So I’m back from my annual golf outing with the bros in South Carolina. Golfing-wise, it went as we should expect it to go, considering the general skill level of the golfers involved and the lack of golf we play during the year.

To dim-wit:

As you can see, I’ve tried to protect the names of the innocent (that’s a scorecard of one of our Saturday rounds). But, really, we all know who was there, and none of those lines adds up to anything worth cheering about. So, whatever. No innocents are protected here ’cause we’re all guilty as all get out.

I mean, look at those numbers, for god’s sake.

(Side note: We were crossing in front of a car to get to the putting green on our last day there, and some guy in a car, I swear, screamed, “Get going, you hacks!” Maybe he didn’t say that — it’d be pretty unusual, even as a joke — but I sure thought he said it, and I had visions of the Donovan boys throwing down, West Side Story like, on some pastel-wearing country club types right then and there. But I was unsure if the comment was what I thought it was, and if it was directed toward us, and if it was a joke. And, after talking to Bro Jim about it later — he heard it, too — we decided that, as much as we’d like to defend our honor, we have no honor as golfers. Again, guilty as all get out. We are hacks.)

Anyway, a few things pop out at me about this particular card.

1. The one circle. That, my friends, is a birdie on a par 5. And that, I will admit to you now, is my line. Beautiful, long drive, maybe 225 (which is long for me). I maybe could have gone for the green in two, but I smartly laid up. A wedge into the green, within 10 feet. A putt with a little left-to-right break that fell. Easy.
2. The 7 right after that birdie. On a par 3. That, my friends, is my golf game. Double-bogey, birdie, double-par-plus-one. Holy Trevino, that’s bad. It took me fewer strokes to finish a 450-yard hole with water in front of the green than it did to hole out on a 157-yard shoulda-been gimme. The 3 is guarded by water, too, but I don’t remember dunking a shot, so I honestly don’t remember how I got that 7. But it’s on the card. Must be true.
3. I am just now discovering the writing under the numbers on the scorecard. What it says, in two lines, is “Drive Carts in Fairway Only/Please Stay Out of Rough”. All you can see, once the numbers are entered, is “Please Stay Out of Rough”. Which, when it comes to golfing with my brothers, is entirely laughable.
4. The scores are not added up. So either we can’t add or we don’t want to add. Probably both.

Despite the scores, fun was had by all. We had too much to eat, as we always do, and too much to drink, as is pretty much always the case. A lot of laughs, a lot of teasing. Some late-night talks.

And it all centered around some of the most godforsaken golf you would never want to see. One brother had back-to-back 10s, which is unprecedented, even in our hacky little world. One brother — the same one, in fact — nailed another brother on the elbow with a high lob into a green. One brother — OK, this time it was me — whistled a skulled iron right past two brothers hiding on the other side of a bush. Went right through the bush. Nearly got ’em both.

One brother almost whiffed a drive completely, the ball traveling no more than an inch in front of the tee. Another toed a drive so badly it went nearly 90 degrees from where he was aiming. Underneath a parked cart.

I whistled a ball over a green that ended up in the middle of a wedding shoot. Honest. Took a free drop. I’m pretty sure that’s not in the rules. In golf, you have to improvise sometimes.

Trees were mangled, grass was tortured, balls were lost on, I would guess, a good 40-50 percent of the holes we played. Putts were missed from a foot away. Four-putt greens were commonplace.

Still, talks are underway already for Pawleys 2016. I’ll have to schedule around a high school graduation, and we all have to avoid Mothers Day, and we never know whether the one brother can make it all the way from Honolulu. Again.

But we’re planning. We’re hoping. We have a streak going now. And, next year, in the 20 rounds we will play among us over the extended weekend, somebody will break 100. I think it’s going to be me.

Did I tell you about that birdie?