Back From the Dead
Hello, friends and neighbors.
All reports of my death are premature. But, I may have to get a day job just to get some rest!
It's been a week now since I played in the High Meadows Pro-Am golf tournament with the Mighty Men of MacGregor. Here's our team of Sparky, Grizzly, Large and our PGA professional, Gentle Ben, in the long pants.
We were all smiles when this photo was taken after the practice round on Sunday. It was a different story when we finished on Tuesday. Somebody must have sneaked out each night and put a piece of cellophane over the holes to keep the balls out of the cup because none of our putts wanted to drop. And, folks, that makes for a long two days of competition and that's not even to mention the negative cash flow.
Golf, in the final analysis, is a stupid game. The objective of the game is to strike a small hard ball with a blunt instrument ill suited for the purpose until it falls into a hole in the ground. Then you do the same thing 17 more times and the one who struck the small the fewest times is the winner. How stupid is that?
No one is certain how golf got started but the modern game is traced to sandy stretches along the ocean shores of Ireland and Scotland. The greens were areas where the sheep had eaten the grass down and the bunkers where shallows in the sand where they slept on cold, windy nights. Over time, eighteen became the standard number of holes in a round of golf and the size of the hole was set as the diameter of the drainage tiles in the town of St. Andrews, Scotland. Very quaint, isn't it?
There are really only two rules of golf: (1) play the golf course as you find it and (2) play the ball as it lies. (So sorry should your ball come to rest in the bowls of a long dead fox as it did for Sparky one day. Play on!) The remainder of the hundreds of often arcane rules are all intended to make the game playable and fair. How hard can that be?
So, off you go to play this simple game. Hmmmmm. About the only thing that is the same from course to course is the size of the hole and the rules. Oh, the teeing ground on each hole is very flat and well manicured. You can even sit your ball off the ground on a tee if you wish. You swing. Whack! And, then all hell breaks loose.
The hole into which you deign to hit your ball is typically a good quarter mile away. Between it and you are all manner of nasty objects of nature. Trees. Sand. Streams. Lakes. Rocks. Hills. Valleys. Roads. Wind. Rain. Sun. Fog. And, of course, right down the middle is strip of immaculately manicured grass called the fairway where you are suppose to hit your ball. And, on either side of this beautiful fairway is a bunch of poorly manicured grass called the rough. And, mixed in with all this grass are the aforementioned trees, sand, streams, lakes, rocks, hills, valleys and roads, all typically located in those the places likely to cause you maximum discomfort.
Having hit your ball from the teeing ground, it is now in play out there somewhere amoung the fairway, rough, trees, sand, streams, lakes, rocks, hills, valleys and roads. No touching of the ball is now allowed with anything other than one our your clubs. And, the next time you strike the ball with one of the fourteen oddly shaped impliments in your golf bag, it should land on the putting green. Simple, isn't it?
So now the ball lies on the putting green into which the hole has been cut. The green is ideally a little piece of heaven surrounded by those trees, sand, streams, lakes, rocks, hills, valleys and roads which only the purest of approach shots can successfully avoided. Grass on the greens is greatly pampered to make it thick, short and even. People speak of them in hushed tones. ("How are your greens these days?" "Oh, they are as smooth as a baby's butt right now! How are yours?") A living billiard table top, if you will, on which the golf ball can roll at a uniform pace. It is perfection in a space-time warp because, my fiends, they ain't flat at all, excepting as an occasional joke on you by the course designer. They go up and down and all around. Sir Isaac Newton says an object put into motion continues along a straight line until acted upon by another force. Between you and the hole, a golf ball put into motion with your putter may break anywhere from zero to ten feet, or more, from a straight line. And, it may break right or left or both or neither. Half the strokes in a regulation game of golf are taken in attempting to figure all this out in just two putts per green. It's amazing that otherwise sane people pay good money to get so embarrased by nature, isn't it?
When you are "in the groove" all this happens effortlessly. The ball finds the center of the fairway from the teeing ground. The next shot safely finds the green. The Univac in your head "reads" the break and speed of the first putt and transmitts the information to your muscles and, should the ball somehow fail to fall into the cup on the first try, you tap it in from six inches for a routine par and complain about the imaginary cellophane over the holes. Effortless, isn't it?
The more common scenario, however, is that your Univac breaks down mid-swing, a tree jumps out into the center of the fairway, the bed of the stream changes courses while your ball is in flight, the greenskeep presses a button to change the indulations on the green just before your ball would have fallen into the cup, or someone (Large comes to mind here) in your group decides this is the perfect moment for flatulance. Four strokes quickly turns into 5 or 6 or 7 or even a consideration of suicide should the total reach the dreaded "snowman" 8. And, you willingly paid good money to do this and bet even more money that you could do it better than someone else. What were you thinking?
Izaak Walton (1593-1683), the English writer of "The Compleat Angler", the definitive text on fishing, noted that "Angling may be said to be so like mathematics, that it can never be fully learnt." Obviously, he never tired golf!
I hate this game.
I love this game.
I hate ...
I love ...
Hate.
Love.
All I know is that golf is the great opiate of sports and the hardest game I've ever attempted to play and I hate it.
Except, of course, on that rare occasion when I'm in the groove, and then it's the easiest and I love it.
OK. Maybe I'll give the $%&$^%#* game just one more chance this Saturday afterall.
All reports of my death are premature. But, I may have to get a day job just to get some rest!
It's been a week now since I played in the High Meadows Pro-Am golf tournament with the Mighty Men of MacGregor. Here's our team of Sparky, Grizzly, Large and our PGA professional, Gentle Ben, in the long pants.
We were all smiles when this photo was taken after the practice round on Sunday. It was a different story when we finished on Tuesday. Somebody must have sneaked out each night and put a piece of cellophane over the holes to keep the balls out of the cup because none of our putts wanted to drop. And, folks, that makes for a long two days of competition and that's not even to mention the negative cash flow.
Golf, in the final analysis, is a stupid game. The objective of the game is to strike a small hard ball with a blunt instrument ill suited for the purpose until it falls into a hole in the ground. Then you do the same thing 17 more times and the one who struck the small the fewest times is the winner. How stupid is that?
No one is certain how golf got started but the modern game is traced to sandy stretches along the ocean shores of Ireland and Scotland. The greens were areas where the sheep had eaten the grass down and the bunkers where shallows in the sand where they slept on cold, windy nights. Over time, eighteen became the standard number of holes in a round of golf and the size of the hole was set as the diameter of the drainage tiles in the town of St. Andrews, Scotland. Very quaint, isn't it?
There are really only two rules of golf: (1) play the golf course as you find it and (2) play the ball as it lies. (So sorry should your ball come to rest in the bowls of a long dead fox as it did for Sparky one day. Play on!) The remainder of the hundreds of often arcane rules are all intended to make the game playable and fair. How hard can that be?
So, off you go to play this simple game. Hmmmmm. About the only thing that is the same from course to course is the size of the hole and the rules. Oh, the teeing ground on each hole is very flat and well manicured. You can even sit your ball off the ground on a tee if you wish. You swing. Whack! And, then all hell breaks loose.
The hole into which you deign to hit your ball is typically a good quarter mile away. Between it and you are all manner of nasty objects of nature. Trees. Sand. Streams. Lakes. Rocks. Hills. Valleys. Roads. Wind. Rain. Sun. Fog. And, of course, right down the middle is strip of immaculately manicured grass called the fairway where you are suppose to hit your ball. And, on either side of this beautiful fairway is a bunch of poorly manicured grass called the rough. And, mixed in with all this grass are the aforementioned trees, sand, streams, lakes, rocks, hills, valleys and roads, all typically located in those the places likely to cause you maximum discomfort.
Having hit your ball from the teeing ground, it is now in play out there somewhere amoung the fairway, rough, trees, sand, streams, lakes, rocks, hills, valleys and roads. No touching of the ball is now allowed with anything other than one our your clubs. And, the next time you strike the ball with one of the fourteen oddly shaped impliments in your golf bag, it should land on the putting green. Simple, isn't it?
So now the ball lies on the putting green into which the hole has been cut. The green is ideally a little piece of heaven surrounded by those trees, sand, streams, lakes, rocks, hills, valleys and roads which only the purest of approach shots can successfully avoided. Grass on the greens is greatly pampered to make it thick, short and even. People speak of them in hushed tones. ("How are your greens these days?" "Oh, they are as smooth as a baby's butt right now! How are yours?") A living billiard table top, if you will, on which the golf ball can roll at a uniform pace. It is perfection in a space-time warp because, my fiends, they ain't flat at all, excepting as an occasional joke on you by the course designer. They go up and down and all around. Sir Isaac Newton says an object put into motion continues along a straight line until acted upon by another force. Between you and the hole, a golf ball put into motion with your putter may break anywhere from zero to ten feet, or more, from a straight line. And, it may break right or left or both or neither. Half the strokes in a regulation game of golf are taken in attempting to figure all this out in just two putts per green. It's amazing that otherwise sane people pay good money to get so embarrased by nature, isn't it?
When you are "in the groove" all this happens effortlessly. The ball finds the center of the fairway from the teeing ground. The next shot safely finds the green. The Univac in your head "reads" the break and speed of the first putt and transmitts the information to your muscles and, should the ball somehow fail to fall into the cup on the first try, you tap it in from six inches for a routine par and complain about the imaginary cellophane over the holes. Effortless, isn't it?
The more common scenario, however, is that your Univac breaks down mid-swing, a tree jumps out into the center of the fairway, the bed of the stream changes courses while your ball is in flight, the greenskeep presses a button to change the indulations on the green just before your ball would have fallen into the cup, or someone (Large comes to mind here) in your group decides this is the perfect moment for flatulance. Four strokes quickly turns into 5 or 6 or 7 or even a consideration of suicide should the total reach the dreaded "snowman" 8. And, you willingly paid good money to do this and bet even more money that you could do it better than someone else. What were you thinking?
Izaak Walton (1593-1683), the English writer of "The Compleat Angler", the definitive text on fishing, noted that "Angling may be said to be so like mathematics, that it can never be fully learnt." Obviously, he never tired golf!
I hate this game.
I love this game.
I hate ...
I love ...
Hate.
Love.
All I know is that golf is the great opiate of sports and the hardest game I've ever attempted to play and I hate it.
Except, of course, on that rare occasion when I'm in the groove, and then it's the easiest and I love it.
OK. Maybe I'll give the $%&$^%#* game just one more chance this Saturday afterall.
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