Poker players don't necessarily have a typical offseason like professional athletes, but right after the
World Series of Poker, there is a lull in the schedule of major events before it all starts up again, and during that time, many of poker's greatest players kill time by spending each day at the golf course.
Well, this year,
ESPN will be filming the inaugural
Doyle Brunson and Dewey Tomko Invitational, a golf tournament featuring mainly professional poker players as well as some noted golf "hustlers," although I'm sure that if you asked them, they would never see themselves as hustlers at all!
The format is pretty neat, and there are two separate events: a three-man scramble and two-man best-ball. For those who don't play or understand golf, let me explain the difference.
In a scramble, each player on a team hits his tee shot and the team chooses which ball they'd like to play for their next shot. This process continues until the hole is completed. In a best-ball format, each player plays his own ball and the best score for the hole is used. It's pretty simple.
Now, because we are dealing with golfers of various skill levels, handicaps are a must; but rather than actually spotting a player a shot, in this tournament, all spots will be based on yardage. For example, the best players might play a course that totals 7,000 yards, while the worst golfers may play the course from less than 5,000 yards. It might not seem like much, but spotting a player almost 100 yards on a hole is a pretty significant handicap. It's Dewey's job to come up with the most fair tournament possible, and he is the right man for the job, as he not only is a great golfer himself, but also has a very good read on the abilities of the "old-school" players as well as the young guns.
The tournament will be played at Bali Hai Golf Club, near Mandalay Bay on the Las Vegas Strip. There are four sets of tees: gold (longest), silver, red, and super red (shortest).
ESPN will shoot two separate two-hour episodes that will air on Sunday afternoons. If you know nothing about golf but enjoy gambling, you'll likely enjoy watching this show.
Here are the teams for the three-man scramble, as well as the tees from which they'll be playing:
The tee designations for a scramble generally aren't indicative of skill level as much as they are on how far you can hit your driver.
Here are the teams for the two-man best-ball, as well as their tees:
Now, if this were a poker tournament, you'd find it curious that Phil Hellmuth and I would be seeded so low, but in this event, we are battling it out to see who is actually the worst golfer in the field!
One thing I learned during a week of practice rounds is that no one is playing well at all. Everyone has a bad back, can't putt, and has no chance to win. Ask a guy what he shot in a round, and it's a safe bet that you can subtract at least five shots from what he tells you!
I guess in the golf world, this is part of the "poker game." In a sense, it's a form of bluffing, hustling, or whatever you want to call it; being honest in this group is a quick way to find yourself absolutely broke!
At the reception for the tournament, I asked about five guys how they'd been playing, and I heard: "horrible," "awful," "ridiculously bad," "OK, but nowhere near good enough to win," and all sorts of stories about how bad they were playing. Then, I asked Hellmuth, and he had the following to say: "I've never hit the ball so good in my life." The name Phil Hellmuth equals great poker player, but his honesty, unfortunately, prohibits him from being anything close to a golf hustler. His response was actually pretty refreshing. Oh, how am I hitting the ball? Terrible, of course!
I'm looking forward to this event. In my early years as a young poker grinder, I spent little time doing anything other than sleeping, eating, and breathing poker. Eventually, around the year 2000, I was completely burned out.
The great thing about golf is that being able to maintain your focus on the golf course, especially when playing for large sums of money, should actually help improve your ability to stay calm during a high-stakes poker tournament when all of your chips are on the line. In effect, the only way to ever become comfortable in high-pressure situations is to put yourself in those situations, and through experience, it should become easier and easier for you to maintain your cool.
In poker, you can get rivered, and that's out of your control, but in golf, it's just you versus the course. There are no excuses, no unlucky dealer, and no bad players busting you; you have only yourself to blame for a bad round - unless your first name starts with a P and your last name starts with an H. In that case, you might say things like, "What kind of donkey would design a course with a bunker there?" Or, "What an unlucky bounce; I guess if there was no luck in golf, I'd birdie every hole."
If you enjoy watching Phil Hellmuth blow up on television during poker tournaments, you just have to watch this!
