It's a Stupid Game!

Update: I am no longer a golfer, I sold my really nice set of clubs to someone who is a golfer, and I don’t miss it to tell you the truth.

Yesterday was Mother's Day. Joel, Ashley, Christine, and her kids were here.  Christine made a tulip and French toast casserole delivery (the tulips were live in a vase). I provided more live tulips (great minds think alike)  and a card with a photograph of tulips on the front.  Joel provided another card and three bags of gourmet coffee beans, which Diane really loved. We had brunch, took pictures or should I say tried to take pictures because the photographer (so-called) neglected to insert the memory card back into his expensive camera.  Sometimes I am just stupid.  After everyone left  I smartly cleaned up the kitchen and then settled down to watch the Player's Championship at TPC Sawgrass on the telly. I thought I would be spending just a few minutes on the couch seeing young men do something really well that I, on very rare occasions,  also do well...hit a golf ball. It ended up being one of the best ends to a four-day match that I have ever seen.

 I really would like a chance one day just to take a whack at hole 17.

Seems that with the above lead in I can smoothly move this old entry from my blog at FMCA.com to here:      

It’s a stupid game.

Mark Twain described it as a good walk spoiled. Someone else said it is a lot of walking, broken up by disappointment and bad arithmetic. I am talking about the game of golf. It may be a stupid game, an opinion shared by David Feherty, who played on the European Ryder Cup team a few decades ago, but it is also my new passion. I guess that means that golf is my new stupid passion.

In my opinion, I am terrible at it. My best game so far is a round in the high 80s. Now, in fairness to myself, that score was the result of a round of golf on a regular-size course. When I play 18 holes on my “ second home course” at Deer Creek Motorcoach resort (the one in Virginia), my score can be as low as 54.

FIFTY FOUR! Wow, you say. Well, it isn’t all that remarkable considering it is a nine-hole pitch and putt with the longest hole sitting a mere 125 yards from the tee. Then again, maybe it is remarkable. The greens are the size of pot holders, the fairways narrow as a 1960s-era men’s dress tie, and there are numerous hidden water traps along with some that are obvious to the eye. In other words, my short game is not bad.

Put me on a large course with big greens, and the story changes.

I cannot drive worth the time it takes me to hunt for a lost cheap ball. Someone once said that if I hit it right, it’s a slice; if I hit it left, it’s a hook; if I hit it straight it’s a miracle.

That pretty much sums it up for me.

I am an active member of the Lambert’s Point Golf Course Ball Exchange Program.

Lambert’s Point is a nine-hole golf course in Norfolk, Virginia, that is built on top of what used to be a huge landfill and garbage dump. It sits at the elbow of the Elizabeth River and so it is surrounded by water on two sides and a driving range on one side. I tend to lose balls off the first tee into the river on the right side. I just can’t leave my 1 wood in the bag! I have a very fast back swing and an even faster down swing, but somewhere in the process of going up and down, my arms just seem to get confused. As a result, my hands are pointing in the wrong direction, which opens the club face and I hit this very long and ugly slice.

I joke that my slice is so bad that a soft drink is named after it.

On the rare occasion that I don’t slice, it is usually because I skull the ball and stick it in the mix of marsh grass, blackberry bushes, and cattails that surround the course. So the hunt begins. I lose one ball and find three. Not a bad exchange rate, if you ask me.

I keep working on it. I shine my clubs thinking that will add some polish to my game. I blow through buckets of balls at the Portsmouth City Park Links driving range. I watch training videos and take advice from all the guys I play with. So far, not much has helped.

David Feherty said that Jim Furyk’s driver swing looks like an octopus falling out of a tree. An octopus has some coordination, some fluidity, and some intelligence. So in comparison, my swing must look like my driver is falling off the back of a moving truck.

My second shot shows some promise. I can take a fairway wood or a hybrid and knock the crap out of the ball. It's just too bad that the crapless ball tends to go left. On occasion, however, I have hit the green on a par-five hole in two if I aim right. Once on the green, I can putt the ball decently. My playing companions seem to have a higher opinion of my game than I do.

I am improving. I know which club to use based on distance from the pin. I have learned the terms of golf and I can now drive well at the range when loading up the tee from bucket number two. The key is shooting straight from the first tee and hitting the green in regulation.

Although I have been golfing for only four years, I am not totally new to the game. I spent the last 10 of my first 12 years living next door to the Ocean View Municipal Golf Course in Norfolk, Virginia. Our two-bedroom bungalow house was located at 609 Greenview Lane, right across from hole number 3. I used to wade in the ditch that ran parallel with the fairway and look for golf balls. We could be sitting at the dinner table and hear “Fore!!” and a couple of seconds later a ball would hit the roof of our house. My brother Rodney and I would charge out the back door and hunt for the ball to add to our sizable collection kept in buckets in our car port. We would clean them up and sell them, possibly back to the golfers who lost them, for a tidy profit. We would cut the covers off damaged balls, slice the rubber band inside and watch the ball hop like some crazed animal all over the carport pad.

I used to stand for hours, peering thru the 30-foot tall chain link fence, that semi-protected our street, and the kids who played on it from the errant balls that hooked left. I watched the carts pull up at the tee. I was fascinated by the clothes the golfers wore, and the clubs they used. I watched the balls fly down the fairway. I heard the congratulations and sometimes the swear words coming from the golfers. I so wanted to play on that course.

I wanted to be a golfer and play on the course for real.

I had a couple of clubs. One was a shortened persimmon wood driver, the head held on with masking tape and glue. I salvaged that club from a water hazard. The other club was a nine iron that the pastor of our church gave me. I would sneak out onto hole 3 just before dark, wait until I knew no one was going to find me, and I would tee up a ball for myself. I could hit it hard and straight. I could par hole 3, a 369-yard par four, the only hole I played, with that old driver, that also was my putter and my nine iron.

Why can’t I do that now?! Just a few summers ago I got my 50-year-old wish. I played Ocean View with my friend John, a retired public school principal and a good golfer. We formed a foursome with a couple of ladies, who like us, had no reserved tee time. It was fun but at the same time a bit surreal. John drove a cart with our clubs while I walked with the ladies who were playing nine holes on foot. When we hit the tee at 3, I looked to my left and saw my old home, the 609 easy to spot on the front of the house. I could almost see my Mom coming out the front door to check if I had sneaked out onto the course.

I thought about those days. Now here I was 50 years later playing for real.

I teed up my ball, coiled up for the hit, and sliced the ball into the fairway of hole 5.

CRAP!

Why do I keep playing this stupid game? I will tell you why. I play for the memories, for the time I spend with friends, including my motor coaching ones, and for that great shot that I make every now and then. I play for the green grass, the blue sky and the cheap clubhouse hot dogs.

I play it in spite of that shot off of tee 3 that went so far right that Teddy Bear, my Cocker Spaniel, couldn’t find the ball if it was wrapped in bacon.

I sort of fudged that last line from Feherty. He won’t care. Fudging is allowed in golf.

It may be a stupid game. My wife sure thinks so, but golfing is now as much a part of my life as motor coaching is. They are intertwined. I have two sets of clubs, one for the coach and one at home.

In the months and years ahead, I hope to drive my coach somewhere new and find a beautiful golf course that has a good ball exchange program and is looking for new members. Then, again, maybe I will make that miracle shot and hit the greens in regulation.

Derrick  

P.S. I used to have two sets of clubs...an eBay Member will have one of them tomorrow. I have permission to keep one set. 

P.P.S. It has been seven years since I wrote this story. Now I have no clubs at all and I am okay with that.  

My Dad read this story. He and I had a phone conversation about it and he told me a couple of things that he remembered. He used to take me out on the Ocean View course a lot. The Green for hole 5 was about thirty yards away from the tee at 3. One time when I was nine, Dad suggested I take a shot to the green at 5 from the tee at 3. I was about to tee up a ball when a couple of players showed up. Dad told me to get out of their way but they said go ahead. I took my nine iron, took my swing, and put the ball right in the hole. The two gentlemen players who were watching me take the shot looked at my Dad and said that they should put me on their team.

One day, I was playing softball in the street with my Greenview Lane friends. Joel, who lived next door, was up to bat when we heard "FORE" coming from a golfer at tee 3. The ball was hooking our way over the tall chain link fence right at Joel. He swung at the ball, made contact, and put it back over the fence where it landed in the fairway some one hundred yards from the hole. The guys on the green started whistling and the player who hit the hook yelled "Thanks, Buddy!" I wonder how he scored that hole.