Keeping up with the Jones: Seth Jones shares one of his personal horror stories

I have wanted to do a Halloween-themed issue of Golfdom for years now. With this issue, we finally pulled it off.

It seems like I always hear crazy stories about something that happened on the golf course. These stories are typically told over dinner or drinks, and they’re off-the-record stories — just industry folks having fun telling tales.

For this issue, on a Friday afternoon, I texted 25 Friends of Golfdom (FOGs) and gave them the story prompt: I’m looking for horror stories from your years on the golf course that, at the time, may have made you mad … but now, you can look back and laugh about it.

Ten of those stories made this issue (a few got left on the cutting room floor). Thanks to all the FOGs who helped me out with this project. I hope you enjoy reading the cover story as much as I enjoyed being told these stories. And if you have a good story for me for next year, you know how to reach me.

In honor of this “True tales of terror” issue, I’ll share some of my own biggest work horror stories:

First, I was on a trip to give a presentation at a GCSAA chapter event, I arrived in the clubhouse, PowerPoint presentation ready to go on my laptop, only to find that the set-up wasn’t for a projector but for a flatscreen TV — and I didn’t have the proper gear to connect the two. I had to give my 45-minute presentation with no photos. I could feel myself just dying on the stage in front of the room. I can tell a story as good as the next guy, but when you don’t have the photos you planned on sharing to support your story, it’s a fail.

I’ll also never forget the one and only time I met Arnold Palmer. He was in his office, fussing with his hearing aids on his desk when I walked in. He shook my hand, I thanked him for his help on a story, and his receptionist told me, “Oh, honey … you’re going to have to talk a lot louder if you expect Arnie to be able to hear you.” So, I proceeded to awkwardly shout at the King in his office. Not the experience I was hoping for!

But my biggest fail is one that still makes me cringe, probably because I was young in my career and trying hard to make a name for myself. My side hustle at the time was as a journalist covering the comic book industry.

I was given the opportunity for a one-on-one interview with the guest of honor at a convention, a big-time comic book writer who had some pull in Hollywood. I waited outside his penthouse suite at the Marriott, anxious for the interview.

Finally, a handler opened the door, and a cloud of smoke came wafting out. The room is dark; my celebrity author apparently brought his own curtains, black lights and other various decorations with him. I set my voice recorder down, and we start talking, and my questions are so beneath him, he’s just shooting me down, over and over again, because I clearly don’t understand the cosmos to his level. After about 20 minutes of getting smoked out by this guy, I grabbed my voice recorder, said thank you and left.

As soon as I got to the elevator, I pushed rewind on my voice recorder so I could listen to the interview, only to discover … my batteries had gone dead. I only got a few minutes of the interview. The room was so dark that I couldn’t see that my recorder had stopped.

This is why, to this day, I constantly check my voice recorder during interviews.

That is the key. Even though these horror story moments defeat you at the time, you learn from them. And that’s what, with time, changes these tales from terror to terrific.

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