After what must be hundreds of thousands of range balls, what felt like truckloads of dirt moved around golf courses, and nearly four decades of mostly mediocre golf, I walked into Mango Tee 38 feeling dangerously optimistic.

With a 16.2 index, the plan was simple: make bogey on every hole and, most importantly, don’t embarrass my 4-handicap partner, Kevin Kim.

I blew it.

Spectacularly.

Fat approach shots. Skulled chips. Lip-outs from every angle imaginable. My scorecard slowly turned into a comedy sketch, and my ego took the hardest hit. The only upside? Nobody could accuse me of sandbagging. If anything, my handicap might have been too honest.

Others, though, chose this exact week to turn into prime Tiger Woods.

Over the eight-day Mango Tee 38 at Alabang Country Club, an 11-handicapper fired an even-par 72. A 24-handicapper came in at just eight over.

On paper, those numbers look… interesting.

They could be legit — those magical days when every swing feels pure and every putt seems magnetized to the hole. In golf, one freak round, good or bad, usually gets a pass. It’s when the freak rounds start piling up that the whispering begins.

We’ve all had those “who is this guy?” days — when the ball suddenly comes off the face like you actually know what you’re doing and every putt looks like it’s tracking. I still remember shooting a 77 at the par-69 John Hay Golf Course in Baguio, one of the very few times I’ve broken 80.

The very next round, I could barely keep it under 100.

That swing from “career day” to “please don’t post this score” is exactly what keeps golf honest — and brutally humbling.

One great round earns applause.

A second raises eyebrows.

A third sends people reaching for the handicap sheet.

This time, it went further.

The Alabang Country Club board of directors eventually asked the two teams to return the trophies, citing what it called highly unusual and statistically improbable scores.

Because in amateur golf, everyone is always watching.

A great round gets admiration. A bad one gets sympathy. Anything that feels too good to be true gets talked about. Trust lives in that narrow space between your handicap and how you actually play over time. Outlier scores don’t just shake up the leaderboard — they shape reputations. They affect flights, pairings, and whether people feel the competition is fair.

That’s the whole point of handicaps. They’re meant to measure potential, not guarantee consistency. They reflect what you can do on a great day, not what you shoot every weekend.

Behind the scenes, the system quietly keeps things in check — best eight of your last 20 rounds, soft caps, hard caps, slow adjustments instead of wild swings. One crazy score barely moves the needle. Patterns do. Over time, the math always catches up, whether your pride likes it or not.

For the rest of us hacks, the lesson is simple: enjoy the hot rounds, survive the disasters, and remember your handicap is always a moving target.

Great rounds show what’s possible when everything clicks — tempo, contact, course management, nerves. Blow-up rounds reveal where things fall apart — tension, bad decisions, rough conditions, or just being human.

Sandbagging, reverse sandbagging, miracle days, and total train wrecks all point to the same truth: the scorecard doesn’t care about your excuses.

An 8-over from a 24-handicapper is peak performance.

A plus-28 from an 18-handicapper is what happens when confidence collapses.

Each number is simply a snapshot of what actually happened — not what we think we “should” shoot.

In the end, golf remains what it has always been: unpredictable, punishing, and strangely addictive. Handicaps hint at what might happen. The course tells you what did happen.

Every swing, every three-putt, every scrappy bogey is a reminder that skill fades, patience gets tested, and the game always has the final say.

Maybe that’s why we keep coming back.

The swing lies.

The memory flatters.

But those 18 little boxes never do.