Tifu by not asking someone’s name

This happened 3 years ago. I was doing some shopping when this guy approached me and said “omg, hey SandPractical, it’s been forever. How are you?”. Pause. This is the exact moment I fucked up.

Now I admit, my memory isn’t winning me any Guinness records, but usually after a couple seconds whatever I’m trying to remember will come to me. So anytime in the past if someone approached me that clearly knew me, but I couldn’t remember them, I’d just pretend I did know them and usually through the stories they tell it would come back to me.

So I made the decision, and pretended I knew exactly who he was. So we make small talk. How’s the family? Where are you working? Blah blah blah…here’s the problem. This guy was asking me if I remembered stuff that I definitely didn’t remember, but I thought, man he sounds so confident. It had to of happened. After a few minutes of this, and total confusion on my part, I tell him it was awesome catching up but I have to get going. He asks if he can get my number and maybe we can hang out sometime. I think to myself “ok, surely I’m going to go home, and my wife’s going to call me an idiot again and tell me where I know this guy from.” So I give him my number. I go home, and my wife is just as confused as I am. We both brush it off and figure he probably won’t actually ever text.

Fast forward, over the next few months he actually does send me a couple texts. It was always just friendly small talk. Well in one of those conversations we find out we both really like golf. He invites me to a scramble, and I figure why not? Now at this point im in too deep to go back and ask him where we met, I have to try to figure it out without him knowing I don’t know. So we get to playing golf and chatting, and once again every time he tells a story about something “we” did in the past, I just can’t remember it at all.

He ends up joining my weekly golf group. So we play golf every week and every week I try to get closer to figuring out who this guy is. 2 years go by and I’m not any closer than the day he approached me shopping. Today we had our weekly game, and he tells all the guys he’s getting married…but then it happened…he asks me to be his best man. Of course I said yes, because I would have felt like a jerk if not.

So now I guess I’m his best man. At what point should I ask him what his name is, since I only know him by the nickname his friends call him.

TLDR; I didn’t ask someone’s name who seemed to know me. 3 years later he asks me to be his best man but I still don’t know where I met him.