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🔹 Take a shot at a free prize from CCC - vote and comment in the poll at the end of this story for your chance to win! It was easy for Steve R. as you’ll see below.

Every private club has a starter. And if you don't know what a starter does, that's fine. Most members don't either.

The starter sits in a small shack near the first tee. His job is to check in foursomes, confirm tee times and send groups off at proper intervals. That's it. It is, by any measure, the lowest-pressure job in golf. Which is exactly why the position attracts a very specific kind of person.

They're usually retired. Seventy-plus. Men who don't need the money but do need a reason to put on pants before noon. They want fresh air, a little human contact and a front-row seat to the daily soap opera of who's playing with whom. Some are delightful. Some are miserable. Most talk too much. All of them are a little eccentric. You kind of have to be. You're sitting alone in a wooden box for five hours watching other people play golf. It's not a job for the well-adjusted.

But very, very few of them are on cocaine.

We'll call him Uncle Ray. Seventy-eight years old. Thick white hair. Leathery tan. The kind of guy who looked like he'd been at the club since it was built. Which, in a sense, he had. Uncle Ray got the starter gig because his nephew was a prominent member of the staff. And when you’re a prominent member of the staff, you can find a spot for family.

Uncle Ray was good at the job, by all accounts. Friendly with the members. Kept the tee sheet moving. Had a habit of telling the same three stories on rotation, but that's true of every starter who's ever lived. Nobody thought twice about him. Though a few did wonder where he got his energy. The man arrived before dawn and never seemed to slow down.

Until the morning he collapsed in the shack.

A member pulling up to the first tee found Uncle Ray slumped over the podium, unresponsive. Paramedics were called. He was rushed to the hospital. The initial assumption was cardiac. Maybe a stroke. The man was pushing eighty. These things happen.

Then the bloodwork came back.

Cocaine. In his system. At 7:15 on a Tuesday morning.

The news traveled through the club like a grease fire. Members couldn't process it. This wasn't some burned-out assistant pro or a twenty-something cart kid with a weekend habit. This was a 78-year-old man whose primary responsibility was saying "you're up" to foursomes. And he was apparently doing it wired.

But here's the thing about Uncle Ray that nobody stopped to consider. A man born in 1948 came of age in the late 1960s. He rocked through the '70s. He partied through the '80s. The idea that a man of that generation might still have a taste for powder isn't as outrageous as it sounds. There is likely more recreational drug use among septuagenarians out there than any of us want to admit. Uncle Ray wasn't an anomaly. He was just the one who got caught.

And he got caught because of what happened next.

Club management launched an internal investigation. Not out of concern for Uncle Ray's health. Out of concern for where he was getting it. A 78-year-old man isn't exactly hitting the streets. He doesn't have a guy. Or at least, he shouldn't.

Except he did have a guy. And his guy worked at the pro shop.

One of the pro shop employees had been selling cocaine to Uncle Ray. Regularly. On the premises. The shack was fifty yards from the first tee and maybe a hundred from the pro shop. The logistics were almost comically convenient. A quick walk between buildings. An exchange disguised as a conversation about tee times. Nobody looks twice at two employees talking.

But the investigation didn't stop with Uncle Ray.

Once the pro shop employee was identified, the club pulled the thread further. And the thread kept going. He hadn't just been selling to one 78-year-old starter. He'd been running a quiet side business. Other staff. A handful of members. The pro shop had become a dispensary with a polo shirt dress code.

The fallout was swift and predictable. The pro shop guy was fired. Uncle Ray was fired. And the “prominent staff member,” the nephew who'd hired his own uncle into a job that put him fifty yards from his dealer every single day, suddenly found himself in a tough spot. He hadn't known about the drugs. Probably. But he'd created the conditions. He'd planted his family in the operation, but never imagined it would end with a cocaine bust.

He kept his job. Barely. The kind of barely where everyone knows you survived but nobody forgets why you almost didn't.

The members moved on, as members always do. The starter shack got a new occupant. Another retired guy. Another round of recycled stories and slow mornings. The tee sheet kept moving.

But for one glorious, horrifying window of time, the most boring job at the club was also the most dangerous. A man nearly died doing lines in a wooden box before breakfast. His dealer wore a name tag. And the whole thing only existed because someone's nephew made a phone call.

Nepotism is a hell of a drug. But apparently not the only one.

And so, dear readers, if your starter seems a little too energetic for a man his age, a little too chatty, a little too eager to high-five you on your way to the first tee... maybe don't ask questions. Some things are better left in the shack.

If this happened at your club, how does it end?

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 She’s out for good (105)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ She’s back within a month (3)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ We would fire the assistant for snitching (3)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Depends who complains! (22)

Well, looks like most of you (and your clubs) are on the side of justice… but a fair amount of you realize how strong club politics can be! “She’s out for good” is a nice thought, but “Depends who complains!” is probably the correct answer at 90% of the clubs out there.

Congrats again to Steve R. for winning the comment contest with this nugget: “My club has an 80 year-old barber with a candy-stripe barber pole. None of the wives will go near him!” For his comment he wins a sleeve of LA GOLF balls!

Vote and comment in the poll above for your chance to win next week’s prize! Also, you can catch up on past stories at ccconfidential.vip - and while you’re at it, tell a friend!

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