Men's night at Redstone is worth nothing and decides everything. Both captains are in the field. The teams are picked that evening, and one man in the room will not be picked until there is nobody else left.
The tournament does not begin on Thursday morning at Castlegar. It begins at half past two on the Wednesday afternoon, on a club medal that is worth no points whatsoever.
Men's night at Redstone is not a cup session. It is the audition.
Everybody plays. The seven Masturds, straight off a flight that landed at half past ten that morning, running on eight hours of jet lag and a Vancouver hotel breakfast. And every 8th Man candidate from Rossland who wants a place in the draft.
Three flights, medal format, prizes at half past seven. Sunset is at 18:46 and the last groups will finish in what light is left.
Both captains are in the field. Neither of them is watching casually.
Once the prizes are done, Liam Wilkinson and Guy Mitchell pick teams from a single pool: the seven Masturds and the full 8th Man roster, together, with nobody pre-assigned to anything.
Not Church. Not Forton. Not any of the locals. Alternating picks, in a room, out loud.
Which means one man in that room goes first, and one man in that room goes last, and has to stand there while it happens.
Not the best golfers. Every format this week is played at handicap, so the question is not who scores lowest — it is who finishes higher than his number says he should.
On that measure Beswick is the outstanding pick in the draft: six places better than his index in Lisbon, unbeaten in singles, and the highest individual cup return of anybody on either team. The only way he slides is if a captain keeps looking at the gross column.
After that it fractures. Forton wins the scramble and has no record. Church is worth the most in greensomes and the least in four-ball, which is an odd sentence to write about the best player in the field. Cartwright arrives with a twelve-month-old handicap that may be a bargain or a liability and nobody discovers which until Thursday morning.
And there is a full scouting report on the site, written before any of this, which both of them are welcome to read and neither of them should trust entirely.
Every number published so far — every price, every projection, every line in the scouting report — rests on Lisbon. It is a year old. It was played on different courses, in a different country, at a flat 100% allowance that has since been corrected.
Eighteen holes at Redstone on the Wednesday afternoon is the first current evidence anybody has, and it lands roughly ninety minutes before two men have to make decisions on the strength of it.
Half of this website could be obsolete by half past seven that evening. That is not a flaw in the plan. That is the plan.