Twenty years after he last teed it up in a competitive event, TC of No Laying Up walked back into a tournament golf scoring tent — and walked out with 82 on the card.
The round was the opening shot of Hitting Cups, a new No Laying Up film-room series presented by Titleist that revives the format that made the original Film Room episodes so popular with the brand's audience. The host is back with former professional golfer and current mid-amateur Justin Huber for shot-by-shot analysis. The first subject was TC, playing the FSGA Winter Series two-day event at the Slammer & Squire course at the World Golf Village in northeast Florida.
It did not go quietly.
"82," TC said in his post-round reflection after the opening day. "You are what your record, you know, says you are."
The scorecard was 12 pars, four doubles, two bogeys and zero birdies, on a course playing cold and firm in classic dormant Bermuda conditions. "I didn't play bad golf," TC said. "I just played like pretty volatile golf."
Huber set the over-under for round two at 81-and-a-half and took the under, and TC delivered a 77 the next morning that swung between elite scrambling and self-inflicted damage. He opened with two consecutive holes that required chipping just to make pars — "two holes, two chips," Johnson noted before correcting himself: "Well, two holes, three chips, technically." TC then went on a stretch from his seventh hole through the 17th in which Huber called the ball-striking "a stripe show."
Then came the closer — a tee shot into the penalty area on a 377-yard par-4 that effectively undid the round.
"Stupid drive," TC muttered as he walked into the trouble. After taking a back-on-line drop, he chipped out, found the wrong side of the green and finished with a double bogey. The voice-over was as self-aware as it was gutted. "I felt like I had amnesia on every hole," TC said. "Like every hole was a brand new experience."
Huber, who broke down the swings on screen, was generous with the diagnosis.
"I think there's just so much good in there," he said. "In another universe he goes out and plays and shoots 71-74 and wins or something. 72 second round all day. We clean up the two doubles, we're at 73, and then you make one of those other putts and it's a 72."
The NLU host was characteristically blunt about how the day actually felt. "Strikes and gutters," he said. "My alignment was atrocious."
For a golf media personality who has spent two decades opining on professional players' competitive nerves, the format is a deliberate gamble. Hitting Cups is built around the No Laying Up audience watching its hosts in the same competitive cauldron they critique. By setting up the first episode around TC's own return to a real scorecard, the show effectively put its founder in the seat usually reserved for the players he covers.
There will be more of these. Hitting Cups will profile other NLU hosts and amateur friends through the rest of the year, with Huber riding shotgun on the analysis. For TC, the next step is a return scorecard that does not require an opening 82. "There's good golf to come," Huber said. After 20 years away, the bar for evidence is fairly forgiving.