Stories
Every plate is somebody's day.
A hole is only a hole until something happens on it. These are stories we wrote to show what a plate can hold: the hole drawn from the survey, and the words in the margin the way the people who were there might put them. Yours will be your own. Build it, and tell it your way.
FOR THE ONE YOU FINALLY BEATBrown Deer Park · hole 1The one score anybody in that family remembers. A four to his five on the first at Brown Deer, from a son who had been trying since he was nine, and a father who paid up without a word, which was somehow worse. The card sits in the margin where a card belongs, and so does the Sunday after, written in his son's own words.
FOR THE ONE WHO OUTDROVE YOUHarbour Town Golf Links · hole 15He bought it for her, which tells you who won. One drive, one Sunday, sixteen yards, and a card that has settled every argument since. Measured twice. It hangs in the hallway he walks down every morning. The anniversary, Christmas, no occasion at all: the plate that gets a laugh and stays on the wall.
FOR THE ACESand Hollow Resort · hole 15An ace is worth nothing without witnesses, and he had two. He has told the story two hundred times since, and it gains a yard with every telling. The plate keeps it honest: the flight traced from the tee to the hole, and both witnesses signed in the margin, each with an opinion of his own.
FOR THE TRIPBandon Dunes · hole 16The trip that became the group-chat name. Four of them, one short par four, and a shot none of the other three will ever be allowed to forget. The card in the corner settles who did what. Four plates, one to each wall, keep the argument always within reach.
FOR THE KIDJefferson Park · hole 1A municipal course, a Saturday morning, and a putt that needed no help at all. She is never to know what her father was doing behind those sunglasses, and one day she will read this plate and work it out anyway. The card is in the corner, her three to his five. He filled it in himself, which is the point.
FOR THE BET YOU WONHarbour Town Golf Links · hole 18It came down to one putt on the eighteenth, with the lighthouse watching and half the marina pretending it wasn't. He made it, walked off, and never took the bet again. The bill itself hangs an inch to the left of this plate. No, he is not giving it back.
FOR THE YESHarding Park · hole 1The ring was in his pocket from the first tee. First green, first light, the fog still on the fairway, and she said yes before he finished the question. The card in the corner settles it: she won the hole. Two plates, one for each side of the bed, and the ring on the green is drawn on both.
IN MEMORYPhalen Park · hole 1Nobody knew it was the last one, because nobody ever does. He played that hole the way he played everything, straight at it and no hedging, and the putt fell like it had somewhere to be. His son wrote those four lines himself. The plate hangs above an empty chair.
Plates people chose to show.
Every plate here was ordered by somebody who offered it to be shown, and chosen by us. Each one opens as it was left. Check the box when you keep yours, and once it is ordered we may hang it here too.