Maginnes: Having fun with the gang

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MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. -- When you get a group of golf pros together away from a tournament, there are a several things that you can count on up front.

Badz/PGA TOUR

Woody Austin is a gracious winner when it's a TOUR event. But a putting contest amongst friends? Well, that's a different story.

The first is that everyone is going to get picked on -- and there is nothing out of bounds when it comes to the ribbing. The second is that between the jokes, there is enough golf knowledge to fill volumes. And last, but certainly not least, someone is probably going to lose some money.

This was the scene on Monday afternoon. The occasion that brought PGA TOUR veteran Woody Austin, Chris Blanks from the Nationwide Tour and various club and aspiring tour pros together was the grand opening of the Champions Golf School at Long Bay. Hugh Royer III, a former PGA TOUR player and four-time winner on the Nationwide Tour, opened the facility with a specific eye on developing young talent into tour pros.

While I have no doubt that Hugh and his staff will do an incredible job, there is a touch of irony in what developed after the ribbon-cutting ceremony. We were all appropriately behaved during the dinner that included important people in the Myrtle Beach area, as well as a few members of the local media. Nice things were said and wine was sipped in a large tent on the practice tee.

But golfers are incapable of being on a driving range surrounded by balls and clubs --especially when they are someone else's -- without making a few swings. So just before dark, two of the three indoor teaching bays were filled with someone swinging and three or four more people heckling. There were a few others over at the putting green and even one washed up old TOUR pro hitting lob shots with someone else's wedge to the short game area. (In case you hadn't figured it out, I was the last one).

As darkness eased over the driving range, it seemed likely that things were going to break up and everyone was going to go home. Woody was coming off of a couple of weeks on the road that included the Masters. I am sure that he would have been happy just relaxing in his room. Chris had to get to Richmond for the Nationwide Tour event the next day, so he probably would have been happy to go pack. But none of that happened, at least not for a while -- and by a while, I mean after the calendar changed, not the hour hand.

It was someone's bright idea to start a putting contest. I think it started when Hugh said, "If Maginnes couldn't have putted he would have never seen what a PGA TOUR locker room looked like." There may have been something else said about how if you learn how to putt in your 40s, you can become an overnight success after 20 years but that particular jab was sent in another direction.

Whatever the motivation, a mammoth game of stymies ensued on the putting and chipping greens. To play stymies, everyone starts in a line and throws their ball at the hole simultaneously. The one who's closest has the honor -- important because he gets to pick the hole to which you'll all be putting -- while farthest is the last to play. And no balls are marked, either, so if there are nine people playing, as we had on Monday night, things can get a little dicey.

Now, here's how you score in stymies. For the sake of argument, let's just say that every hole is a par 2 and all balls are in play. If your ball hits another, you are penalized a stroke. We declared the fringe a hazard, too. If someone's ball is blocking the hole from yours, tough you need to find a way around it -- or suffer the consequences. After six holes you pay everyone who beat you and get paid by everyone that you beat in the stroke-play format.

The fact that we'd all been there a while and this game took place under a couple of flood lights with one of the top-50 players in the world using a putter with a pink grip made for one heck of a good time. In the end, the cream did rise to the top and everyone was handing Woody $1 bills. I must say that he is a lot more gracious on television when he wins than he is beating a bunch of hoodlums in the dark. Actually, the fact that he was willing to volunteer his time to help a friend launch a business says a lot about how unfazed Woody is by his own celebrity.

I think that everyone involved will tell you that the event was a success. Well, almost everyone -- I lost $52.