Swing, Curse, Repeat
Hi, my name is Jim and I play golf. Don’t let anyone fool you. It’s an affliction with no permanent cure. I semi-golfed a few times when I was a teenager, but golfing back then was behind our house with some 2 or 3 odd clubs that one of my friends found in the back of his garage and a few balls one of us found near the 14-foot chain link fence at the country club. The fence was designed to keep us out, but it didn’t work so well with golf balls. I should have thought more about that back then. There was a large field behind our house, and each of us would start on a different side and try to be the first to hit the old oak tree in the center. It seemed like it was miles away to us, but in reality was probably about 200 yards. We never kept score or counted strokes, it was a matter of whoever hits the tree first wins. In reflection, it was a truly enjoyable semi-golf experience as only a kid’s game can be.
I began to play seriously at about the age of 35, and soon discovered just how expensive the stupid game really is. A good set of clubs costs as much or as little as you think you can spend and hide effectively from your wife, club dues are generally astronomical and paid annually, green fees (sort of a silly name when what you’re really doing is renting a golf cart) are charged every time you play (in addition to the annual fees), balls, gloves, shoes, tees, rangefinders and various accouterments to numerous and cumulatively expensive to name…the list is endless. Then there’s clothing. Most courses have strict dress codes; no cut offs, no jeans, no t -shirts, nothing vulgar or inappropriate printed on your shirts, and any food or drinks have to be purchased on site. Let’s don’t even talk about the cost of real lessons from a real professional. I went to a lesson with a pro once. He told me that after my first lesson he would be traveling to Europe the following month. When I paid his bill I understood how he could afford that, and determined it was OK to play mediocre golf and still have money than play average golf and be broke.
Golf encourages cheating. I know, I know. I can hear the golf purists sniff and say it encourages personal accountability and self-reporting of rules violations. No, it doesn’t, unless you’re a PGA pro that makes money at it. If you’re an average guy like me with only limited amounts of athletic ability to begin with, you’re going to need every advantage you can find. If you play strictly by the rules of golf, no average duffer’s ego would allow them to be emotionally able to continue. Did your ball land between 2 tree roots? Use that foot wedge to move it so you won’t break a club. Is that limb in the way of your swing? Rather than use your #7 chainsaw to remove the offending brush, just move your ball a few feet and try to hit it between two trees. Did your shanked ball end up so deep in the woods that daylight only occasionally breaks through? That’s right. A foot wedge is again appropriate. Any one of those situations calls for death by strangulation and a 12-stroke penalty in the rule book, but there’s only so much purity this supremely frustrating activity allows, and sooner or later even the strongest among us will succumb. For sanity’s sake, I sometimes count a successful round as one in which I find more golf balls than I lose. Golf also teaches perspective - whether you want it or not.
Scoring in golf is pretty simple. Every time you swing a club with the intention of hitting the ball, whether you manage to do so or not, is counted as a stroke. Practice swings, in my estimation, are a poor investment of your time and only postpone the time until you mishit the next shot. Each hole has a number of strokes designated as “par” for that hole. “Par” for most holes is an impossibly low number that most of us won’t reach by a factor of 5 or more, but it’s OK to look at it as a goal, however improbable. Terminology is an important part of the game, and learning that “birdie” is one less than “par” and “bogey” is one more helps even novice golfers sound more experienced. My friends and I have adapted a scoring method where any score more than “double bogey” (2 more than par) on one hole is automatically written as a maximum of double bogey on the scorecard and the player so scoring is admonished to place their ball in their pocket before they swing again and hurt themselves. This is a great benefit to the final scoring tabulations for all concerned. Don’t forget about mulligans. It’s essentially what we used to call a “do over” for golfers. The number of mulligans allowed per round is between you and your playing partners. The rules committee doesn’t have to be involved if you don’t want them to. We don’t add big numbers like we used to.
One other note to remember - if you didn’t curse often before you begin playing, you soon will. Try to limit the depth and frequency of your cursing to mild admonishments and not the blue streak that threatens to bring lightning from above in quick retribution. You may also be tempted to throw clubs after a bad shot. Pause, and remember how much you paid for them before throwing one or more into the pond or pounding the green or tee box into submission. I will mention that it’s not an uncommon sight to pass a trash can near a tee box with what appears to be broken fiberglass or steel club shafts bent into pretzel shapes…sometimes more than just one club. I’m confident they deserved their fate.
There are somewhere in the neighborhood of 5,328 swing thoughts to remember before, during and after any swing with any club at any ball at any given distance from the pin, and those swing thoughts change with each and every club. I’ve seen golfers become physically incapacitated by the number of swing thoughts running through their heads and be unable to move in any way whatsoever until their partner mercifully removes the club from their hands to interrupt the mental paralysis. While it seems counterintuitive, the best way to keep swing thoughts from interfering with your golf swing is not to have them at all and pray that muscle memory takes over before your deeply ingrained bad habits can appear.
Golf is insidious, pitiless and relentlessly vindictive. It’s possible to hit a great shot, start to feel as if there’s hope on the horizon, approach the next shot, raise your head too soon in the swing process and hit a blazing shank 60 or 70 yards to the right of where you aimed. The moral of this is that the moment an amateur golfer begins to feel any delusions of adequacy, golf will reach up quickly and jerk them back down to reality…twice.
Many golfers drink while they play. It’s easy to fall for the numbing solace of alcohol while being subjected to continuous mental and physical torment over the course of a 4 or 5 hour round and does allow the drinking golfer a built-in excuse for poor play. It’s also possible to hit a good shot or two when inebriation inhibits any attempts at mastering swing thoughts and the body resorts to that mystical plane of muscle memory. Unfortunately, that mystical plane only lasts for a few minutes until alcohol quickly causes the brain to reach the point of diminishing physical returns. Besides, I’m far too chicken to risk driving the 5 miles or so home inebriated and the strong possibility of having my picture in the paper and paying a DUI ticket that costs more than my golf outing, so I suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous golfing sober.
Every golfer has a favorite ball. I think there’s an unwritten requirement somewhere that once you play more than 5 rounds in your life, you must forever be emotionally attached to one brand of ball or another. No reasoning or data is required, and your preference might be based on nothing more than simple emotion, but the ball to which you become attached is almost always one of the most expensive. Golfers, during their everyday lives, often appear as reasonably sane people that interact rationally, logically and factually with others. Those qualities disappear when golfers discuss their ball of choice, favorite brand of clubs, favorite tees, glove, shoes or anything else and reason goes out the nearest window. Don’t fight it, just go with it and recognize it for what it is when you see it in other golfers…irrational behavior that’s simply another part of an irrational game.
Sooner or later every golfer faces an important decision. The process is intricate, and involves coercion, self-deception and peer pressure, and leads to the inescapable conclusion that the only thing standing between the golfer’s poor play and membership in the PGA tour is poor equipment. New equipment, regardless of the expense, will, in theory, replace the need for practice, lessons, physical conditioning, healthy eating habits and poor personal hygiene and immediately improve, in and of itself, any golfer’s poor play. We believe it, we convince ourselves of its truth, and we all discover it’s a lie of the basest sort as soon as we play a round with new stuff and manage, in spite of the cost, the score the same or even worse than we did before. We do, however, look better doing it with new equipment, if that’s any consolation.
I have made one single hole in one in the approximately 9,742 rounds I have played so far. Only one, but I remember it with a clarity that surpasses practically every other event in my 70+ years. I have also scored par on all 18 holes exactly once in the same number of rounds. It was indeed a frabjous day and made even more so by the fact there were witnesses. I remember distinctly approaching the first tee for the round after that event and hitting a 50-yard duck hook into the pond and suffering through one of the most horrible golfing experiences of my life. Golf only allows fleeting moments of adequacy before dumping you back into the pit of despair, but those shining moments, though as ephemeral as the gossamer wings of angelic hummingbirds, persist when all other memories fade. It’s the game you love to hate. I think I’ll go again tomorrow.