The Rowdy Cup

History

In the spring of 2015, twelve young men answered a call. They came with different swings and vastly different tolerances, bound by a single conviction: that somewhere out there was a cup worth suffering for. They were in their mid-twenties, eager to take on the world, and the corner of the world they chose was Mount Pleasant, Michigan. They did not know what they were getting into. None of us did.

The early campaigns were brutal. There were no handicaps then, and the results were the kind the history books politely call “decisive.” Only later — older, and somewhat wiser — did we level the playing field: for fairness, for competition, and to #GrowTheGame.

Twelve years of campaigns have followed, across Michigan and into Virginia, Wisconsin, and the Carolinas. Men married. Men had children. Men relocated. Some hung up their spikes, and new men stepped forward to take their place in the line. But every year, when the orders come down from the commish — Tadas A., who was there at the beginning — the men report for duty.

They come back for the golf, sure. For the wild shirts, the team names, the hoons. But mostly they come back for each other: brothers in golf, marching forward through life, forging bonds that cannot be broken by mortals — or by a four-putt. This is the Rowdy Cup.

The Cup

They say a trophy is just metal. The men who have carried this one home know better. One cup, two teams, and three hundred sixty-five days of consequences for the side that loses it. Alongside the cup, honors are bestowed each year for acts of valor and — more often — for acts we have all agreed never to fully explain. The full record stands in the Awards.

Format

Two teams, four or five rounds of match play, one point per match. Every format the cup has been played in, drawn from the annals — click one for the rules:

The handicap each man plays off, the strokes it buys him and how a tied cup is settled are all in the rules, along with the years each of them worked differently.