest of my life.

Chris: In the aftermath, I realized that, yes, this was a bold move. That us calling out our opponents so directly invited the chance that a loss would prove extra humiliating, especially after we had taken the lead on Day 1. Did we hand our opponents the chance they needed to mount a stunning comeback? It didn't matter, we were bold. It was then that we won The Channels Cup.

Kyle: When we got back to Whitby, I relayed the whole thing to Abby, which was complicated because she had no idea (a) who Neil Diamond was, (b) that the song “Sweet Caroline” existed, or (c) what a song parody was, so it took a while. But it finally started to click, and then she became very upset.

“Are you,” she asked, through tears “still a man after that, daddy?”

“I don’t know,” I whispered.

Joanna: The press conferences really knocked my socks off.

Anthony: From the C&C presser, I did laugh pretty hard at Noodles' "we're seeing it as if we're winning 3-5".

Damon: Team C&C had a great house. Those Coffee Crisp bars from Canada were outstanding.

Jim: Pizza was magically delivered.

Kyle: I seem to recall that we were supposed to go out for dinner but there wasn't much enthusiasm for that (the Cape not taking reservations kinda put a damper on things). We ended up chilling in the pool and ordering pizza, which suited me just fine.

Joanna: The Stroud Delivery Service, after acquiring sandwiches for lunch, came in clutch once again, picking up pizzas from local haunt Papa Geno's.

Anthony: I don't know if pizza has ever hit the spot that hard.

Jamieson: I’ll be honest, I can’t really keep Thursday and Friday nights straight.

Lawton: Mainly the smoke. You may be thinking "Lawton, you don't smoke" and you'd be correct to trust that instinct.

Drew: Noodles made burgers in a smokestorm. There was a wonderful spread and things were super chaotic but it all worked out great.

Colin: With the inexplicable indoor BBQ, Noodles took years off his life due to smoke inhalation just to make sure everyone got fed a burger. 

Lawton: Unfortunately in this case, I grabbed the grill because that's what a man does when he shits the bed on the course and is attempting to reclaim his manhood from what can only be described as a den of testosterone.

Zac: Lawton abandoning all safety concerns and grilling inside the house. Those were some damn good burgers, Walter. The nights all run together, but I'm pretty sure I swam that night in my boxers.

Lawton: Rachael and Shannon had made up hamburger patties, and it was my job to cook them. Thankfully, there was a nice gas grill without a propane tank on the screened-in porch. I stood there like Owen Wilson in Zoolander just smacking the grill hoping it turned on. I notice a shutoff on the wall and think "OHHHH natural gas, what will the world think of next."

Damon: I still think that the grill was supposed to be outside on the deck before being fired up, but at least the place didn't catch fire and the burgers were great. I would've eaten more but they were gone. People said Kyle was eating a lot of burgers and it seems accurate because he actually swiped half a burger out of my hand as I was about to eat it and just walked away chewing it. Weird.

Lawton: I get the grill going and throw the burgers on. Quickly I realize that the smoke is building up more than I expected. The screened porch is not helping, as it decided it would like to hold on to every last inch of smoke. It looked like you'd walked in on Jacob and Damon "preparing" for a night out. The burgers would best be described as flame broiled, but they turned out well. I felt I had at last contributed to Team C&C.

Editor’s Note: We did not have both pizza and burgers Friday night, the pizza rememberers are correct. Burgers were Thursday night after the practice round (the characterization of Noodles trying to poison himself and everyone in his general vicinity with the smoke from some incredibly delicious BBQ is accurate, however).

Kyle: Someone (Jake?) had weed and it was excellent.

Editor’s Note: I did not, at least not that night, but I appreciate the complement.

Jim: I think there was some sort of game played in the driveway that a Canadian won (of course).

Kyle: I was glad the golf was done so that we could focus on the marquee event of the weekend: the impromptu HORSE game. There used to be a 3-on-3 tournament in my hometown every May called the Gus Macker. I believe it originated in Michigan but London, Ontario was a Canadian test site. They played it at Victoria Park (downtown London, one of the city’s signature spots) and it was legit a big deal for several years. Probably something like 2,000 teams at its peak. Anyway, if you were in the top men’s or top women’s division, they had two “show” courts, made out of interlocking tiles and with plenty of seating on three sides. Very cool. Never got to play in the top division but loved watching games there when my team wasn’t playing and typically knew a few people playing there. Well, whoever owned Team C&C’s Airbnb must’ve purchased a court just like this from a different outfit that was going broke, because the court was immaculate. 10 or 20 grand, easily (but–and I cannot stress this enough–I do not know what I’m talking about).

Jacob: We played a game of HORSE that reinforced the reality that I am, always have been, and always will be, a pass-first point guard.

Kyle: I think we had 10 or 12 of us (Zac and Shane, in the pool, both later claimed they were “unaware” the game was happening WHICH I’M SO SURE) and we decided, in order to keep things flowing, to implement a rule that if you scored, but all remaining competitors also made your shot, you took a letter. It still took ages. I remember I kept missing my patented “shoot a five-footer from a seated position,” which was discouraging.

Anthony: Was this when we played the saddest game of HORSE ever? GotDAMN that was sad.

Damon: Playing H.O.R.S.E. would have been a lot more fun if I hadn't quietly retired from basketball to focus on golf eight months earlier.

Jamieson: The other thing I won’t forget was Drew’s H.O.R.S.E. strategy, which was equal parts impressive and annoying, and had me out of the game in short order, which would prove to be a harbinger for the following day’s play.

Kyle: It came down to me and Andrew.

Drew: Kyle defeated me in the finals in HORSE.

Kyle: I think he was HORS and I was HOR (but we might’ve both been HORS) when he made a free throw and then I matched to take it all it down. People were weeping–honest to god, weeping–they were so moved. Andrew asked me to speak at his funeral and I said I would think about it.

Colin: I actually can’t remember if this was on the way home after the practice round or after the Friday sessions, but I would be remiss if I did not interject with the anecdote from the ride between the course and the C&C house.  With Gary graciously driving Bobby and I, he wanted to call home to chat with his wife before diving into the rest of the evening. Bobby and I had no option but to eavesdrop on the conversation as she questioned what it had been like for him to finally meet “all these Yahoos” from the Slack that he spends so much time talking to online.

Gary: “A few even brought their spouses along.”
Mrs. Gary: “Oh the spouses were invited? You didn’t mention that to me. Do I embarrass you?”

She was a delight and I still chuckle thinking about her busting Gary’s chops.

Kyle: I also have a vivid memory that most of us were sitting on the back patio and I looked in the window and could see Johnny at, like, 11:00 p.m. reading a novel. People kept checking and swore they didn’t see anything, but I swear everyone was fucking gaslighting me. I also remember someone later telling me that Johnny was pretending to read for my benefit but this ALSO SEEMS LIKE FUCKING GASLIGHTING.

Jacob: After everything died down, some folks went to bed, while others stayed up to watch the U.S. Open. I valiantly tried to stay up with the tennis crew, but after the exhaustion from teeing off first in the morning and the adrenaline rush of reversing my Channels Cup narrative, I desperately needed sleep.

Kyle: A bunch of us (Colin, Andrew, Heath, I think, and a couple of others) stayed up late to watch Tiafoe and Alcaraz QF. Sorry, SF. I was so fucking tired and desperately wanted to go to bed, but Tiafoe won the fourth set tiebreaker so I felt obligated to see it through to the end. Alcaraz, predictably, won the fifth, but it was a great match. The Americans fell asleep but Colin and I stayed up. WE SHOULD GET ANOTHER POINT FOR THAT.

What do you remember about the Saturday a.m. Scramble matches?

Damon: Saturday started off with another great breakfast.

Joanna: Everyone was noticeably sluggish, but despite how slow everyone was moving, there was a still a lot of excitement going into the second day of matches. It was a lot fucking nicer because it was closer to the house. Once again, Team World had some extra pep in their step due to expertly made breakfast burritos.

Jacob: Man those burritos were good.

Chris & Anthony vs. Colin & Shane (tied)

Jacob: Damon and I spent more time paying attention to Chris and Anthony’s match against Colin and Shane than we did to our scramble while we were playing it.

Colin: Many people will probably tell you they played in “The Match of the Channels Cup”. And while other matches had stand-out individual moments (the late Friday match already discussed, the last Scramble match that I’ll discuss in a minute), I’m confident in saying there wasn’t another match that can rival the Scramble Match between Shane/Me and Chris/Anthony, when measuring quality of play, intensity, momentum shifts, etc.

Anthony: It was cold and wet. There was nowhere to warm up, and just like that Chris and I were shivering on the 1st tee against piss juggernaut Colin and Shane.

Chris: The tee shot on #1 is the first time I really felt nervous during The Channels Cup. It was all on the line and Anthony and I had a very tough matchup in Shane/Colin. It immediately went very badly very quickly, losing the first 3 holes.

Colin: Through the first 3 holes, the rout was on. This felt like a mismatch. Honestly, it seemed impossible that this match was going to be anything other than a Stephen Ames-esque thrashing. 

Shane: Finally, at long last, I felt like I was truly in the action in the scramble. Paired with Colin against Chris and Anthony, who had both lost Friday afternoon, I felt extremely confident, and the match got off to a dream start as we raced out to a 3-up lead after three. Not only that, but I was contributing—Colin wasn't carrying me completely. And that is when my own personal nightmare began.

Colin: On the 4th tee, Shane boasted that playing with me as a partner was like being on a date with the Bonniest Lass in the Highlands. We were feeling ourselves. There was honestly a hint of “Ok, let’s not completely embarrass these guys.” Those feelings did not last long.

Anthony: At this point Chris and I just let all the air out of our lungs, wondering how embarrassing this was gonna be. It was absolutely the perfect time for an on-camera interview. Shane did the "Bonniest Lass" bit and I made a weak joke about thinking we were going to a soccer match (I was wearing a soccer jersey).

Chris did crack a joke that made me laugh (which might not have been a joke - we were actually looking ahead to singles, in a way) and weirdly, just like that, I kind of realized that this was the worst it could possibly get, 0-2 for the Cup, 3-down after 3 holes, and it...wasn't really that shitty at all. If anything, this was still fun, and if we go down in flames, well, then we go down in flames.

Chris: We finally halved the 4th, and thought ok, we're not going to get shut out.

Shane: There's no better way to put this: they started to sink everything. It was unreal. These were not easy putts, we were not playing terribly, and we weren't dumb enough to become complacent with a lead. They just caught fire.

Anthony: On hole #5 we got away with shitty tee shots when I hit a decent blade-bump chip that might've been unintentional. Another par to halve the hole. And just like that, two straight holes where we gave up no ground!

Chris: We won a hole on #6, and then on #8, Anthony hit a putt unlike anything I've ever seen. This would go on to be a theme.

Anthony: Hole #6 was where the round turned.

Colin: They won #6 (the dumb par 4 with the huge dip), which really didn’t seem particularly consequential at the time. 

Anthony: This was the hole that's dead straight, but the fairway drops down into a valley, and unless you’re Colin your approach shot is blind. Fortunately, Colin hit his drive way left so that even though he could see the hole, the ball was on the side of the #5 tee box, 6 inches below his feet. He had a, let's say, spirited discussion with Shane, eventually convincing his partner that he could hit a good wedge from that stance. Neither of them did - Shane might've ended up in the road - while I stuck a blind 8-iron onto the green from the fairway 130-ish out. Chris lagged his putt to gimme range and I was so excited about possibly winning a hole that I picked up the marker without hitting a birdie putt, prompting a "WYD?!?" from all parties. I sheepishly asked where was a good place to go back and take my birdie putt from, and of course hit it nowhere close. But we had won a hole! 2-down.

Shane: Anthony did a little more of the heavy lifting from tee to green, but Chris was just as spectacular with the putter, dropping our jaws over and over. They were making pars at worst, and plenty of birdies—this was a proper scramble.

Anthony: Hole #7 was a par 5 that, again, C&C reached in two (I think both Shane and Colin did) while Chris and I were slightly short. C&C made their two-putt birdie and we were left with a birdie putt from just off the back of the green. Chris gave me a good read with his putt, and I started walking in my putt as soon as I hit it. We didn't win the hole, but hey, it was a birdie, and the momentum was still ours.

Colin: We had a good look at winning #7, but missed a putt to restore our 3-up lead.  No matter, we thought.

Anthony: Our approach on #8 left us with a slaloming double-breaker sideways thru a ridge that Chris did well to hit to gimme range. With him in for par, I used his line and took all of the second break out of the putt by ramming it so that it would've gone 8 feet past, except it slammed into the back of the cup.

Colin: And then the floodgates opened. Anthony couldn’t miss a wedge. Chris couldn’t miss a putt. It happened so fast.

Anthony: Chris pumped his fist and yelled loud enough to alert the group behind us that we were onto something. That was two holes in a row that he'd hit a perfect setup putt. 1-down.

Shane: They chipped away at our lead, and personally, my confidence began to go.

Anthony: On hole #9, C&C were in trouble off the tee. Chris nuked his drive, and I hit a decent 60 to leave another birdie putt for Chris, and this time he simply made the putt. Somehow we'd hit the turn all square, wondering what the hell was happening.

Shane: I got the sense that Colin was getting annoyed with me close to the turn (though he never said as much), and I can't blame him, because for a while I just wasn't contributing.

Chris: By the turn, it was all square, and the next 9 holes are among the most intense things I've ever done in a sporting event.

Anthony: Hole #10 was a long par 3 that I thought I caught perfectly with a hybrid off the tee. Turns out I was just short of the green, but we also had to navigate three sizable hills and dales to get to the hole, which was cut in an evil spot. Chris hit an all-world chip so that we had a pretty manageable par putt left, about 3 feet. C&C were forced to chip in from off the green, and were closer than us, but with a much harder putt. We made par (I honestly don't remember who - the next part was way more memorable) and Colin and Shane discussed their par putt for an eternity. Shane went first, with his putt taking a diabolical amount of break and just sliding below the hole.

Colin again called on his partner for feedback, lined up his ball and re-lined it up about seventeen times, discussed more about it with Shane, and then...hit the exact same putt as Shane. 1-up.

Colin: Poor Joanna tried to do a ‘Fit Check after the 10th hole. I was in a dark place.

Anthony: I believe I heard "I'm not doing a fucking fit check" at this point, which was unfortunate because it was time for our fit check. Turns out you CAN play golf in a 2012 Brad Davis Houston Dynamo jersey.

Anthony: After Colin reluctantly made it through a fit check on the 11th tee box, Chris gave me another perfect read and I rolled in the putt. Four straight for Team World, five of six, 2-up.

Shane: This was hard to handle, because we had considered this match ours, both on paper beforehand and certainly on the front nine, and now it was spiraling out of control. Colin later said that he had never seen anyone play better against him his entire competitive life, and I certainly hadn't.

Colin: We stemmed the tide with a birdie on #12, getting it back to only 1 down. Shane and I primally screamed at each other on the green and I was sure we were going to take this thing back over. And then on #13, they did it again. 

Anthony: We responded with a regulation par to win #13 after a great approach from Chris, and possibly the beer cart girl yelling during Colin's swing, although he said nothing.

Colin: Another good Anthony wedge to about 12 feet, with us scrambling. Shane hit an absolutely brilliant pitch to a foot and it looked like we were going to escape with a halve. But Chris was having none of it. Back to 2-up.

Shane: I can't remember if I contributed anything on the back nine, but if I did, it wasn't much. These weren't nerves as much as they were a kind of trauma, like getting hit in the head in a boxing match, and somehow staying in the fight, but just staggering around punch-drunk, waiting for the end.

Anthony: Hole #14 was all Colin, while we made a complete mess of it, and it was back to 1-up.

Colin: We won #14 with another birdie (I hated the putt, was sure I had left it short, but it got there), back 1 down.

Anthony: Colin slammed his driver in disgust after hitting his tee shot on #15 which turned out to be in a perfectly good spot.

Shane: Luckily, Colin kept his composure better than I did, and kept fighting what felt like an inevitable tsunami.

Colin: #15 was the driveable par 4. A terrific late-round match play hole. I hit a tee shot that deserved to go OB left (sometimes your worst miss shows up when you most expect it), but luckily hit a tree and came down in play. Even with that, we ended up with a 2-footer for par to halve the hole. This 2-footer had legitimately 4+ inches of break. It was brutal. Shane missed and I was terrified we were about to be 2 down with 3 to go. I absolutely hammered the putt, taking most of the break out and getting incredibly lucky for it to drop. I think about this putt way more than a normal person should think about something like this.

Anthony: We had to hit a pretty difficult par putt to keep it 1-up.

Colin: Nerves and stress were beyond high at this point.

Shane: On the 16th, a par-3, we both hit good shots and managed to win the hole to square the match.

Anthony: No such luck on #16, however, as I pulled my 8-iron left, and more importantly, long into the shit behind the green.

Colin: Shane and I both hit good shots and we had a terrific look (about 8 feet) for birdie on #16, while Chris and Anthony hit a really good looking shot that went about 5 feet over the green - right over top of the flag. A solid chip, but not close enough to be conceded, and the door was open. Shane and I missed and it felt like we were screwed. Then the guys gave the gift back, missing their par putt, and the match was tied with 2 to go.

Chris: We rode some luck, we had some brilliance of our own, we got the brilliance from Shane/Colin that we knew they were capable of, and then #17 happened.

Colin: Emboldened, Shane and I strode to the 17th tee convinced the match was ours to win. A mid-length par 5 seemed likely to play into our strengths. But the most important thing to remember in this match was that no matter what you thought was about to happen, you were wrong. 

Anthony: I was distraught that after all we'd done to ham-and-egg our way back, dominating that stretch from #6 - #13, we were now all-square, with momentum on C&C's side. We were also staring at a hole C&C would be licking their chops at, a downwind par 5 that was also downhill for the last half.

Chris: I had gone first, switching our order a bit, and left one safe. Anthony was going to go for it.

Anthony: I pulled my drive halfway to Rhode Island.

Shane: I was finally feeling good about myself again, ready to handle the pressure, and then after Colin pushed his drive right on #17, I hit my worst drive of the morning.

Anthony: We caught a massive break when Shane topped his tee shot and Colin blocked his drive into an unplayable position on the right.

Colin: Shane topped his tee shot. So what? We were using most of my tee shots anyways. I stepped up convinced I was going to absolutely destroy the ball. And then at the top of my backswing, memories of the dead pull-hook on #15 resulted in an anti-left swing that shoved my ball into the trees on the right, essentially unplayable. We drove up and debated pitching it out sideways (leaving about 210 in) before deciding to go back to Shane’s topped tee shot and hoping a good 3-wood from there would leave a short iron in.  

Shane: They were in the fairway, and for a moment we felt like we could scramble our way out of it and salvage a half.

Chris: I don't even think I can do this justice, but the shot that Anthony hit on #17 is one of the most clutch things I have ever seen.

Shane: Then Anthony hit his 3-wood.

Colin: Somewhere in the middle of all of this, Chris and Anthony stepped up to their best option (~260 out). 

Anthony: Before I talk about the next shot I hit, I need to point out that Chris basically hit two perfect shots on this hole: his first was to save Team World with a safe drive that ended up two inches off the fairway. C&C were forced to hit from Shane's tee shot, which didn't even make it to the fairway, and even after Colin bombed a fairway wood, they were left with a mid-iron approach. From Chris's tee shot, GPS on the cart showed 257 to the middle of the green.

Chris: From the moment Anthony stepped over the shot, I had zero doubts what was coming next.

Anthony: Colin and Shane had driven up to their ball about 100 yards ahead of us, while Kyle and Heath had come to check out our match, pulling up right behind us.

Kyle: I managed to convince Heath that we should check out some other matches, so we drove off before #14. We headed towards #17, the long par 5, where Colin and Shane were all square with Chris and Anthony. I think we just missed the tee shots, but saw Colin, Shane, and Chris hit their approaches.

Shane: All I saw of it, searching for our ball in the woods, was Anthony twirling his club as he finished his stroke. I thought, shit, that was probably good. I had no idea just how good.

Anthony: All day I had hit first on shots that were "get it out there" shots, because Chris is a longer hitter. And I was all set to hit first again, except that Chris didn't have a fairway wood in his bag...essentially by default, I became the longer hitter in that moment. We decided that Chris would hit the layup to about 100 yards out, and if that ended up in good shape, I would attempt to smash my 3W as hard as I could.

Kyle: The mood was tense, so Heath and I tried to stay quiet.

Anthony: Chris actually pulled his layup eeeeever so slightly, so just to make sure I had a full green light, I had him drive all the way up to his ball to check. He came back and gave me the OK.

Shane: It had to be the best shot in Channels Cup history.

Kyle: Legitimately the greatest shot I’ve ever seen in person.

Colin: Given the situation, it’s the best shot anyone’s ever hit against me in a match.

Anthony: I took a couple of practice cuts, set up an inch or two further from the ball than I would have for a regular 3-wood, moved my hands up the grip slightly (apparently "choking down" and "choking up" on a golf club mean the same thing, which...anyway I did the opposite of these), squeezed a little bit of extra turn out of my shoulders, and threw the club head at the ball as hard as I fucking could. The ball flight was lower than I expected, but I knew I had hit a proper smash.

Kyle: Chris and Anthony fist bump, everyone else is absolutely fucking stunned. Absolutely incredible.

Anthony: More importantly, it started on the perfect line, which was important because we had to navigate a tree off the right, and started to cut back slightly off the left. I was satisfied with the shot, lost sight of the ball, gave the club a tiny half-twirl, and got in the cart, hopeful that we were in a good spot, something that was just short of the green and left of the fairway if not in it.

Colin: I didn’t see the shot. I don’t know if Shane did. I just heard Chris react to it and then pulled out my rangefinder to see the ball sitting what looked like about 8 feet from the hole.

Anthony: The first good sign was that I didn't see the ball short of the green, which is where I initially thought it would've ended up. The second good sign was that, after C&C got on the green with their 3rd, they turned to us and said "8feetholehighmotherfuck" or something to that effect. There was some Team World fist pumping, and when we got close enough we could see that our ball (that's right, OUR) was just on the fringe an inch left of the green, hole high, and I would probably put it at more like ten feet. After C&C missed their birdie opportunity, Colin asked us to make eagle since he'd bet the prop and no one had made eagle yet. Somehow neither of us did, but with the birdie Team World was now dormie.

Shane: Anthony's shot will be remembered the most from that day, and deservedly so, but we shouldn't forget what Colin did on the 18th, the par-3 over the water.

Anthony: Colin hit, in retrospect, an unreal tee shot on #18.

Kyle: Team World wins #17 and now we’re off to #18, which is a picturesque par 3 over water. LOTS of water. Scorecard says 169 from the tips.

Colin: Obviously we all recall the 18th at Bass River. I measured 143 yards from the tee. I pulled a 9-iron, which is roughly a 145-153 club. 

Kyle: Think it might’ve been 160 that day, but, with the wind, it seemed at least two clubs longer than that. Chris went in the water and Anthony was safe, but short of the green (might have that backwards).

Colin: Chris and Anthony both came up woefully short, looking like they might not even be in play. Shane and I shared a glance before both going back for more club. I pulled 8-iron out and watched Shane.

Shane: It was playing incredibly long; in fact, I hit what I thought was a terrific 6-iron, only to watch it disappear on the rocks by the water.

Kyle: I think Shane caught a gust of wind and went in the water, so it was on Colin’s shoulders. (FOR ONCE, AMIRITE?)

Colin: Heart beating out of my chest, I went back for 7-iron - a club that I can comfortably push to 170. All that mattered was good contact, and I made my best swing of the weekend. 12 feet. We were good, right? The other guys probably weren’t even going to find either of their balls. Think again. 

Shane: The end was actually a little more dramatic than it needed to be.

Colin: They found a ball in the marsh and somehow pitched it up to 15 feet above the hole on that devilish green. Chris hit a putt that I still can’t believe didn’t go in. It looked good the whole way. I can tell you that there’s no way in hell we were making our birdie putt if that had gone in.

Kyle: Colin hits a gorgeous shot onto the green and, one scary two-putt later, the boys had won the hole and halved a truly epic match.

Colin: The work wasn’t even done yet, but when Shane’s 1-footer caught the very left edge, I exhaled, and the first halved match in Channels Cup history had been recorded.

Anthony: We made Shane putt a 8-incher for par to fittingly end the first halved match in TCC history after we got on in 2 with help from the marsh (and Colin, who actually spotted our ball), but missed our par putts.

Shane: Colin's shot was just as clutch as Anthony's, and it saved me from being 0-3 heading into singles. The larger picture, though, was not great. Truth was, we couldn't afford to split that match.

Anthony: BTW, my 3 wood is a titanium TaylorMade R7, made in 2007, and I've tried replacing it multiple times over the years (including for TCC 2021) only to come back to it every time.

Chris: Even though we couldn't close it out on #18, on Anthony’s 250 yard shot to 10 feet on #17, it was then that we won The Channels Cup.

Bobby & Zac vs. Jim & Lawton (won 1 up)

Jim: This was a big match for Team C&C; Lawton and me vs. Zac (my 3rd match in a row against him; 1-1 so far) and the undefeated legend Bobby.

Lawton: We needed this one. I was paired with Jim and it was a chance to defeat Bobby, the undefeated king.

Zac: Getting Jim for my 3rd match in a row was so psyching me out, the man is abusive and mean and plays so many mind games.

Lawton: Jim is a joy to play with, such a consistent and calming influence. We needed it, as this was a fucking battle.

Jim: First two holes were basically my kryptonite; right sloped fairways leading to the woods. That we were 1-up after two is entirely to Lawton's credit. A close match where we never trailed and never better than 2-up. I don't think either team was happy with their putting.

Lawton: Bobby and Zac played so well as a team and really made each other better. At no point did either team have more than a 2 up lead. We led from hole #2 until hole #13 when Team World won two of three holes to pull even. Jim and I were on the ropes, but Jim never wavered, even did an interview where he shared what brand of underwear he had on. The balls on this guy.

Zac: Two man scramble is a lot different than four man, is all I'll say.

Lawton: We halve #14, and win #15 to go 1 up. Step up to #16, and we have to go first. A par 3, pin is in the back left. Plenty of room to bail out right. Jim hits a nice shot inside of 10 feet, so no pressure on me. I stick one to 5 feet. Bobby and Zac hit decent shots but par is the best they can do. Jim steps up and pulls it slightly to the left. I step up and do the same damn thing. At this point, we've got two holes and two halves will do us just fine. Hole #17 nothing special happens, we halve the hole and head to #18.

Jim: We got to #18 at 1-up. Pretty sure I had teed off the first 17 times - the idea being if I'm safe, Lawton can swing for the fences, but on #18 he headed for the tee like a man on a mission.

Lawton: #18 is a shortish par 3 over water. It's a truly excellent finishing hole for match play. There’s a possibility of wind but the tee for some reason feels a little sheltered. Heath is there chatting with people as they come through. We have to go first and he comes over and says "it's playing a club longer than you think". Now if you know Heath, you know this is excellent advice, but also that he was here chatting because his match had ended on hole #12. I'm a good man but this sort of conflict can stick in your head. I club up to a 6 iron. Jim goes first and it ends up in the water. The pressure is sinking in and I know I need to put this on the green to put pressure on them.

Jim: I almost said something but Lawton had a serious game face on and promptly striped one over the flag to ~15 feet.

Lawton: I hit it to 25 feet above the hole. I felt like a god damn super hero and Heath saved the day.

Jim: That pretty much wrapped up the match as Team World was in trouble off the tee.

Shane: Finally—finally—Bobby had gone down. It would have been better on day one, but we really needed to take the wind out of their sails somehow, and keep him from compiling an 8-0 Channels Cup record.

Lawton: Zac went in the water and Bobby cleared the water but was well short on the right side. The putt we had left was a very quick downhill putt, but we got it to stop close enough to the hole and Jim made the putt for the half and the match. Big 1 point for us. C&C halved two other matches to give us a fighting shot in the afternoon.

Shane: Credit to Jim and Lawton for holding tough here exactly when we needed them to. Seeing what they did actually made me more upset that Colin and I hadn't been able to seal the deal in match one, because we were starting to see signs that Bass River might be very good to us.

Jamieson & Gary vs. Drew & Johnny (tied)

Shane: Then came the wildest match of them all.

Jacob: I was a bit nervous watching it on the 18th tee simply because we had the Masshole schmucks behind us finishing up #17, and with one of the seminal moments of The Channels Cup unfolding in front of us, I was ready to tap into my inner Masshole to counteract any more bullshit coming from the townies. Luckily, they behaved and were actually very nice about having to wait once I explained to them the stakes of what was going on ahead of us.

Jamieson: I remember feeling great going into the Saturday morning scramble match. My only blemish in the 2021 Channels Cup was a tie in the alternate shot against Drew and Noodles, and having beaten Noodles the previous day, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to draw even against Drew too.

Drew: Jamieson and Gary started out hot winning first two holes. They had a chance to put Johnny and I away early but were not hitting putts.

Jamieson: We started well, winning the first hole with a birdie and the tough, long second hole with a bogey, but for the next 8 holes we frustratingly couldn’t pull away. It seemed like every time we were in good position to make par and force them to drain a long putt, they’d make it. The 7th hole exemplifies this the best. Gary did his job, getting us squarely into the middle of the fairway, and I tried to be aggressive with my drive and cut the fairway on the 485-yard par-5. I hit a good shot, but it finished mere feet behind one of the tall, sparse trees left of the fairway. I was confident that we could make birdie with Gary’s drive, getting us close to the green and then chipping up, but Gary was adamant that we play my ball, and I could sling a hook around the trees and onto the green. Trusting his confidence, after Gary advanced one down the fairway from my ball, I hit a monster 4-iron hook from just over 200 yards, and the ball landed on the front of the green and trickled just inches into the fringe. Our eagle putts weren’t aggressive enough though, and Johnny and Drew answered with a birdie of their own to tie the hole.

Drew: Johnny and I really battled on the front 9 then started playing better on the back.

Jamieson: The lead began to crack around when we made the turn. I busted a drive off the 9th tee, but we couldn’t get our short pitch close, and settled for par. On the 10th, a long par-3, we tied with bogeys. On the 11th, with Drew and Johnny in bad shape after their tee shots and us with a great drive, we were looking to pull away, but we couldn’t get our approach into birdie range while they drained a long birdie. Johnny made another massive birdie on the next hole, the par-4 12th, to draw even. On the 14th, a sharp dogleg left par-4, I absolutely lured a drive down the middle of the fairway and we hit our approach to tap-in range to take the lead again, but we missed makeable putts on #15 and #16. On the par-5 17th, my drive gave us irons into the green, but Drew hit an impressive approach shot as well, and we tied the hole with two putts.

Drew: Johnny was carrying us on approach shots and I think we got it to 1 down heading into #17 which we both hit the green (or greenside) in 2, after Jamieson did. We managed a birdie to halve the hole and now had a shot to halve the match on #18.

Colin: I don’t know if I started the idea that we needed to get some information to Johnny and Drew, but I was all-in on the concept. Text, phone call, drive out there. Whatever it took. They needed to know how long the 18th was playing relative to the yardage.

Gary: I remember the crowd around #18.

Jacob: #18 was nuts (ocean wind is no joke, folks), made doubly so by the fact that I was watching from the tee box across the water and wasn’t sure what everyone’s scores were, so I had to rely on people’s reactions from 150 yards away.

Colin: Trying to keep track of all of the shots was mayhem. 

Joanna: I parked at hole #17 for a lot of putts, got some great footage—you're all welcome—but what I loved was watching people get to #18, come up over the hill, see the hole, and go oh shit, look at what I have to deal with, even if I get it over the water I have to deal with sand, or a hill, or more water.

Drew: Nobody hit a good tee shot. Mine was short in rocks, Johnny right in shit, Jamieson and Gary were in the bunker and the rough with difficult chips. We had to play from the junk, was able to advance ball with no penalty, then Johnny chipped up to about 15 feet, but above the hole. I forget exactly what Jamieson and Gary did, but I want to say 2nd shot wasn’t great, and 3rd shot was very difficult downhill, but they left themselves about 5 feet for bogey.

Jamieson: On the short par-3 18th, with Drew and Johnny in a world of hurt off the tee, we let conservatism get the best of ourselves. I pulled my tee shot just slightly, into the left greenside bunker, while Gary’s shot finished short of the green. Only needing to tie the hole, we figured that with the pin on the front left, and with the green sloping front to back and right to left, Gary’s shot would put us in the best shape to get the ball to tap-in range, as it would be difficult to keep mine on the putting surface.

Shane: I actually didn't see the end on the 18th green—I was inside getting some food and trying to organize everything for the afternoon—but my teammates came running in to tell me, and I was stunned.

Jamieson: Ultimately, I think the decision was defensible, as both lies were locations where we could/should have made par, bogey at the absolute worst. But both Gary and I were tentative with our chips, leaving the ball short, and we couldn’t get our third shots closer than 5 feet or so.

Drew: Johnny steps up and casually drains the sidewinding, downhill putt for 4. Now they just need to make their bogey putt to halve the hole and win the match.

Jacob: Johnny’s monster putt and the subsequent fist pump and fist bumps was the only time I was certain what the score was.

Jamieson: After Gary missed his putt, I was absolutely convinced and confident that I had the line.

Drew: This was a difficult putt by anyone’s measure.

Jamieson: But I missed it dead left to lose the hole and drop us into a tie for the match.

Gary: The pin placement was so hard, and we three putted to lose the hole and halve the match.

Drew: Gary ran it by, and Jamieson couldn't make it either and we got the miracle half. Jamieson didn't play well for him, but Gary had some flashes of brilliance to keep them up most of round.

Jamieson: I’ll admit, I was devastated. Despite how well I had played on Friday, which was a veritable iron clinic, I just did not have my game on Saturday, and not only hadn’t I scraped the ball around well enough Saturday morning to pull out the W, I made mental mistakes down the stretch that lost us that match. Straight-up, the ending of that match was embarrassing.

Drew: Johnny (in particular) and I played really well, and the birdie on #17 was my personal highlight of golf this weekend. We were all drained (as evidenced by all of us losing singles except Gary who walked over Heath), as that was one of the most exciting/tense matches I've ever played.

Jacob: It was a strange moment. I had navigated two tense matches before co-authoring a historic blowout with Damon who I was finishing up a nice and laid back practice round with, and both Team World and I had led wire to wire to that point. At no point in The Channels Cup did I ever believe that we would lose, but as I stared down at Team C&C’s raucous celebration while the Massholes breathed down my neck, I was a bit fearful of what awaited us in the afternoon. I quickly took a shot at #18 just to get a feel for the wind, left it way short, sprinted down, picked up my ball, then Damon and I headed into the clubhouse for lunch.

Shane: Out of nowhere, from a place that was approaching resignation, I was completely infused with energy. It was 7-5—we could do this. I gathered our team while we all had Johnny's heroics fresh in our mind, and gave a little pep talk. I don't remember exactly what I said, but it was along the lines of "this is exactly what we needed, they're going to be shitting themselves after that, so let's go out and break their hearts in singles."

Jacob & Damon (won 7&6) vs. Kyle & Heath

Shane: We always knew Match 4 in scramble, Kyle and Heath vs. Jake and Damon, was going to be tough on us, and that was before we realized that both Jake and Damon were better than we expected. On paper, coming into Saturday, that seemed like an especially difficult hill to climb, and it was no big surprise when they won 7&6.

Damon: I went into the clubhouse to get some beverages for the morning round and as I grabbed some Gatorade out of the cooler, I felt like a miniature bolt of lightning was corkscrewing its way into my wrist. I thought my fitbit was electrocuting me but it turned out to be a bee sting (or was it a mythical green head?). There was some swelling and minor discomfort, but I wouldn't let a shark bite keep me from playing golf, let alone a bee sting.

Jacob: This is the biggest ass-kicking I have ever unleashed on anyone in any sport I’ve ever played.

Damon: Saturday morning found me paired up with Jake and we were facing Kyle (the hamburgler?) and Heath (yet again).

Kyle: God, Heath and I got absolutely dismantled. We lost #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #8, ##9, and #11!

Jacob: It wasn’t Kyle and Heath’s fault they got blown out, they were set up to fail by Team C&C’s leadership. They never had a chance. Heath struggled a lot that day (but I saw him sink tons of huge puts against me in 2021, so I push back against his assertion that he is not good), and Kyle was good around the green, but neither had the distance to contend with me even on my worst day, giving us a huge cushion to work with even before you factor in Damon’s massive improvement and significant distance advantage over Kyle and Heath. If they had paired either Kyle or Heath with someone who could regularly drive 200+, this is a very different match. That said, Damon and I were both playing lights out, so unless they stuck Colin in this one, I don’t think anyone on Team C&C had a chance to beat us.

Shane: The scramble session was one where a huge mismatch was going to come into play, and that happened in the anchor, with Jake and Damon taking on Kyle and Heath. Damon had been playing better than we thought, but Jake, we knew by now, was playing some great golf, and had dramatically improved from a year ago. That match was never going our way—Jake and Damon won 7&6, the most lopsided match of the Cup.

Editor’s Note: This was true until Gary beat Heath 8&7 in singles later that day.

Shane: That meant we were starting the session down 1-0. For Colin and I not to offset that with a win was a bad blunder, and for a minute I thought it marked the death of Team C&C.

Jacob: Damon carried us through the first two holes as I kept shanking my hybrid and got really worried that the magic I had built up with that club the day before was gone.

Damon: We got off to a pretty hot start and never looked back. I was just glad that we used some of my shots and I got to be part of Jake's winning streak.

Kyle: We were the last group off Saturday morning (8:10 a.m.). As we were waiting around, I clocked a group of 8 to 10 guys in matching red shirts and then a group of another 8 to 10 guys in blue, so I figured they were also doing some sort of team event.

Damon: There was also the incident with the Masshole that told Kyle to "get off my fairway"... that was wild.

Kyle: They seemed, in no particular order, (a) good, (b) serious, and (c) sorta dickish, so I was praying they wouldn’t be up immediately after our group. No such luck. #1 at Bass River is not particularly long, but it was a tough tee shot, and I believe all four of us lost our opening shots. Not a promising start. Not a fast one either. We halved one and I could feel blue/red match one breathing down our necks.

Jacob: That was as worried as I got about this match all day as we won the 3rd hole, and to be honest my bigger concern going forward was making sure that Kyle’s day wasn’t ruined by some douchebag Masshole townie with extreme little dick syndrome.

Kyle: #4 is a long flat par 5 going the other way from #3. We were a bit behind but I could see the group ahead of us.

Jacob: We were maybe a shot off pace, we were moving a tad bit slow but nothing a seasoned golfer shouldn’t expect on a Saturday morning.

Kyle: I remember that we had to wait to tee off. Blue/Red are on the third green. Their ringleader is staring daggers at me. My game is in tatters, so I’m strictly hitting irons off the tee. We tee off and start to drive away when this motherfucker says “hey, buddy! You guys gotta pick up the pace.” I am, to put it mildly, not in the mood, so I note (shout, whatever) that (a) we’re playing a scramble, so that should help with pace of play, (b) that we agreed on the previous hole to play one tee up rather than the tips, (c) that we were attempting to play faster, (d) that we weren’t even out of position because we still had to wait on the #4 tee, (e) that it was Saturday morning, the course was packed, and that there was nowhere to go, and (f) that he could EAT MY ENTIRE ASS.

Joanna: I didn’t have any idea what was going on. When did Kyle get into that fight? Was that the second half of the second day? Man that was wild.

Editor’s Note: I think you might be able to hear the rumblings of the beginning of this conflict off-camera towards the end of this interview with Joanna.

Jacob: Some Sullymurph asshole told Kyle to get off “his” hole when we were on #4 and they were on #3, the par 5s that run against each other and contain like 3 trees separating them. It’s an insane complaint to make and it’s exponentially more insane to give voice to it, but such is the little dick mindset.

Kyle: Predictably, he did not take this well, and started shouting at me. Muttering to Heath “am I gonna have to knock someone the fuck out at Channels Cup?” I jumped out of the cart and began walking towards the third green, traveling from the fourth fairway to the third fairway to do so, whereupon this motherfucker starts shouting “DON’T YOU WALK ON MY FAIRWAY! DON’T YOU WALK ON MY FUCKING FAIRWAY!!” I swear to god, the craziest thing I’ve ever seen on a golf course and I saw Colin spend fully 25% of a round pissing.

Jacob: Seriously fuck that guy.

Kyle: “YOUR FAIRWAY? WHAT IN THE ABSOLUTE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT YOU FUCKING LUNATIC??”

Jacob: It was genuinely upsetting not just to Kyle but to the rest of the group, and we spent most of #4 and #5 just talking shit about that fackin townie to blow off steam.

Kyle: I think I blacked out after that, so I don’t quite remember what was said after that, aside from Heath quietly suggesting that maybe getting into an international brawl was somewhat inadvisable. I stormed off, absolutely fuming.

Damon: A while later it seemed like the other guys in his group were cool (in comparison) but I think the Masshole got into Kyle's head and by then it was too late.

Jacob: The funniest part of all this came later on when two guys from that group sheepishly apologized to me and Damon for hitting shots near the 7th tee box (they never came close to hitting us and weren’t at all distracting, I don’t think we even noticed their balls were there until they apologized), and to this day I am convinced that was them meekly apologizing for their fuckface friend.

Kyle: Heath said that one of the other Blue/Red guys sheepishly apologized for Captain Fuckface’s actions. That mighta been to placate me, I dunno.

Jacob: I pretty much ended this match with a chip-in birdie on #6, and Damon and I were kind of disappointed that our 38 wasn’t enough to end it by the turn.

Kyle: Jake and Damon closed us out on #12. They were already in for bogey and I think I had a six-footer for bogey, so the match was done, but Jake made me putt. FUCK YOU, JAKE! 😂 Probably my only good stroke of the round.

Jacob: Heath and Kyle left to check out the rest of the matches after ours was clinched, and Damon and I played a practice round on the remaining back 9, where I hit my best shot of the weekend: I stuck an 8-iron to within a foot or two on the par 3 16th. Damon was somewhere else, taking a phone call or maybe pissing in the woods like everyone else was that weekend, and I started cackling as the ball settled, laughing my ass off at the notion that my first ever hole-in-one almost came with no stakes and no witnesses right in the middle of some of the most pressure-packed golf any of us have ever played.

Kyle: The guys wanted to play the rest of the holes in preparation for the singles matches, but I had no interest. Jake, Damon, and Heath played #13. I just drove and tried to figure out how I could possibly salvage a portion of my game for my singles match. All in all, it must’ve taken close to 80 minutes for our three groups (remember: our match was long over; I don’t even remember if Jake and Damon teed up on #18) and, sometimes when I’m feeling down, I think about Captain Fuckface waiting on the 18th tee and I can’t stop laughing.

What do you remember about the Saturday p.m. Singles matches?

Shane: Privately, I thought of all we needed to do and understood what an enormous task it would be. Colin would have to beat Jamieson, but I thought that might be easier now after what had happened to end the morning. I would have to beat Chris, no questions asked. And up and down the line, so many matches had to go our way. But I also knew I wasn't deluding myself when I told the team that it was possible. It was, very much—completely tangible. For the first time since Friday morning, we had a kind of psychological momentum, and we wanted the trophy so bad. Ten points to Hyannis.

Chris vs. Shane (won 6&4)

Shane: Chris called me out and I bitch-slapped him all across the course. I completely fucked him. It was a fucking. Print that: print that I said it was a fucking.

Chris: Did I call out Shane? Yes.

Shane: I told Colin when we arrived that I wouldn't lose that match, and though I don't think he believed me, I believed it myself.

Chris: Did I desperately want to win? Yes, no doubt about it.

Shane: Even in the scramble round, as things went downhill for us, I knew watching Chris that it was a winnable match for me, and of course with our big deficit, I knew it was one I absolutely had to win.

Chris: Am I frustrated, to this very day, that I didn't make a better match out of it? Yes, it burns me up every time I have a quiet moment to myself.

Shane: I also knew Chris was a great competitor, and that he thrived on intensity. One of my goals for Saturday afternoon was to drain that intensity completely. I didn't have to do anything, though—with Anthony and Lawton as our partners, we had a fun group of laid-back people, and Chris and I get along extremely well anyway, so it was only natural that it was a fun group and a fun round, and that we'd set an easygoing vibe early. I could just be myself, and that was good, because I knew we'd both be taking the match very seriously internally, but it was better for my own mentality if we kept it loose on the course. I was very determined that this wasn't going to be some holy war, or some kind of revenge thing for him calling me out. That could all come later, but for my own purposes and the purposes of the team, I needed to relax.

Chris: Did it matter even one fucking iota? Did it??? It did not.

Shane: There wasn't much between us off the tee, but my short game was way better that afternoon, right from the first hole when I chipped out of a bunker, made bogey, and watched him three-putt for double. My short iron and wedge game was a wreck, but the course was so hard and rolling so fast, and the greens were open enough, that I could play bump and run shots pretty successfully, and let my chipping and putting save me. I didn't play a great round, but I played a very smart round with a couple great moments on the back nine, and that was enough for a 6&4 win that looked a lot more comfortable than it actually was. When he conceded on the 14th green, all I felt was massive relief that I had come away with a win, and I transitioned immediately into captain mode.

Chris: Did we successfully distract the Team C&C captain with his own personal battle, that he was free to win, while setting the rest of Team World up to go out there and win the Cup??? You bet your fucking ass we did.

Anthony (won 4&3) vs. Lawton

Lawton: Pain, so much pain. For 5 holes, I played as bad as I have in a long time.

Shane: I got a front-row seat for that match, and it was always going to be so tough to win. Credit to Anthony, he was a force of nature, and I don't think anybody on our team except Colin could have taken him down in singles.

Anthony: Team World was still up 7-5, and Chris and I were in the first two matches again. Unfortunately, Noodles, my opponent, took a few holes to recover from what seemed like a soul-crushing three-jack on #1. I might have taken my foot off the gas while watching scores in the other matches.

Lawton: Was it a sign my body was about to give out? No definitely not, I just suck at golf. I was proud of the fight I put up and tried to get my attitude back as I didn't want to infect Shane who was playing really well.

Shane: The only match we lost in the top half of singles was Noodles vs. Anthony, and frankly Noodles just got a terrible draw.

Lawton: I got it back to three up on hole #8, but immediately lost hole #9. At that point, I just wanted to make Anthony work for it and I think I did. He made an excellent putt on #15 that ended a match that was just starting to turn in my favor.

Anthony: Credit to Noodles for shaking off the rough start, hanging around and almost taking our match to #16.

Lawton: It summed up a weekend of golf that I'd rather forget, but I never will because of how fun it always is.

Shane: We all learned at Channels Cup 1, and in darts, what a great clutch competitor Noodles is, but he hadn't gotten in as many reps as he wanted before Cape Cod, he was a day away from going to the hospital with exhaustion, and Anthony—who had actually struggled on Friday—was rounding into incredible form.

Jamieson vs. Colin (won 6&4)

Colin: The scoreboard wasn’t great, but I think we all felt like it was very possible that we could still come back, especially if we got off to a good start. The reality was that any hopes we had of winning the Cup required me to beat Jamieson. I was playing well and had at least convinced myself it was possible, but deep down I was still expecting to get beat.

Jamieson: In writing this, I’ve tried to think back to specifically what I was feeling after taking the tie in the morning scramble match and entering the singles matches knowing a few things: 1) that the team was in good shape, but could use a W out of our top spot, 2) that I wasn’t playing particularly well but needed to pull both my golf game and my head out of my ass, and 3) that Colin was playing very well. I started fine, with a par on the first hole, but the rest of my round was a quick disappointment.

Colin: He made a mess of #2 to hand me a lead and then I had about 15 feet for eagle on #3, just needing 2 putts to go 2 up. I three-jacked, and kinda felt like I had blown my chance.  

Jamieson: Despite me out-driving him on most holes, Colin was hitting quality shot after quality shot, and I just didn’t have the game to put pressure on him. He won the second hole, the fourth hole and the fifth hole (that one with a birdie).

Colin: But he just never got it going. I birdied #5 to go 3-up, which was honestly the first point in the match that I actually thought there was a chance I could win. 

Shane: Colin was proving what an incredible competitor he was by beating Jamieson in a match that was never close, and had to have been partially influenced by how the morning session ended for both of them. Months earlier, I had proposed to Colin that we avoid pitting him against Jamieson in singles, since if the exchange went badly for us, we'd be wasting our best player. He vetoed that instantly, and now I was seeing why—he had it in him. Under different circumstances, if we had won the Cup, it would have been a legendary effort.

Jamieson: I clawed one back after two excellent shots on six, but lost again on eight, then #10, then #12. It was the kind of round that happens in competition sometimes where, when you have a few mediocre holes early on, your subconscious begins to shift from “be aggressive and make birdies” to “hey, a bogey isn’t too bad.” I wasn’t losing golf balls, but every hole included one bad shot - a missed fairway, a mediocre approach, a duffed chip, a birdie chance not taken advantage of with the putter. Credit to Colin - he probably wouldn’t say he had his A game either, but he played well in the ways I didn’t.

Colin: It was around this point where I frantically started scoreboard watching. Shane was up big, and so was I. Thanks to Joanna saving Jim’s glasses, he stormed past Bobby, and we were banking 3 of the first 4 points. Game on.

Jamieson: One weird note: both times I played the 12th hole, I tried to cut the corner with a hybrid but hooked it into the shit, and both times I managed to find my golf ball in extremely favorable locations. I still don’t know how I found either of those golf balls.

Bobby vs. Jim (won 6&5)

Jim: Everyone else: Jim's going to talk about his fucking broken glasses.

Anthony: I remember the exasperation on Jim’s face after he broke his glasses on #2, not realizing that gave him superpowers that allowed him to then steamroll Bobby.

Jim: I feel like Team C&C was counting on me to get a win here.

Jamieson: My playing partner Bobby, in his match against Sweepmonkey, was also struggling, but despite our bad play, Team World was surging.

Joanna: As I was bebopping along between everyone, I got the word that somebody needed to get sweepmonkey's glasses.

Shane: In the fourth match, the last time I saw Jim before the end was on the second hole, when something had happened to his glasses.

Jim: I know I hate the look of the first two holes so I'm hoping to be at worst 1 down after 2. Bobby makes a nice up and down to par #1. After my second (3rd? I may have had to take a drop after my tee shot) the arm of my glasses breaks off.

Joanna: This was it; my time to shine.

Shane: He seemed upset, and he was on the verge of going 2-down to Bobby, and it certainly didn't look good.

Bobby: Jim and I were playing pretty evenly until his glasses broke and he was forced to wear his sunglasses.

Jim: There's no way I can play without glasses, I have sunglasses in the car, and historically I have only played poorly with them. Now I'm 2 down, I can't see and the only saviour is a pair of sunglasses back in the car. Let's just say I am not in a good mood. Fortunately, intrepid reporter Joanna was with us - my cartner was Colin (against Jamieson) so she was probably stalking someone. I ask if she'll make the trip to my car to get my glasses... after she first locates my car keys ... that were with Kyle.

Joanna: I sped backwards through the course, bobbing and weaving around flying golf balls, through the course, which offers little protection from oncoming drives, possibly the first time I've been legitimately concerned about being hit with flying golf balls.

Shane: But Joanna was on the spot to help him, and even ran to his car I believe to get him new glasses or something that could repair his old ones.

Joanna: I had to speed back through the course, and I came upon a group of people I had to wait for, I think at the 3rd hole. Lucky for me, it was the same group of guys I was behind in the concessions line earlier, with whom I commiserated about hot dogs, and they were nice enough to hurry me along. I made it out to sweepmonkey's vehicle, located the glasses, and sped back to whatever hole they were on. I did the best I could.

Jim: Meanwhile I try to fix the arm with a bandage but there's not enough to hold with any strength. My mood is not improving. Before I tee off I manage to at least get them to sort-of stay in place by using a bandage to tape the cross piece to the bridge of my nose.

Bobby: That was the magic that saw him go on an absolute tear to end our match early.

Shane: All he did then was win the next four holes, and then five out of six holes between #8 and #13, to win a dominant 6&5 match. The singles session was a tale of two halves. In the front half, my half, we were doing exactly what we needed to do.

Gary (won 8&7) vs. Heath

Editor’s Note: Gary vs. Heath and Damon vs. Kyle were actually the last singles matches to tee off, but the Cup was won in the second-to-last grouping of Zac and I versus Drew and Johnny, so in the interest of drama, we’ll leave those two pairings for last in this section.

Gary: On the second hole, my tee shot (we were playing the Whites) hit a tree and went 20 yards behind the tee box on to the ninth fairway, and I still managed to recover with a five to win the hole.

Heath: I have minimum of use to add beyond that in my single’s match against Gary, he hit MULTIPLE TEE SHOTS BACKWARDS, and still won in 11 holes.

Gary: I was seven up through the first seven holes and closed the match out on #11 without losing a hole.

Heath: I’m not good at golf, I think. Pretty sure this has been mentioned though! Save this for Channels Cup 2025 when I have retired and dedicated my existence to being good passable at golf!!

Damon vs. Kyle (tied)

Kyle: We were down 7-5 going in to singles, so obviously every match was critical for us.

Damon: I was me vs Kyle but we were riding along with Gary and Heath (at this point I've spent more time with Heath in these two days than I had spent with my shut-in girlfriend in the past year).

Kyle: I remember about forty people were trying to order lunch at the same time and, inexplicably, there was one single person taking orders, and she frequently needed to check on things in the kitchen. When it was finally my turn, she had be standing to the side and took, like, four more orders, so I was like “ok, this definitely isn’t my day.” The Cape Cod IPA was nice, mind you.

Damon: I was glad to be in the last group but there was the fear that if the other matches didn't go Team World's way that it would come down to my match. I've been clutch in basketball games and never shied away from taking the last shot, but I (unsurprisingly) do not have the same confidence on a golf course.

Kyle: Damon and I were in the same foursome in the morning and had a pact well in advance of the singles session starting as follows: (a) whatever happened, we wouldn’t be the deciding match; and (b) whatever happened, we CERTAINLY wouldn’t be the deciding match and have to take those tee shots on #18.

Damon: Fortunately, The Channels Cup was decided before our match was completed.

Kyle: I immediately lost the first two holes. I HATE THOSE FIRST FUCKING TWO HOLES. But no asshole was screaming at me, so it’s not all bad. I halved the next two and then won the 5th and The Great Pillow Fight of 2022 was on in earnest.

Damon: I started off well and had been maintaining a slight lead.

Kyle: We were all square at the turn, halved #10, and then Damon won #11 and #12. I remember trying to stay focused but my recollection gets a little hazy at this point.

Damon: I had back to back pars on #11 and #12 and was 2, up but a triple bogey on #13 and a double bogey on #14 had us all square again. I believe it was #12 where I had a nice drive followed by a nice 5i shot that put me in a good spot off the green. Either way, I believe that was the hole where Kyle crushed his second shot and it went THROUGH my cart and put him in a good spot too. I say "my cart" because Gary had already clinched his match against Heath and he then abandoned me to watch the better golfers.

Kyle: My overriding memory of the last few holes is that Damon would be in the hole, I’d be standing over a short putt, and Damon and I would be standing there counting out our strokes in order to assess whether or not my putt would be conceded.

Damon: There was a 13-14' par putt that I hit in there too.

Kyle: Damon’s standard refrain was “wellll, if it didn’t matter, I’d give it you,” which I totally get. I wouldn’t give me anything either, but the result was I had to grind out a lot of short putts, which was stressful af.

Shane: Damon already had two wins and was closing in on his third, and frankly we had wildly underestimated him and were paying the price.

Jacob (won 5&4) vs. Johnny

Jacob: I was locked in.

Shane: The bad news was that Jake's singles match against Johnny, which we thought would be competitive, now started to seem a little lopsided as well, which had nothing to do with Johnny—he'd just had arguably the most heroic moment of the whole Channels Cup for us.

Jacob: After going 0-4 last year, I had a familiar foe standing between me and 4-0 this year. Johnny drained the greatest putt I have ever seen: 40 feet uphill into a hurricane to demoralize me to kick off my scramble with Damon in last year’s Cup, and my signature highlight of the 2021 Channels Cup was having a greenside chip lip out on #18 that would have capped a 3 hole comeback with 3 holes to go against Johnny and Heath. I wanted revenge.

Shane: But taking on Jake now seemed like a much harder ask than it had when we chose the lineups, and that fact made the top half matches all the more critical, because this seemed like another one we'd probably drop.

Jacob: Yet again I started off slow, as I seemed to have used all my front 9 mojo on the opening 9 of the tournament, but I got lucky as Johnny started off slower. I didn’t deserve my 2-0 lead after 2, which is why the 7th hole will forever live in infamy for me. After going up 2-0, Johnny and I halved 2 of the next 3, and then I made a complete fucking mess of #6. I opened the day slicing my driver, and on this hole I switched to my hybrid off the tee and I still sliced it somewhere up near Boston. Zac and I drove up to the pro helping usher people along the deep valley on #6, and he said my tee shot bounced across the street, hit a parked car and almost came back across. I screwed up my ensuing shots and couldn’t even put up a respectable number.

Shane: Johnny hung tough for a while, and when he won the sixth hole to get back to 2-down, it was at a point where things were looking at least a little hopeful.

Jacob: I felt like my game was teetering on the edge all day and it just fell apart. I was a fraud. Then I watched Johnny rip yet another beautiful draw with his driver right up the par-5 7th fairway and my heart sunk, knowing that my Lead Protector™ was not what this moment required and I didn’t know if I could rescue it.

Johnny had given me no choice: I could cling to my binkie and pray to the golf gods hoping that my hybrid would be just good enough to defend a 2 hole lead over the next 12 holes, or I could put my big boy pants on like Johnny did and match him distance for distance and actually try to defend it. Accepting that my dreaded slice was here to stay with a vengeance, I aimed across the other fairway to our left, and ripped a beautiful(?) 230 yard drive that settled in the 7th fairway. My trusty hybrid didn’t let me down and left me under 100 yards in for an approach that I left way short at the base of the green. Thankfully, this green was as flat as my kitchen floor. I knew that even though I was about 40 feet away, if I pointed it straight ahead and hit it square, it’d go in for birdie.

It did.

I screamed “let’s fucking go!” and pumped my fist as I squashed Johnny’s comeback before it could really begin. I went on to take the next hole after hitting another sliced fairway in regulation with my driver, then hit what was probably my 3rd best shot of the weekend when I stuck a 52 degree to within 10 feet of the pin on the top side of the narrow two-tiered 8th green, then everrrrrr so carefully two-putted into the downslope for par to go 4 up with 10 to play.

Shane: We followed the match with interest from our group, feeling like it was lost when Jake went immediately back to 4-up through 8, then seeing our spirits rise again when Johnny took the next two holes.

Jacob: I got super cocky on #9 and probably provided some great comedy for Zac. Three holes after feeling like I was melting down and providing fuel for Team C&C’s furious comeback, all of a sudden I was God and I could manipulate the ball however I wanted. I sliced my drive behind a bush, then came up with an absurd plan to hit a very open faced 4-iron through the bush and over a tree that wound up going about 50 yards while still being behind said tree, then I put my ensuing recovery shot on the other side of the cart path behind the green as someone in another match asked me where the hell I was going (maybe Jim? I can’t remember, this stretch of golf from #6 through #12 was an adrenaline-fueled blur).

I settled myself down, and even though I lost #10 to cut my lead to 2 again and really get my blood pumping, I still felt like I was in control, unlike on #6 when it felt like the end of the world.

Shane: 2-down after 10 wasn't so bad, but that's when Jake turned it on.

Jacob: I sliced another drive on #11 but got it far enough away from trouble into the thin rough where it was no different from a fairway shot, I landed a very nice 8-iron on the green, then two putted to take a hole back yet again in the face of a ferocious Johnny comeback.

Shane: By the time he had a 4-up lead after 13, we were counting it as another point for Team World.

Jacob: Team C&C do not let my boastful demeanor fool you: Johnny put the fear of God into me several times in this match, and it was a lot closer than the scoreboard makes it look (I should also note that while everyone correctly identified an improvement in my game, mainly in my driver, I shot an 84 in singles in 2021 and an 86* in 2022, so it’s not like my game changed that dramatically from year to year, I was just far more consistent and in less trouble off the tee in 2022).

*86 was the pace I was on when the match ended on #14

I could tell that this counter-punch had landed, and Johnny’s spirit began to succumb to the cruel math bearing down on him, being down 3 holes with 7 to play. I took #13 and #14 to close him out and put Team World in prime position, then pivoted to being Rascal’s #1 fan and second-in-command. If either Zac or Damon could win matches they were controlling all day, then we would win Team World’s first Channels Cup.

Shane: My match with Chris had actually ended just before theirs, and I got to see the end of it. I even did some commentary for Joanna as we overlooked the 14th green while she filmed, and when Jake won, that was the 10th point for Team World.

Shane: Even though Jake's point wasn't the clincher, it did land with a kind of finality on those of us watching at #14. The fat lady wasn't singing yet, but she was definitely doing her breathing exercises.

Zac (won 3&2) vs. Drew

Colin: With Jake and Gary taking care of business, we were down to one path and one path only. Drew had to turn it around on Rascal and Kyle had to be slightly less bad than Damon.

Shane: At that point, though, we still had a little bit of hope—since they lost at Hillandale, they needed 10.5 points, and there was still a prayer that Drew could turn his match against Zac around, and Kyle could beat Damon.

Chris: I remember Gary and Damon and Zac just taking control in each of their own ways, special, beautiful - dare I say, sexy? - and we were all able to watch as a group as Zac, the Rascal himself, closed it out.

Zac: Going into the singles, I thought I literally had no chance.

Jacob: Drew is extremely good—one of the best ball strikers I’ve ever played with. He was probably the MVP of the 2021 Channels Cup. Rascal was better that day.

Zac: Even after a slow start from Drew and being 2 up, I was just waiting for him to turn it on.

Jacob: Zac was equal parts confident and incredulous. He couldn’t believe that Drew hadn’t taken the lead on him for even one hole yet, and was just constantly expecting the other shoe to drop, while also strutting around like a king and playing remarkably consistent and just awesome golf.

Zac: But that's the benefit of match play - you can just sit back and pace yourself and if you're ahead you can sort of play not to lose. After #5 we were all square, and I was worried, but somehow i pulled a win on #6 out of my ass, and then again on #7. Both of those holes I made long 10+ foot putts to put the pressure on Drew to halve and he missed his putts.

Drew: Zac started better than me, but heading into the back 9 I had regained some of the momentum and was set to halve the match at the turn.

Zac: Drew brought it back to AS on 8, but again my putter got on fire and I just played within myself to get 3 up after #11.

Drew: Zac hit it into the greenside pine tree on #12, while I was 10 yards short of the green in the fairway.

Zac: I think Drew knew he had to make a move on #12, and he piped one right down the middle and long. I had a big drive, but pulled it left. He hit first and was on the green in 2, but probably about 30 feet away. I felt the pressure and really needed to put one on the green, but I made too good of contact out of the rough and blasted it past the green into a little stand of pine trees next to the green.

Jacob: What happened next was one of the most ingenious shots I’ve ever seen.

Zac: As we pulled up, I could see my ball underneath the boughs of the pine tree, but it looked like there would be no way to play it as the pine tree appeared to be VERY thick and I'm not a guy who usually can squeeze into tight spaces (he he).

Drew: Like an oversized red squirrel, he managed to work his way into the tree such that he had a partial swing with no branches in front of him.

Zac: However, when I got up to the green and level with the trees I could see some light coming through the trees from the backside. I thought, huh, maybe there's an opening here. So I walked around towards the clubhouse and sure enough, there was a gap in the trees big enough for me to enter. I had to muscle my way over the ball, and from the other side Drew and Jake said all they could see was a clubhead come out of nowhere to address the ball.

Jacob: At first I was aghast at why the hell Rascal was going through the back of the bushes when his ball was towards the front of them. Then I realized what he was doing and geeked out. The man was clearing space for his backswing—this is what 1,000,000 IQ golf looks like.

Zac: I chipped it to about 10 feet.

Jacob: I could hardly contain my excitement. I think I even might have squealed a bit when Rascal’s ball settled.

Drew: He stabbed at the ball, the rough in front of him slowed it down and it ended up on the green. Never could get it back after that.

Zac: I then proceeded to hulk out of the trees by exiting green side to watch where the ball landed, and I heard Drew mutter to himself "dudes in the fucking trees and puts it inside me", and I knew that I had the match. He two putted from 30 but I was able to make my putt and save par, and we pushed.

Jacob: At this point we could all sense this was Rascal’s match to lose.

Shane: We needed a full point out of Drew against Red Rascal, we needed Kyle to beat Damon. The problem was, we were losing both.

Jacob: Drew fought back hard on the back 9 with a valiant and scrappy effort despite not having his best game that day, but Rascal was just so steady and continued to putt well and keep Drew’s ferocious comeback attempt at bay.

Jamieson: As we reached the 12th hole, and then the 13th hole, where Colin mercifully put me away, it became clear that unless something truly crazy happened, we were in good shape to pull out the team victory.

Lawton: Shane and I had been following the other matches the entire day and circled back to watch the ones that would decide it, Zac/Drew and Kyle/Damon. They were both EXCELLENT matches and Drew looked poised to put the pressure on Zac on hole #15.

Jacob: Despite Drew’s hellacious comeback, thanks to Rascal’s putter they halved the next three holes to keep Zac’s 3 hole lead going into #15—putting The Channels Cup trophy within reach. Kyle and Damon were still battling it out behind us, but Rascal could clinch the Cup with a tie on this hole, while Team C&C needed to win both those matches to win the Cup.

Ivan: I was following the scores online and kept thinking Team C&C could close the gap. Honestly really disappointing to see it all unfold.

Shane: One of my favorite moments of the whole Cup was a quiet one, on the 15th hole after our matches were over, when Colin and Jim pulled up in their carts. It was the first time I'd seen them since they had started, and the three of us just hugged and congratulated each other; the larger outcome was undecided, but we had done our jobs, and it was a special moment to share together. Between us, we had tied the Channels Cup at 8-8.

Colin: The crowd converged on these two matches between Zac and Drew and Damon and Kyle. Coors Lights (at least in my cart) and a lot of pent up energy released into a chaotic scene. I remember Kyle was looking decent on #14 right as Rascal blasted his tee shot way right on #15.

Jamieson: As we drove around, despite smarting from my loss, I spent the next few minutes trying to soak up the feeling of impeding victory while also trying to corral the other onlookers from getting too close to the ongoing matches.

Jacob: As everyone anxiously gathered around #15, particularly all of us on Team World, Rascal yelled at everyone to calm the eff down after his shaky tee shot, and to go help Damon since he had been playing alone against Kyle and Heath for the last few holes.

Colin: Rascal was FIERY at the noise and chaos right in his line of play with The Channels Cup on the line (what a diva, right?  Wait, don’t print that…). This was the moment, and I really believe that we could do this if Rascal lost #15. It could have opened the floodgates. The pressure would have been WILD for those last 3, and Drew is the coolest customer Team C&C has. He would have been the man for the job.

Jacob: As the chaos and chatter escalated, I grabbed Zac and dragged him towards the cart and then punched the gas. He had sliced his tee shot juuuuuust short of the woods, and it was sitting on top of some brush about 200 yards away from the pin, with a fairly decent lie. This was it. The Cup was within reach, we just needed one more moment of magic from the Red Rascal.

Lawton: Zac was in a terrible spot off the tee while Drew was in the fairway. Zac then went onto hit the shot of the Cup, an amazing out that got him to the green.

Shane: Drew was dead tired by then, but he was giving it his all, and Rascal just had too much scrambling mojo.

Colin: I was closer to the #14 green than to where Rascal was playing from, but I could see that he was way right behind a large plant and it looked like he had no shot.  I expected him to pitch out sideways.

Jacob: With how well Rascal was putting, all he needed to do to clinch the title was get the ball from the woods on to the green.

Zac: I remember being SO MAD at Gary for not staying with his cartmate after he had won his match. I actually think this helped me, as I was so busy thinking about that and not paying attention to my crappy lie out of the woods that when I smoked my 5 wood to 20 feet to win, I really wasn't even thinking about my match.

Colin: Kyle won #14 and I started to get excited. 

Colin: And then from 100+ yards away the crowd began reacting to a recovery shot so brazen that Seve himself would have stood and applauded. I still don’t really know or understand how Rascal hit the shot he did, but by the time I got over to #15, the C&C hopes were essentially done.

Jim: Apparently Rascal hit an incredible shot out of the trees but we were watching the other group so I missed it.

Joanna: I would also say that I really appreciate Shane, I can't believe I'm going to say this, be such a humble, graceful loser, in that he narrated the end of those matches for me on video, and I really appreciate his expert commentary in that it made it feel like a televised match in a way that elevated the entire experience.

Jamieson: As we stood off the side of the 15th green, as it became clear that we were about to win … I don’t really have any words to say other than it felt pretty fucking good.

Jacob: Rascal two-putted for par, Drew missed his birdie putt, and it was official. We were champs.

Lawton: A couple putts later he held off Drew and the celebration began.

Anthony: The celly on #15 after Rascal clinched the Cup was so satisfying.

Lawton: I sat alone in my cart just staring into the distance. I wanted to be a good sport but at that moment I just wanted to be alone. I have not felt like that about a sporting thing since I was a small kid. It's what's great about this event and I can't wait until next year where I hope to be on the other side again.

Kyle: I don’t remember the exact timing, but I’m certain that Team World clinched when Damon was ahead (Editor’s Note: we did not). I offered to halve the match, he said no. I won the 14th to tie it up and asked again and he said yes. Felt like the appropriate outcome.

Damon: We were still all square after #14 and since Team World had already clinched, we decided to call it a draw. Probably a good thing with that looming water on the 18th that probably would've ended up costing me the match.

Shane: Rascal hit an unbelievable shot out of the woods on #15 to hold his 3-up lead and go dormie, assuring Team World of that 10.5 victory total. He won 3&2, and that made the Damon-Kyle match irrelevant, so they halved the rest of their holes to make the 11.5 - 8.5 final margin.

Chris: And it was then, THEN, that we won the Channels Cup.

Shane: It was a massive moment for both of Team World's players; Zac had saved the Cup with Gary by joining up on short notice, and it was one of those cool magical moments the Cup seems to produce. He proved to be such a great addition to the group.

Zac: I'll always remember Shane congratulating me and saying "joins The Channels Cup his first day in the slack and now he's won it for Team World." and also "why are you so handsome do you want to kiss?"

Jamieson: I’ll add just that, while I wish I had won my singles match, it’s true what they say that the team victory really feels like what matters the most. I played well in the 2021 Channels Cup, but that team loss stung. It feels incredibly silly to type this about a Ryder Cup-style competition we all just drummed up a few years ago, but winning this thing continues to just feel so fucking good.

Joanna: Team World won, I can't say at this point it was because of my breakfast, but trust me it was delicious. Obviously the end was exciting, but what I really loved was getting everyone together to take photos and just experience golfers being golfers, just guys being dudes, and what's better than that?

(Team C&C in red from left to right: Jim, Johnny, Heath, Lawton, Drew, Shane, Colin, Kyle)

(Team World in purple from right to left: Jamieson, Anthony, Damon, Bobby, Jacob, Chris, Gary, Zac)

Anthony: For shits and giggles after it was over we all took like 12 attempts at hitting the green on #18 and we were all failing miserably every time.

Jacob: I think I lost more balls on that last 18th hole than I did the entire Channels Cup. I am so happy I closed out both of my matches before having to deal with this beautiful nightmare of a hole.

Jamieson: Turning to 2023, I can’t wait to defend this title as a non-captain, free of the administrative duties (which, let’s be clear, I was very bad at). Goals: the first road victory in Channels Cup history, and a personal 4-0 record.

Shane: Watching Team World hold the trophy, drink their beers, and pose for photos with Bass River in the background stung a little, but not much. Frankly, they earned it, and they deserved it, and while I wish a few things had gone our way to give us a chance in the end, we had our share of luck too, and it was clear that they had the better team.

Damon: The Channels Cup is the best thing I've ever participated in. The months of videos, smack talk, planning, practicing, singing, and the real friends made along the way... what could be better? Well, winning it is pretty sweet too!

Jim: The whole weekend was just a ton of fun - I feel like I played my most consistent golf of the season over those 4 days and I can't wait to do it again. Thanks to my Cup cartners Shane, Lawton, and Colin (2x) for all their support. And thanks to Mary Anne, Shannon, Rachael, and Carrie for all they did to keep up fed and hydrated.

Joanna: I'd like to say that I appreciated the effort that both teams put into their press conferences, in that Team CnC took it very seriously and used it as a solid motivational point, but Team World took it up a notch. Very impressed with Cup participants, very cooperative with the media, and as much digging as my team did, we couldn't manage to cancel a single player. Very impressed with the assembled group.

Mary Anne: My biggest most indelible memories involve meeting so many Slackers for the first time! What a beautiful bunch of people to golf and hang out with! Special thanks to Joanna for the superb event organization (and thoughtful gifts!). Also to Rachael & Shannon for keeping the kittens herded!

Jacob: Just hanging with the boys on #18 and throwing back Coors Lights while soaking up the glory of our victory is a golden memory that’ll last a lifetime.

Shane: It felt poetic, too, and maybe even good for The Channels Cup, for Team World to win. I shook Jamieson's hand and congratulated him, just as he had done for me a year before, and now we would both step down with one trophy each. And of course, it would add all kinds of energy and excitement to 2023.

What do you remember about the dinner in Cape Cod on Saturday night?

Lawton: Insanity, that whole night.

Kyle: I seem to recall that getting a group of our size in anywhere was a nightmare (no reservation or no reservations on the weekend policy is a killer), so it was a scramble to find anywhere that would take us. I say that not having actually done anything about it (I feel like it was Shane), but just wanted to point it out.

Jacob: There was one space left in the parking lot next to the restaurant—#77—which I won’t lie, gave me some goosebumps given the Ray Bourque, Boston and Colorado connections all flowing together inside my head (I remember Kyle and Noodles both saying how awesome that was and how much they love and respect the Colorado Avalanche and Claude Lemeiux specifically).

Damon: Dinner was a great time.

Anthony: It was close to perfect. Got super lucky with parking, Rascal picked up the bar tab for the first group of guys to arrive.

Joanna: Oh god I was so tired. I remember that scary guy sitting outside, but he wasn't a guy, he was a mannequin. I enjoyed every one of us cramming into that skinny little bar area.

Jacob: I walked in with my teammates as conquering heroes. We were there to celebrate and hoo-boy did we ever.

Chris: I parked the trophy at the bar and had literally every girl there ask me for my phone number.

Kyle: We took the last cab, so pretty much everyone was already there when we (me, Carrie, Shane, possibly Lawton?) arrived.

Colin: I don’t know how it happened but we got relegated to the Kids Table and I was briefly very surly about it.

Lawton: We were singing and chanting at random guests.

Drew: We were loud and obnoxious, people ended their meals earlier then they would normally have.

Damon: I doubt there has ever been a louder group of people out in public that was universally loved by everyone else in the restaurant.

Lawton: The restaurant was CHOCK full when we got there and by the time we left I think they may have closed forever.

Jacob: We were obnoxious—but in the fun way. I talked shit about Massholes earlier, but the ones who aren’t total jackasses are fun as heck, and we were the perfect kind of party for that place. Some people couldn’t take it, but others, like the woman who probably? had a birthday we sang to, adored us.

Mary Anne: We were dining in a fine local establishment and had a woman walk by tell us: "It's my birthday!!"

Zac: I loved when we kept singing happy birthday to people.

Mary Anne: So of course we sang to her in our finest drunken manner!

Jim: I remember joining in on someone's happy birthday song and scaring some poor child in the restaurant. A woman came over and asked us to sing Happy Birthday to her too.

Mary Anne: And promptly made the baby sitting nearby start to cry!! #everyone's a critic

Bobby: I remember singing happy birthday and making a small child cry. More alcohol. So much food.

Anthony: So glad I recorded 5 seconds of our random birthday serenade.

Joanna: I remember singing happy birthday to this lady? We found out it was her birthday? I don't know. We absolutely should have a karaoke contest at channels cup next year.

Damon: Singing "Happy Birthday" and then being invited to sing it again was great. Gary was back to supporting me by this time and he encouraged me to approach the "Birthday Girl" at the bar. She was sitting with a date and before I had the chance to walk over with The Channels Cup and say "is that your boyfriend? I bet he doesn't have one of these" as I hoisted the trophy and placed it on the bar, they were gone.

Jim: Rascal photoshopped the drinks menu of Spanky's to make it look like one of their drinks was Slack-appropriate. I don't think many people realized that.

Jamieson: I’m sure other people can tell this part of the story better that me. I remember being surprised that Spanky’s was a real place. The lobster dinner was great in victory. I got to meet and talk to Johnny for the first time, which was cool, even if he is a dirty Carolinian.

Kyle: It was around this time that the edibles got passed around and my already shaky memory gets even hazier.

Jacob: Chris and Anthony were watching some real sickos MLS shit, and I passed weed gummies around the table that wound up being a lot stronger than I anticipated. This is where my memory of Saturday night begins to slip.

Kyle: I had a couple when they were passed my way (after inquiring about their strength and being told they were pretty mild) and then at least one more when the bag came back my way.

Anthony: I have no recollection of watching MLS on my phone during dinner, which photographic evidence does point to.

Colin: My night improved when I told the waitress I was debating between lobster dishes and shrimp dishes and she told me they could do an off-menu combination of Lobster AND Shrimp Scampi. Changed my life.

Zac: I remembered the food tasted so good, like winning. I was so happy. I remember the bathroom stank so bad but I didn't care.

Kyle: The menu was overwhelming. I knew I wanted to start with a cup of clam chowder, which was bold. You have to appreciate that it was 2022 and people simply weren’t ordering starters at Spanky’s. Lotta MMQBing. Someone—I believe it was Zac—suggested that I get the Spanky’s platter and he seemed so confident in this decision that I knew it was the right call. Indeed, the food was incredible.

Jacob: Zac ordered some kind of shrimp appetizer for us that was one of the best things I’ve ever tasted.

Drew: What I remember most about the dinner was the amount of seafood Zac the "Red Rascal" had on his plate. I think I quipped to Shane, "What did he order, the Atlantic Ocean?", which drew an audible laugh (the amount of blue drank he consumed that evening surely helped).

Bobby: Shane drank all the blue drinks.

Kyle: While we were at the bar and waiting to be seated, I had their “limit one per customer” signature blue cocktail and it was pretty lethal.

Joanna: I wanted to have the blue drink everyone was getting but seeing what it did to the gentlemen who had it, I think I chose wisely.

Jacob: Feeling stronger effects earlier than I expected from the weed gummies, I passed on the blue drink and decided that the only way I would survive the night is to swear off liquor and stick with beer. A lot of beer. Like a lot. Chris and I showed everyone what it means to tap the Rockies that night.

Kyle: At some point, the server came around and Chris said he was going to have a second blue drink and asked if anyone else was going to have one.

Anthony: I just probably shouldn't have housed my Blue Drink.

Kyle: Shane said yes and I, living in perennial FOMO mode, jumped on the bandwagon.

Shane: Blue drinks, baby!

Zac: I just remember how quickly Shane got hammered after drinking two (limit two) of the Slap my clam Shells and call me Spanky's.

Kyle: The singing had to start at this stage of the night. I forget why we started but we just kept singing “Happy. Happy birthday. Happy Happy. HAPPY BIRTHDAY BIRTHDAY” like the nicest, yet simultaneously unsettling soccer hooligans. I feel like this went on for a long time. That might be wrong. I’m also not sure I want to know.

Jacob: Chris generously offered to drive my rental car back so I could imbibe MVP-style, but because we are nothing but collectivists, we had to ensure that Chris also could imbibe MVP-style, so he tried to sneak his full blue drink out to have back at the house.

Kyle: Gary, bless his heart, drove us back to the AirBNB. Can’t even begin to fathom the shit we were talking at that point.

Jacob: I don’t know what happened but it didn’t work. He came back, we hung out at the table for a little bit longer as Shane kept yelling at Chris to just leave, and I don’t remember much of what Shane said, but as they argued one quote stands out in my mind: “he’s fucking 16 years old what is he going to do!?”

Shane and I ushered Chris out, standing on the side he was holding his blue drink on, as someone (Zac?) behind us caused a distraction and we were home free. We stopped at the packie (remember I’m part Masshole) and I picked up Coors and Coors Light for the party while Anthony grabbed a whiskey, then we headed back to Team C&C’s mansion.

What do you remember about the party on Saturday night?

Bobby: There was a "Saturday night"?

Chris: Very, very little.

Shane: My worst memory from Channels Cup is still one I recall vividly. I was having a great time with the gang, we were having some laughs, and some joke made me laugh out loud. That's when I saw Kyle sitting to the side, glaring at me. "Yeah, that's not an annoying laugh," he said. I'll never forget it.

Kyle: I never said that Shane had an annoying laugh (or something along the lines of a sarcastic “now that’s not an annoying laugh”). Please don’t print that I said that.

Colin: < footage not found >

Lawton: Oh god, too much. I almost shit my pants while playing beer pong.

Damon: I don't remember much about the party. I played some pool.

Anthony: After making the liquor store run with Jake for a bottle of Glenmorangie, I broke the only rule of being drunk at a party, which is stay on your feet. (Might've mixed gin, Blue Drink and scotch too.) Sayonara consciousness. Although to be fair, beer pong in the dark isn't the most compelling viewing.

Lawton: Thankfully Jacob noticed my urgent handle jiggling and I only shit all over the toilet seat. Did this lead to my dehydration? It certainly didn't help.

Kyle: Beer pong (probably haven’t played in a decade) was hilarious.

Shane: Beer pong was going strong at one point in the night, and I found myself on the same side of the table as Jake.

Jacob: You’re going to read a lot of defamatory statements below about one of my better talents. I stand what some people say is “far” away from a Beiruit (or as more people wrongly call it, beer pong) table because my senior year at UMass in my alcoholism den apartment, we had a real 10-foot Beirut table, not these 6-foot junior tracks so many of the folks below believe is the big leagues. As everyone struggled to short-arm their shots on this small table, I took a few steps back and ran the entire dadgum Slack off the table, going undefeated for the second time that weekend. The only close game was with my fellow MAC/Channels Cup clinching brother, Zac, where both of us were way too messed up to be trusted with directing ping pong balls in the direction we wanted them to go.

Zac: I saw Jacob really needed to win the Beer Pong for his own self esteem so even though I was up like 4 cups in our 1 on 1 game I let him win. It's so cute he thinks he actually won of his own accord. Classic Unkiss fan.

Drew: Was not involved in the shenanigans on the deck.

Kyle: I was really feeling the accumulation of all the drinking, plus the edibles (mighta been a joint too but that could’ve been later) and I have a vivid memory of my legs wobbling during a Beer Pong game and I briefly thought I was going to fall through the patio table like so many Bills fans, but then I didn’t. In a panic, I scanned the backyard area to see if anyone had noticed, and thought I saw Shannon flash me a knowing look, which created a fifteen minute or so spiral where I was dead certain Shannon and Shannon alone knew I was completely bombed. Will be interested to see if she mentions this.

Joanna: It's hard to take Jake seriously as a human after seeing his beer pong stance.

Shane: I remember Jake standing 19 feet behind the table to play beer pong.

Kyle: Jake’s form was atrocious.

Shane: What you have to remember is, at the time, nobody was doing that. And they still don't, because it's insane. I'm fairly positive he didn't win a single game that night.

Kyle: Yet the results are undeniable.

Shane: He claimed it was because this let him use full extension, or something, and if that wasn't annoying enough, it seemed to be effective. We had just watched him have a hell of a Channels Cup with his ridiculous and unsightly swing, and now he was bringing the same godawful energy to the beer pong table, with similar results. I think about it at least once a week, and it still pisses me off.

Jamieson: Not much aside from Jacob’s absolutely normal beer pong form.

Shane: At one point in the craziness Saturday night, Carrie and I made a beer run because supplies were running low at the house. It was nice to get some one-on-one time with her, to get to know her a little better. We had a great time.

Kyle: All I’m going to say is that MULTIPLE people texted me a screenshot of a Google Map showing how far it was from our Airbnb to the nearest party store and it was, like, a max of three minutes. So how my wife—and Shane—could’ve been gone for fully an hour and a quarter is absolutely beyond me. They both seemed VERY CHUMMY when they got back. I’m just sayin’, if the story is that they had “an extensive and complicated shopping list to deal with,” how do you explain them coming back with a 30-rack of Coors Light, a pack of solo cups, and absolutely nothing else? I WANT TO KNOW!!

Joanna: Kyle is so tall. I showed that picture of me and Kyle to my mother and she said "oh god," but not in a good way.

Kyle: I think we—myself, Zac, Shane, Jacob (Editor’s Note: No), Chris, Carrie, possibly Lawton?—hit the pool, and we were all timing ourselves to see how long we could hold our breath underwater.

Jacob: As folks were hanging out in the pool, I realized it’d be nice to build a fire in the fire pit, and I set out to build one with the limited supplies in the backyard.

Anthony: Note to self for next year: bring stuff to swim in.

Kyle: I remember vaguely thinking that I always assumed one of us would die on this trip, but not this way. Shane wanted us to smack the water when he hit a certain time and we cooked up the idea that we would smack after, like, ten seconds. He found this…considerably less funny than we did.

Jacob: The Airbnb had some wood that was suitable to build the frame, I just had to fill it with kindling. As people are having fun doing whatever in the pool, I was drunkenly stumbling around in the dark around the wood-filled edges of the lawn grabbing sticks and whatever else I could find, like beer cans and beer packaging to pack it in, so I could build a base to keep the fire going.

Kyle: After that? Fire pit! I think. I dunno. I was pretty far gone.

Jacob: I did too good a job of packing it in and then Zac correctly pointed out that oxygen is a key component of fires, and he just poked some holes in it and whoosh we had a fire.

Kyle: I remember the boys took ages to get it going (while I cowardly stayed in the pool to stay warm) and then all of a sudden, we were sitting around the fire.

Shane: At some point in the night, after we smoked to cap off all the drinking, Jake, me, Zac, and Kyle, plus (I'm assuming) a few others, sat around the fire pit and had a long conversation. I'm sure Jake and I talked about aliens.

Jacob: I don’t know how it happened but at some point the stoner in me came out and started talking about how astronaut Edgar Mitchell’s experiments (and many other like the LHC) on quantum physics show how quantum mechanics demonstrate that everything is connected, and we all just stared at the stars in awe as we all riffed about what this connection meant. It was a beautiful moment in a weekend full of them.

Kyle: Some excellent discussions, that were surprisingly heavy. Fears, dreams, the unshakeable weight of being a parent. Jake started explaining—I shit you not—string theory to all of us and at some point I fell asleep …and then I woke up and Jake was still talking about string theory. Good stuff.

Shane: But the next day, someone—I want to say Zac?—mentioned that he really appreciated the depth of conversation, and how we opened up to each other. I didn't remember a fucking thing.

Jacob: Then the sleep debacle happened.

Kyle: I feel like it was VERY late at this point (maybe 4:30 or so?) and Carrie and I had a ten-hour drive back to Canada the next morning, so, reluctantly, we—heretofore known as the After Hours Crew—had to wrap things up.

Damon: I know at one point we were being shown random places where we could crash (which involved trespassing through people's rooms).

Jacob: Shane was convinced that Chris and I could sleep upstairs with him, with one of us taking the other bed in Drew’s room and the other taking the bed next to Shane.

Kyle: Chris, Zac, and Jake were staying at the C&C House (instead of their own place), so Shane wanted to show them their room, which was, like, an adjoining room to Colin and Shannon’s room, but you had to go through Colin and Shannon’s room first.

Jacob: We were loud and obnoxious and Drew closed the door as soon as we walked in at like 3 in the morning, so as a courtesy to him I ruled that bed out immediately.

Kyle: They were fast asleep, and the five of us (I think Carrie, sensibly, had gone to bed) wandered (staggered) past them into the spare room, which we all agreed was quite nice, whereupon Shane turned to me and said “Kyle, what the fuck are you doing here? You already have a room!” I told him I wanted to be part of a caper, which feel free to put on my tombstone.

Jacob: Chris was slightly more fucked up than I was and so he got the bed next to Shane. I contemplated sleeping on the floor and Chris discouraged me saying there should be plenty of bed/couch-space in the house, so I walked back out of this area of the house the only way I could: through the bathroom, where Shane was taking a shower and singing something in falsetto, and then through Colin and Shannon’s room.

Shane: Later in the night, Jake walked in on me showering. Details are fuzzy, but I believe I heard him say "wow, impressive," as he walked by.

Jacob: I ventured along this daunting path as quietly as I could while keeping my eyes as high up in the air as I could, and set out to find a bed or a couch or something soft to sleep on. In this huge house I should be able to find one, right? Nope.

Damon: Later, as I struggled to fall asleep on the couch, I was regretting not going back to the Team World house with Zac. I'm sure anyone that didn't go home with Zac after a night of partying has similar regrets.

Jacob: There was a comfy chair at the top of the stairs across from Shannon and Colin’s bedroom that would have been suitable, but there was a bright light near the top of the stairs that was shining directly in my eye and I didn’t know how to turn it off and didn’t want to risk turning on all the lights in the house at 4 am. All the couches, downstairs and in the basement, were claimed by my more skilled Team World teammates, and I was so drunk and tired that I decided the rug in the dining room where Team C&C filmed their press conference was a suitable bed for my current state. After two minutes I realized this was monumentally stupid, and an acceptable solution was sitting just outside all along: my rental car. I pulled off one of the headrests, curled up in the backseat and slept like a baby for about 4 hours before Drew and Jim loading their clubs into their cars woke me up, and I snuck out of my car after they left so as to not spook them that early in the morning.

Chris: I remember waking up at Team C&C’s house on Sunday morning, after maybe 3 hours of sleep? I was very hungover, but what woke me up was the sound of Lawton outside on the deck, cleaning up from the events of the night before. As I looked down at him, I felt shame. Shame for sleeping in some random bed in a house that wasn't mine, shame for knowing that I had to walk through Colin and Shannon's bathroom and bedroom in the next 5 minutes, shame for not knowing where my shoes were, shame for not helping Lawton.

Kyle: The next morning we got up and several people had already left. I went to grab some breakfast and Noodles–without looking up from whatever he was reading–pointed at a giant Walmart cardboard box and said “we gave you all the beer.” So that was nice.

Chris: I felt so much pride for Lawton though, amazed at how responsible he was being, he felt like the version of myself that I would strive to be. I don't always meet the target, you know, but it's nice to have a goal in mind, a role model.

Until he ended up in the hospital.

Anything else?

Mary Anne: Great side trip to Provincetown with Carrie Power! Who knew there were so many drag queens all in one place at one time??! Still can't see myself calling it P-Town tho.

Drew: The weekend started off inauspiciously for myself, Heath and Johnny. After having a successful flight—bags arriving safely and no delays—we were excited to drive to TreeHouse Brewing on the Cape to meet Zac The Red Rascal for a few beers to start the Cup.

Zac: I will forever love Damon, because before I met him I had not met anyone in the slack, and I was TERRIFIED I had been punked into flying and driving to Cape Cod.

Drew: Unfortunatley, when Heath inputted the TreeHouse brewery in his maps app, he selected the one in Charlton, MA. This location is due west of Boston, not South. It is nearly equidistant from Boston airport so the ETA warranted no suspicions (having looked it up beforehand). When we arrived and Zac said he's in the parking lot, and we look around and there are no other cars in the lot, we knew something was up. That and there was no signs of seagulls or large bodies of water, lol. We realized we drove to the wrong one.

Zac: When Drew and Heath and Johnny "went to the wrong brewery" and didn't show up to the one I was supposed to meet them at, I was like huh that seems like a pretty big mistake. But I started thinking maybe this was all a ruse.

Drew: Now if you know geometry, you know we were further from our eventual destination than we were 90 minutes prior when we left the airport. Zac, having never met any of us in the Slack, and hearing about the competitive nature of the Cup must have thought we were playing a trick on him, but the joke was on us as we were now close to 2 hours from drinking beers while he was enjoying one solo. We eventually made it, and Zac joined up with others for lunch so the story ends well at least.

Jacob: We have to talk about The Sunday Sickos Round.

Chris: When we got to the course for the Sickos Round on Sunday, I was shockingly feeling great. The Gatorade and liquid IVs were flowing, I got a bit of food down, and I was ready to conquer the day. All seemed mostly fine with the rest of the group too, but as Lawton and I were chatting near the clubhouse, he did say that he wasn't feeling well.

Joanna: The Sickos Round is such a treat because it's really the top tier degens of the degenerates. Why do we play this extra round of golf? We're so goddamn tired.

Mary Anne: We got an up close and personal look at Joanna's golf game ... girl has skills!!

Jacob: After seeing Joanna’s golf game for the first time, I was fully convinced that she could play on Team World and beat Heath and maybe Kyle.

Chris: Who was ok, really? I brushed Lawton’s present state off as the hangover of a dad who went a little bit too hard - a feeling I know well - and felt sure he'd recover just fine. Lawton is an ox!

Jim: The sickos round on Sunday was pretty good.

Jacob: I didn’t get to play in it last year so I made sure I was available this year and it didn’t disappoint, except for when Lawton lost every ounce of moisture in his body. That was sad.

Jim: One group was Jamieson, Joanna, and the Colorado bros. I was grouped with Mary Anne, Damon, and and Lawton and played the front in 40.

Joanna: We paired off into groups, with me and Jamieson riding around with the Colorabros Jake and Chris. Damon and Noods were paired up with the Sweepmonkies. Shit we gotta find a nickname for Jake and Damon

The course was gorgeous, and had the nicest ladies that worked in the centrally located concession stand.

Jacob: The course was perfect, like it was literally chiseled out of the Earth, but I will never forget the most sadistic bunkers I have ever seen: placed like 100 feet below and next to the green on a hole named the Death Star or something. Whoever designed that, who hurt you?

Joanna: The ladies clearly hadn’t seen a lady golfer that day until us because they were very excited to talk golf fits—I obliged, naturally. The hot dogs were good, however all their Bud Lights were Patriots themed so that was terrible. I needed those Bud Lights though.

Chris: My overriding thought that day was that I was going to introduce a tiny change in my setup. The perfect time to modify a golf swing is after 4 rounds in 2 days, and illegal numbers of Slap My Clamshell and Call Me Spanky’s, right? The plan was that the foursomes would switch around at the turn, so Jamieson, Joanna, Jake, and I started off while Jim, Mary Anne, Lawton, and Damon waited at the first tee. The round started well enough, except around #7 we got told by the marshal to hurry our asses up.

Joanna: There was also a grumpy guy who I assumes lives on the course behind the third hole like a troll who snapped at us to keep pace when we couldn’t see another soul and ended up running into the next group.

Chris: Didn't he know the condition we were in?? But that's fine, we speed up a little bit as best as we can, and decide not to wait on #10 for the group behind us.

Joanna: We started hearing reports of Noodles being at the clubhouse, not feeling great.

Jim: Once Lawton took ill, I fell apart, so congratulations Noodles - you're my golfing muse.

Chris: We start to wonder why we don't see them behind us, though, until we see Jim coming up to us on the 11th tee. He tells us that Lawton went into the clubhouse with Mary Anne because he had really started not feeling well. Oh no! But surely he'll be fine after some rest and fluids, so we press on with our round.

Joanna: We prepared to be like 'oh no buddy' but also make fun of him only a little.

Chris: A few holes later, we're on one of the holes near the main road to the course, and I could hear sirens. My immediate thought was, "oh man, I hope that's not for Lawton" followed by "come on there's no way that's for Lawton."

Mary Anne: Jim and I took the trip to the hospital to make sure Noodles was ok!!

Jacob: The mood turned sour after we learned that Lawton went to the hospital. I don’t remember much from this stretch before we learned he was fine and it was just a man going through some hubris, but afterwards I just remember feeling completely emotionally and physically wiped out.

Chris: Jim found us not long after that to say that Lawton had gone to the hospital, and that he was fine, but that he and Mary Anne were joining him there until Rachael could arrive.

Joanna: THEN we find out that the Sweepmonkies, who I assume adopted Noodles and are now his parents, have gone to accompany him to the ER. We adopted Damon into our group, who by the way had an EXCELLENT shirt for the round.

Chris: We had Lawton's stuff in our car, so we made arrangements to finish our round and then get to the hospital so that we made sure he had all of his things. It did feel a little bit like a pall had been cast over the round, but we pressed on like heroes and finished the round. It was a beautiful, challenging course, and we can say that where our friend fell, we conquered. We did it for Lawton.

Jacob: I couldn’t care less about how I was playing (which was actually pretty well in spurts after yet another shaky start, I hit a pretty memorable 5 wood over some water and landed it greenside after not using that club the entire weekend), I just wanted to enjoy the round, and boy did I ever. After we learned Lawton was OK, the round continued as one long low-key Team World victory lap as we added Damon to our group.

Mary Anne: I remember Noodles getting a giant hug from Rachael when she came to pick up her man and take him home. 😘

Chris: Oh and Jamieson shot like a 67 that day. Best round I have ever seen in my life.

Jacob: Also Jamieson had the best round I’ve ever seen and shot like a 43 or something silly.

Joanna: RIP Noodles, we loved you.

Jacob: As we came upon #18 with the end of the weekend in sight, I locked back into Channels Cup focus. I wanted a proper send-off to a perfect trip, so after putting my tee shot in the playble rough, I hit a 5-iron a little fat and it settled at the very base of the green. I walked up to it, thinking about all the destruction I had wrought in the previous 48 hours, and gave myself a proper sendoff as I drained yet another ~40 foot birdie putt to cap off the weekend.

Jamieson: Hopefully people liked their pint glasses. I really pushed for those things because I dig a custom pint glass.

Chris: See y'all next time. #RoadDogs.

Anthony: #OddNumberedYearRoadDogs