Fore lorn

I am now ten months golf-free.

Golf is one of the oddest games I’ve ever encountered. First of all, it is an athletic endeavor, yet entry requires literally no athletic ability. You merely have to pick up a golf club and swing it at a ball and, voila, you are golfing. In my years of playing the game, I have seen every possible example of non-athlete zipping around in carts all around me, occasionally getting off their duffs and attacking the ball with every limb crooked in impossible contortions, sending projectiles flying in all but the intended direction over and over again. This, of course, is part of the game's appeal, that anyone can make at least a marginal go of it, once you get the hang of not missing the ball altogether. You don’t even have to walk the course, if you’re not so inclined. So much for the proverbial good walk spoiled. Now it’s a good go-cart ride spoiled.

I should point out that while non-athletes can conduct a game of golf, they are not necessarily good golfers. On the other hand, I have seen athletic kids in their teens, masters of other sports, hit the course for the first time and play in the 80s. I have wanted to kill them for this, but there is no question that natural athletic ability evidences itself in the hand-eye coordination and basic body control necessary to repeatedly move the ball successfully. Golf, therefore, is not a game for non-athletes, it just happens to be a game that non-athletes are able to play.

Like an sport, golf rewards practice. To some extent. I can’t say that I ever practiced much, but I did on occasion go to the driving range and mindlessly hit balls out into the field. More to the point, if you play pretty regularly, you find yourself improving on the shorter shots, like chips and putts, so your score can improve a little bit. Of course, these shots don’t require use of your whole body, so maybe that’s why this part of the game is open to more players. Old guys who have been playing all their lives, regardless of what they do off the tee or on the fairways, tend to do very well around the greens, which may not prove the point but which does at least offer some evidence to support it.

I was never much of an athlete, but there was something about golf that intrigued me. It probably came from what all golfers know, that every now and then you hit a shot that is as good as anyone could have hit that shot. You are, on the basis of this one swing, as good as any golfer who has ever lived. The shot, of course, is sheer accident, but that kind of accident doesn’t happen in other sports. You can’t accidently hit a home run off a ball pitched at a hundred miles an hour by accident your first day on the baseball field, for instance. But you can sink a hundred foot putt, or chip to an inch from the hole from thirty yards off the green, or get a six iron stiff to the pin from a hundred and sixty yards off on the fairway. And when you do that, you wonder, why can’t I do this all the time? You know the answer, of course, but the fact that you can do it some of the time tends to minimize the psychic thud of all of the rest of your shots.

So every game, no matter how bad you are, probably has a few shots that are as good as it gets. Add to this that you’re outdoors on a fine day (unless you’re the sort of idiot who thinks that forty degrees Fahrenheit and gale force winds make it a good day for golf, and believe me, I have been one of those idiots), there is usually a natural beauty to a golf course with broad vistas and charming little lakes and even occasional wildlife (I’m all in favor of heron, but you can take your geese and shove them sideways), and you’re in the company of good friends enjoying warm companionship: there are some attractions to the game beside the game itself. And the game itself does keep bringing you back because of those magic shots that, if you just hit a few more of them, you’d be so much better.

But the down side, and this is why I went on sabbatical—I hesitate to say that I’ve quit, because I’m pretty sure that when the DJ gig comes to an end and all of a sudden I’ve got seven days a week to fill up, I’ll be looking the pick up the old sticks again—is that the damned thing takes all day. Unless you’re alone on the course, the average game, from first shot to last, takes roughly five hours. Plus you have to get there and get home, you’ve got to wait around to tee off, and you may throw the odd lunch in there somewhere, which means that a game of golf requires a full working day of about eight hours. When, like me, you’ve got five full working days already, adding a sixth, even though it’s not exactly work, means that there’s one day left over for everything else. And therein lies my problem. I can’t do everything I want to do that isn’t golf and/or work in one day. Since I’ve been on sabbatical, I’ve read more books, gotten more chores done, and generally relaxed more that I have for the last dozen years, thanks to the hole in my schedule created by not playing golf. In other words, I have gotten a lot of my life back. No more running out Sunday morning without reading the papers, no more getting home too late to fix up a decent meal, no more trips after long days at work to do errands that I can now leisurely do over the weekend.

Still, I won’t say I haven’t missed it. When I drive by a golf course, I gaze at it longingly, wishing I was out there for a little while, maybe trying to get up and down in 2 on the fourth hole at the Sprain, for instance. But then I just sigh and move on. I have accepted my present fate. Should my circumstances change any time soon (and God knows, they easily could), the clubs are in the basement near the door, ready to go. In the meanwhile, I’m looking forward to Blizzard Beach golf with O’C during DisAd13. He is fresh off a victory over a couple of tween girls last weekend, so maybe I can get him to pony up some reasonable stakes for a nice gentlemanly bet…
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