Client Golf

A number of years ago I arranged a golf game at Alamance Country Club with my appraiser training supervisor, and the owner of a leading mortgage brokerage company here in Burlington at the time. The mortgage broker company owner who was a member invited another member to play, and I brought my boss as a guest. The game was set so we decided to play a friendly $5 Nassau to make things more interesting. My boss was from Kinston and grew up playing some golf with his older brother at Kinston Country Club, but rarely played once he settled down with his wife and in his appraisal career. I, on the other hand, went through periods of playing and not playing and had just gotten back into playing again. The mortgage brokerage owner didn’t play much but was a decent golfer and his partner played regularly. It seemed like a perfect and fair match in the making even though we had never played with or against each other.

I don’t remember all the details of the match, but what I do remember, however, is my boss who had played so little at the time and was hitting 2 iron tee shots flying about 240 yards straight down the middle of just about every fairway. He even birdied the first par three and played well on the holes I didn’t. It was the proverbial perfect brother-in-law display of golf between us. Our opponents played competitively on the front side, but we whipped them pretty good on the first 9-hole match. Recognizing that my boss and I were playing well, the dilemma we faced was to essentially throw the match and let our client and his partner start winning some holes on the second nine hole match, or to keep finding out how good we could play right up to finish. Being young in our early thirties at the time, we of course chose to keep playing as good as we could. The second match was similar to the first one and we ended up winning the front side, backside, and overall match, and $15.

The price of winning didn’t come without a cost, however. While our mortgage brokerage client didn’t stop ordering appraisals from us, we did notice a slight decline in volume over the next couple of months and we never played golf together again. If my boss and I had to do it all over again, we would have just played for fun instead of playing them in a match play game for money. Looking back 18 years later we now laugh about it and wonder what the heck we were thinking.

If you are ready to buy or sell, call Mary Staton or Bert Ward - they’ll be happy to answer any questions.