The NXT Curse

Back in the day, one of my self-appointed responsibilities was the procurement of “tchotchke” (a.k.a. promotional items such as golf shirts, hats, golf balls, etc.)

Early on, there were logoed Maxfli golf balls, eventually gravitating to the Titleist NXT brand for name recognition, always thrilled to parcel out a few sleeves on the first tee box to our loyal clients.

On such an occasion, we were playing Caves Valley, an ultra-premium golf course in the Baltimore area as guests of influential Lancaster, Pennsylvania businessmen.  One of our hosts kindly teed up his newly gifted logoed Titleist NXT ball on the first tee, proceeding to hit the first and second of said Titleist NXT logoed balls into two different ponds. On the third hole, in the right rough, our host picked up his remaining NXT, examined it for a moment, then threw it into yet another pond, insinuating our treasured gift was far below his discriminating standards!

Fast forward some fifteen years, I remained the sovereign potentate of golf ball acquisitions, altering buying habits, electing to upgrade the majority of our fleet to Titleist Pro-V’s however, remaining somewhat loyal to the Titleist NXT product line.  The logic relative to the acquisition of a few boxes of the less expensive NXT product line was that a number of our customers wouldn’t know the difference and/or their business did not warrant Pro-V status.

Anyway, a colleague invited a relatively new customer and his guest for a round of golf at Conestoga Country Club in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.  After some time on the range and lunch, accompanied by a few brewskis, we all headed to the first tee where I proudly distributed sleeves of our Titleist NXT logoed golf balls to our customer, his guest and my colleague.

Everyone was having a grand old time until things began to unravel half way up the sixteenth hole.  While searching for our client’s misdirected tee ball, my colleague stumbled upon one of our companies’ previously misdirected Titleist Pro-V logoed ball, adorned with my distinctive orange underline below the numbers.   My colleague, recognizing my unique markings, cheerfully shared the origin of the find with our client. 

At that very moment, our new client came to the stark realization that his new service provider had the option of distributing Titleist NXT’s or Titleist Pro-V’s on the first tee box, choosing Titleist NXT’s.  I can only assume our new client felt slighted while simultaneously perceiving our organization as cheap with questionable intellectual capabilities!  All in all, a really bad combination for a new (or any) business relationship!

Update:  I had the good fortune of communicating with Mrs. Shorb (The Club Champion) this past week.  She shared that she did participate in the 1991 and 2007 Country Club of York Club Championships.  She also shared that she was unable to participate in the 2018 Country Club of York Club Championship. 

If you are enjoying our weekly posts, we’d be eternally grateful if you’d spread the word.  Thank you for following Bad Golf Guy and be sure to check us out on Instagram.

The back nine can only get better!