Am I wrong for teeing off first because I made birdie?
You birdied the last hole, so you grabbed the tee box first — and now your buddy is citing some made-up rule. Here is who actually gets honors, and the fault split.
The golfer who made birdie
He shot the best score on the previous hole, and honors going to the low score is an actual, universal rule of golf that everyone in the group already knew existed. A running joke about who has the brightest shirt does not override a real rule just because it got mentioned a couple of times.
The golfer in the bright shirt
Their group had a long-running bit that the loudest shirt tees off first, and nobody complained about it until the exact moment the other guy made birdie. Suddenly discovering the official rulebook right when it benefits you is convenient enough to be suspicious.
The verdict
Who's at fault
The golfer in the bright shirt is more in the wrong here. Honors goes to the low score — that is a real rule, and both of them knew it before the round started. The bright-shirt thing was a bit that came and went, maybe used once, and you cannot build a binding tradition out of something you both forgot half the time. The one thing working against the birdie maker is timing: rediscovering the official rules the second they help you is a little too convenient, and being suspicious about that is fair. But suspicious timing does not beat an actual rule. Birdie beats bogey.
“Birdie beats bogey. A pink shirt is not a golf rule.”
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