The best round of my life came on my friend Galen's birthday, and we started out playing together. It was a typical summer morning at our course, which is to say miserably humid, and even in the early hours I was already regretting the decision to walk. Galen and I are the same age, but he's slim and runs long distances for fun, while I gave up "slim" about 25 years ago and am gassed if I chase my kids around the kitchen for longer than 20 seconds. All of which made it a huge surprise when it was Galen, not me, who succumbed to the beginnings of heat stroke on the eighth hole. I encouraged him to call it a day. He resisted and tried to keep playing, but he lasted about a minute before we called the clubhouse for a cold Gatorade and a cart evacuation.
He was fine, mostly. When we saw him at the turn, cooling off in the clubhouse, he looked like he could use about 40 hours of sleep, but he wasn't going to die or even go to the hospital. I would have quit then, too, drenched in sweat and beleaguered, except that I had gone up and down on the ninth hole for a 40. It's exceedingly rare for me to break 80, and any opportunity must be seized, so I rented a cart for the back and soldiered on.
At that point, incredible things began to happen. Pars galore, an actual birdie, and the kind of ball striking that rarely makes it out of my dreams. I kept in touch with Galen through text, and to my surprise, when we pulled up to the 17th hole, there he was. For support, mostly, but he also filmed the last two holes as I blew my own expectations out of the water and came in at 1-under-par 35 for a career-best 75. It remains the only time I've ever played nine holes under par, and he was there to see me finish, despite getting nuked by the sun just a few hours earlier.
That was two summers ago. On a recent Saturday, I was chasing my children around the house, very much gassed, when the texts started pouring in from Galen. His best score for 18 holes was also 75, but now he was blowing it out of the water. You can't really trust a great round until midway through the back nine, but after a tough up-and-down on 15, he was a shot under par. I knew what I had to do—I grabbed my camera, raced to the course, commandeered a cart, and found him after a par on the 17th green. As he tried to complete the round of his life by making par and finishing with a 1 under 70, I was there for him like he had been for me, armed with a camera and, I hoped, just the right amount of encouragement.
His first shot flirted with OB, but after that it was clinical, and when he tapped in for his par, he fell to his knees and slapped the green with both hands.
Here's the thing: Galen is one of my best friends, but I can count on one hand the number of times we've hung out away from the golf course. We met at a golf course, we became friends on a golf course, and I believe I see him more than any other person on the planet besides my wife and two kids. It's a friendship forged entirely out of golf, and at least 85 percent of our conversation revolves around golf.
Does that sound a little strange? Not if you're a golfer. We don't need anything more. We have our own jobs, our own family, and our own interests, and once in a while we'll chat about a TV show we both liked, but there's no need to fill in the edges with other shades of life. Golf alone provides us with the soil for a full, rewarding friendship, limited though it may seem from the outside.
It's hard to imagine anything more comfortable, and is what golf offers us in 2026—a simple but all-consuming place in which to exist with our friends. You often hear people say that it's hard for men to make friends as adults, and that's probably true, but when it happens on a golf course, the universe has solved the problem for you—everything flows from there.
"What did you guys talk about?" my wife will often ask, when I return from a round with Galen or another friend.
"Golf," I'll say, and she'll roll her eyes.
I don't blame her. She doesn't play, so how could she know? Golf isn't just the common ground that breeds a friendship—it's all the context that friendship needs.
Yet another reason we love golf is the Handicap System. Golf has employed a “handicap” system for more than 115 years, and its aim is to allow players of varying ability to compete on the same course the same day. And rather than run down the features of what has evolved into the Golf Handicap Index Network, and why it’s revered, I’ll just take you to Callippe Golf Course in Pleasanton on any Wednesday from spring to fall. Show up with a verified index, throw in $20 for the pot and $20 for the fee, and you’re in the Wednesday Night Skins League.
The game is played on the front nine and attracts players like Johnny Fracisco, an aspiring U.S. Amateur contestant, and Vijay Srinivasan and Matt Heitel, who played at San Jose State. Other regulars include a flooring salesman, a food distribution employee, a Superior Court judge, and the owner of a pool cleaning company. Depending on their ability measured in average score (or Handicap Index) some play tee off from the black (longest), blue or white tees, the latter which happen to be suitable for a creaky and cranky journalist (yours truly).
“Skins” is One vs. All. The person with the best score on a hole that no other player matches wins the hole. But if one other player has the same score, it’s a tie and the skin carries over. With 20 players times $20 each ($400), a skin or two can pay off nicely. The payout is split in “gross” and “handicap” groups.
Under the dutiful recordkeeping of Operations Manager A.J. Hebert, Fracisco, Srinivasan, Heitel and others play gross. But my average of late makes my Handicap Index float between 13 and 14 in the handicap group, and I get “strokes” on seven of the nine holes. And here’s the beauty of the system.
The best players often drive within 50 yards of the green of the downhill, par-4 first, 430-yards long. The white tees for me makes the hole play 380 yards, yet my second shot is often 150 yards long, maybe more so due to course conditions.
In other sports, such disparities in talent could be critical. An “A” tennis or racquetball player would hit serves that my “C” game wouldn’t be able to touch. Bowling has something similar but the lane never changes, whereas all nine holes are different.
Each hole carries a rating for difficulty, and Callippe’s first allows me a “stroke.” If I can manage a par-4, my score is recorded as a “net-3.” Fracisco often birdies the first and has a shot for money in the gross game, but his score ties my net-3. No money for me. If Fracisco had two-putted for par, my net-3 wins unless another player getting a stroke also scores net-3, making the skin carry over.
Callippe makes the game interesting because there are two par-4s that the better players can drive, and the par-5 third is reachable in 2 as well. For me, a good drive and approach on the short par-4 No. 2 can leave a birdie putt, and if converted goes on the card as a “net-eagle-2.” That can hold up for a skin except when Fracisco, whose tee shot many times comes to rest on the green, sinks his putt for an eagle-2, as has happened, damnit.
Players usually don’t know if a score will hold up until all players are in and the cards are recorded. This is where – usually during the post-round liar’s dice game – where much howling can be heard. And of course there are debates about the system.
Why does Gilbert Gonzalez, whose Handicap Index is 1 thanks in part to his Tour-like length, get a stroke on the par-4 seventh (hole handicap No. 1, meaning most difficult)? He often plays it from the black tees in driver-gap wedge. I also get a stroke, but I’m 50 yards shorter from the white tees and still need to use a hybrid to reach the green.
For that matter, deep philosophical discussions have taken place on the merits of giving strokes on par-3s. Indeed, Callippe’s fourth from the black tees can be tricky at close to 200 yards in a strong cross breeze. From the whites, at a manageable 165 yards to the pin, if I hit the green I’m “laying zero.” Two putts would be a net-2, so take that Fracisco, you dog.
