Needless to say, this was the most disappointed I've ever been to win $1,000. Just seeing $100,000 in my account under the always fluid "live winnings" was surreal, and especially so when considering I was still in first place as late as 4:30 in the afternoon and with no more than a handful of holes remaining for the final few pairings on Sunday of the final round....and in a contest consisting of 170,432 contestants no less.
And compounding my heartbreak was knowing just how really truly close I was to netting myself $100,000, an amount that I surely would have used as my bankroll as a stepping stone towards eventually parlaying that 100 K win into $150,000, to $220,000 to $375,000 to $500,000, to $1,000,000, and eventually all the way up to something like $3,326,137 two or three years from now by way of participating in much, much, much higher dollar buy-in contests, ones that consist of 25 to 50 to100 times fewer the amount of competing entries, but for payouts just as large if not larger than the 100 K/ 40 K/ 20 K top three place prize payout that my 11th place $1,000 winning lineup scored me yesterday from the $4 dollar buy-in, 172,432 entry contest I was a part of.
For you see, I entered 20 or so lineups for the Players Championship between this $4 contest and a few other contests priced between $3 and $12 as the buy-in this week, all 20 or so lineups consisting a crop of the same dozen golfers I used to mix and match between them, each and every golfer making the cut (I actually won another $312 on top of that 1K with those various lineups as I finished in the top 150 to 3,000 with practically all of them). It's absolutely crushing to know that I had Louis Oosthuizen at $8,200 in 35% (7 out of 20) of my mixed & matched lineups, and had I simply just used Oosthuizen in my 11th place $1,000 winning lineup instead of Paul Casey at $8,300 whom I had in there for this particular lineup.....this 11th place/ 1K earning lineup would've finished in 1st place for that highly coveted but oh-so-elusive $100,000 K "stepping stone bankroll" winning victory for me. I could taste it. In fact, I could quite literally even SEE it...
As for my reaction towards winning a G-note with an 11th place finish, but doing so while coming so painfully close only to fall just short of that 1st place/100 K game-changer bankroll, well, needless to say it elicited a Judge Snails-esque "Damn!" type moment from me(only, really, like 100 times more forceful and about 275 times more explicit) after he sliced his tee shot immediately subsequent to having just pompously proclaimed "Gambling is illegal at Bushwood sir and I never slice".
