Football and Golf

Jensen Jennings
Posted 2/10/21

Other than the first weekend of the Men’s NCAA Basketball Tournament, Super Bowl weekend is always my favorite sports weekend of the year.

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Football and Golf

Posted

Other than the first weekend of the Men’s NCAA Basketball Tournament, Super Bowl weekend is always my favorite sports weekend of the year.

I’m a big fan of all sports, but football has always been my favorite. The last few years though, while living in South Florida, I’ve become a big fan of another sport. Golf.

I love watching professional golf and even though it’s Super Bowl weekend, I think I might be even more excited for the Waste Management Phoenix Open final round on Sunday.

The top 10 on the leaderboard heading into Sunday is absolutely loaded. Xander Schauffele and Jordan Spieth are tied for the lead at 18 under par. There are seven other golfers all within five strokes of the leaders. Guys like Brooks Koepka, Justin Thomas and Scottie Scheffler.

You may be asking yourself, “Why would someone care about a golf tournament on Super Bowl Sunday?”

Well, let me explain.

My roommate, when I lived in South Florida, was named Dante. We served together in the Air Force and have been best friends since we first met in 2011. When I moved to South Florida in 2015, neither of us were interested in golf.

Slowly but surely, we started getting interested in the sport and played often. One of the nice things about living in South Florida was being able to golf year-round.

The more I got into playing the sport, the more I enjoyed watching the pros on the PGA Tour play. 

Around the time I started getting interested in golf, a media company I enjoy called Barstool Sports, released a podcast about the sport called Foreplay. The hosts of the show were going to the Waste Management Phoenix Open that year and talked about it nonstop.

The crowds at this tournament are crazy. They have a stadium-like atmosphere built around the 16th hole and there’s nothing else quite like it in golf. Fans cheer, yell and boo at the players nonstop. The exact opposite of how you’re supposed to act at a golf tournament.

Seeing the videos and hearing the stories made me so excited to watch it for the first time in 2017. Dante and I invited our good friend Tyler over every year to watch the Super Bowl. 

Thankfully, he also enjoyed watching golf, so he was excited when we asked him to come over earlier in the day to watch the golf tournament as well that year.

Ever since that first year in 2017, it was always the three of us watching golf and then watching the Super Bowl. We had endless amounts of food and plenty of beer for the day.

When I told them I was moving away after I graduated from college, one of the first things we talked about was how much different this year’s Super Bowl and Waste Management Phoenix Open would be.

Every year for the last four, we always hung out together on Super Bowl Sunday. Now that I live halfway across the country, it’ll be weird not cracking open my first beer at noon and settling in for some golf and football with my best friends.

We will still be talking with each other in our group chat about both events, but it will just be a bit different than what we’re used to. 

We’ve already talked about who we’re pulling for on Sunday. In the golf tournament it’s either Spieth, Thomas or Koepka. For the Super Bowl, I have to cheer for the Kansas City Chiefs after the Tampa Bay Buccaneers defeated my Green Bay Packers.

Thankfully, Dante and Tyler are fans of the New York Jets and the Miami Dolphins, so they have a longstanding dislike for Tom Brady, who is now the quarterback for the Buccaneers. They will also be rooting for the Chiefs.

Instead of my typical Super Bowl Sunday spent with my best friends, I’ll be settling into my recliner with some chili in the crockpot, a cold beer in my hand, golf on TV and cheering for a Spieth victory. The only thing that could make Super Bowl Sunday better, is watching the Chiefs keep Brady from winning another Super Bowl.