davideen: Beaten by a hack
Hmmm... from first glance... I would say the "hack" had the advantage... even if the Hack didn't upgrade equipment and you were both essentially playing starter gear -- the Hack was on forward tees, while you are now playing on Master Tees with starter gear.
If you are both playing starter gear, that can be an fairly significant disadvantage.
My first thought was "coin rooms" but you appear to be playing mostly on desktop so this kind of thing is less common on desktop PC but happens all the time in coin rooms on mobile where you may only be playing 1 or 3 holes. They are notorious for being swingy or high variance.