So what would you have done?

[telrod11]

Background:
Playing a friendly brother-brother match with a couple of good friends. The stakes are dinner (roughly $12 max). My brother is about a 30 handicap, and the two guys we play are both 12-15 handicaps. (I'm about a twelve)
My brother is given 12 strokes on the 12 hardest holes, and we play for two dots a hole - low score and low team total.


We go out and go 6 dots up after 3 holes; At hole 4, I suggest that we wipe out the strokes that we give my bro, to try and even things up. One of the other guys gets *really* upset with me for suggesting we change things, to the point of taking his clubs off the cart and announcing he is going back to the clubhouse. We send his brother after him, and he comes back and we finish, but it put a real downer on the rest of the day.

What would you have done? It really hacked me off, but I wasn't going to let him ruin my day, so I played on. (We wound up winning, with it not being close)

[Ian]

obviously you did the right thing, thats exactly what i would have done.
frankly i dont see why he was so upset with you trying to even things out?

[powerfade]

Did he not understand what was going on?
You would think he'd be all in favor of not giving your bro the strokes, then play on.

Did he have trouble on the first 3 holes which was probably the real reason for his ridiculous reaction?

[kfowler]

Was it his "time" of the month?

[jcorfive]

I would have been thrilled to let you give those strokes back.

Maybe he thought it was an insult to his game? He could have thought you were telling him (in a not so direct manner) that he wasn't good enough to have given you guys strokes, an ego issue.

As far as getting him to come back to the game I would've simply told him the strokes would not be taken off and we will finish what we started. He would have been putting himself into a disadvantage but would still have his pride.

If he still didn't want to play, I'd simply take the dinner offer off the table and finish out with three guys. A new betting game could've then been implemented in his absence if so desired as well.

[tonyy]

He probably played like crap the first 3 holes. Either way, you did the right thing by trying to even it out and being fair.

[firstcut]

I would have bought everyone a beer and told the whiney brother how you liked baked potato with your free steak dinner.

[Grogger31]

I would have asked him why he was being a do*che. If he kept it up, I would have ordered the most expensive dinner I could.