Peyton Manning won Gardner Heidrick Pro-Am with 1 awful tee shot

CASTLE ROCK — Here’s a switch: Brandon Stokley hung Peyton Manning out to dry.

“I take all the responsibility for that,” Stokley, the ex-Broncos receiver and Front Range radio staple, told me after the Gardner Heidrick Pro-Am on Wednesday at Castle Pines Golf Club. “That was my fault. We shouldn’t have hit the driver there, we should’ve hit the wood.”

Only Peyton Bleepin’ Manning could win a pro-am with one of the worst shots known to man. On the first hole of the morning, the Broncos icon lined up in the tee box on No. 1, drew the club back and let go with one hand, accidentally topping a ball that landed about 50 yards away.

“Anyone see where that went?” Manning cracked, turning back to the gallery. Who’d all been there. Many, many, many, many, many, many, many times.

“One of us!” the crowd chanted. “One of us! One of us!”

Bloodied but unbowed, PFM walked over and gave Stokley, his good pal and caddie, a high-five.

“It’ll take the blame for that,” Stokley said with a chuckle. “It was on the receiver, it was on his caddie, for that 50-yard topped shot.”

In Stoke’s defense, there was a reason Manning’s clubs weren’t top-of-mind at that moment. See, the former Broncos wideout was doing the math in his head as to how many golf balls they’d have left to give away by the end of the round. The plan for Manning, once he’d finished a hole, was to retrieve the ball, sign it, and present it to a kid in the crowd. A souvenir for life.

No good deed goes unpunished, of course, and Stokley found himself doing a mental supply count fairly early into the round.

“I got worried after three holes, because he’d lost four balls in three holes,” Stokley recounted. “I said, ‘Buddy, you can’t give out (one at every hole). We’ve gotta start rationing the golf balls a little bit or I’m going to be digging into Wyndham Clark’s bag, stealing his golf balls.’”