The end of summer is often a painful time. Not only does it signal the arrival of cold weather and thousands of new students asking where Room 299 is, but it is also the beginning of Pumpkin Spice Latte season at Starbucks (yuck). Fortunately, at the Murray Library, there is one nice end-of-summer tradition that makes it all worthwhile. I am speaking of course, of the Annual Murray Library Mini Golf Tournament of Champions, now in its 6th year.

If you’re new and you’ve never heard of the Annual Murray Library Mini Golf Tournament of Champions, feel free to catch up by reading Branching Out posts from years past: 2018, 2017, 2016 (no post) 2015, and 2014. The essential facts to be aware of are that there’s a Best Golfer award (often won by Duane, but last year Cathy was the champ) and there’s a Worst Golpher award (often won by Amy, but last year Kelly and Laura H took that prize in a tie). The competition to win these awards is often quite fierce. Another thing to be aware of is that in all the years past, no guest has ever won a prize. It’s always been library employees who’ve won. (Remember this – it will become relevant later on in the story.)

This year, to make things even more exciting, we decided to add a team element to the mix. The names of library staff members and their guests were all put into a hat, and foursomes were picked randomly. Teams were asked to choose names, and were encouraged to dress thematically. With the addition of teams, we added two new awards to the contest: Best Team and Werst Teem.

The official rules of the tournament, which were written out in a very official Murray Social Committee email, are as follow:

Due to a rule invented by Laura Harris last year, anyone who worked in Murray 122/134/G6 in 2019 or who still has a permanent line in Murray is eligible to play. Guests can play, but are not eligible to win the Best Golfer and Worst Golpher trophies. [Probably? It’s never come up before.] Guest scores will however count for the new team trophies.

(Remember these rules. They will become relevant later on in the story.)

It was a beautiful late-August evening at the course. Here are our teams in action:

“The Happy Hookers” – Chris (guest), Lara, Tyler (guest), Brittany S.

“The Girls with the Good Putts” – Racheal, Amy, Shelby, Jill

“Par-Tee On, Duane” – Kim, Maureen (guest), Duane, Cathy

“The Fore-Tune Hunters” – Kelly, Robbie (guest), Christine, Cam (guest)

“The Puttercups” – David, Rachel H., Shawn (guest), Brittany P.

“Harry Putter & The Hole-In-One Prince” – Jason (guest), Britni (guest), Kate, Myles

Yadda, yadda, yadda, golf happened. I’m not a sports reporter.

Once the golf was finished, it was time to head over to Fuddruckers to eat some food and enjoy some post-game conviviality. While library employees and their guests nommed burgers and guzzled cheese sauce, members of the Murray Social Committee quickly tallied the scores to figure out who would be the winners of the four coveted prizes.

BUT!

(This is where the controversy comes in.)

The person with the best overall score was Shawn, Brittany P.’s guest, with a score of 33! Unfortunately, due to THE RULES, Shawn was not actually eligible to win the top prize. So then we looked to see who had the second best score, and it was Cam, Christine’s guest, with a score of 38. But he wasn’t eligible to win the prize either! So then we looked to see who had the third best score, and it was Maureen, Cathy’s guest with a score of 39. But she wasn’t eligible to win the prize either! So finally, we had to look at the FOURTH BEST SCORE and it was a three-way tie, but at least there were finally some actual library employees who managed to make a halfway decent showing for themselves. These three people each scored 40. One of them was Jason, Kate’s guest, but (are you sensing a pattern here?) he wasn’t eligible to win.

So finally, that left us with two actual, proper winners of the Best Golfer trophy.

CONGRATULATIONS DAVID AND CATHY! You are truly the Best Golfers.

The awarding of the rest of the prizes was much less fraught with controversy. The winner of the Worst Golpher trophy was Lara with an abysmal score of 59.

The first ever winners of the Werst Teem award (not surprisingly, based on Lara’s score) were The Happy Hookers with a combined total score of 199! Congratulations Lara, Chris, Tyler and Brittany S.!

Lara accepts both awards on behalf of the rest of her team.

Finally, the award for Best Team, the overall champs of the tournament, went to Harry Putter and the Hole-In-One Prince! Congratulations to Kate, Jason, Myles and Britni.

They look happy! That’s because they’re collectively pretty good at mini golf.

It was definitely a tournament for the history books. Well done everyone. See you in 2020! (We’ll perhaps review the eligibility rules between now and then.)

Full scores below. Par for this course is 40. Guests are in italics.

• Shawn: 33
• Cam: 38
• Maureen: 39
• Jason, David, Cathy: 40
• Kate, Chris: 41
• Myles: 43
• Robbie: 44
• Duane: 45
• Christine, Shelby, Racheal, Britni: 46
• Rachel H, Tyler: 47
• Kelly: 50
• Jill: 51
• Brittany S: 52
• Amy: 54
• Brittany P: 56
• Kim: 57
• Lara: 59