Golf

I have taken up the game of golf out of self-defense. In America not playing golf is a bit like not contributing to the United Way or something equally antisocial.

I admit I do not understand the game of golf. It seems almost as if someone as a prank were to make a sport of, say…milking cows. Not that I’d mind milking as a sport, I was once semi-pro. At least with milking as the sport, that can really kick your ass. Reminded here of reality shows purporting to document how people react to the primitive chores of a desert island. To watch as an average pedestrian is transported to the task of milking cows, the results are often humorous if not necessarily so for the cows.

That golf is a sport surprises me. That thousands draw hushed breath as Mr. Singh, Mr. Woods or Mr. Cunningham step to the ball is to this farmboy incomprehensible. Granted these are the best linksmen in the world, the courses on which they play are among the more hallowed and expensive shrines of sport. To my mind they are just milking cows, or mending fence or hanging the laundry on the clothesline. I do understand the innate desire to turn daily chores into a form of recreation, if not the stuff of legend, so we too can feel heroic within our daily routine. This is a basic underpinning of ego, to feel a sense of worth if not artfulness in our lives. The objective of sports is to turn the mundane smack of the ball, or a padded fist fight into a display of grace, efficiency, balance and improvision against significant odds, exactly like milking cows or packing hay bales in a barn without breaking a leg and at a temperature known to kindle moths.

So it is I have arrived at golf. It bothers me to admit this because golf is a sign of approaching maturity; the general take here is old age. My private synonym is uselessness. If as a farmer I can avail myself to an activity like golf when there are a million more useful things to do I must be getting…old. My synonym is useless.

As might be apparent I do not come to golf of my own free will. Still, beyond some flagrant flaws I think golf can restore a person. For example the average course could be a darn sight more natural if they were to discontinue the use of lawnmowers. If it isn’t pasturing sheep, cows, llamas, buffalo, hyenas or Bengal tigers it ought not pretend to be a golf course. Where do they think the term hazard came from in the first place? The Scots who invented the game weren’t kidding about stuff like hazard and the “club” wasn’t only useful for hacking at the ball if also to keep off a sour sort of Holstein from impinging on your game. Same for the hyenas.

As to golf carts…if you gotta use a golf cart stick to miniature golf. Being of the Scots line myself I can say this under privilege of original patent, it was my direct blood ancestors who invented the game. If you ain’t walking you ain’t golfing. Sure if you have to use a wheelchair, canes, crutches, skateboards, even bicycles, but golf at its core is the stick-and-ball companion to a good walk. It is exercise, it is heart/lung function, it is particularly good for the old guys if they don’t cheat the basic ingredients. Nobody said you gotta play eighteen.

As to eighteen, that too is a departure from the original, Scots golf is played with one hole, different tee locations, same hole. Calvinists being a short-changed sort of homo sapiens were as cheap about golf as they were about money. They thought two holes sinful and mindful of adultery or a Swiss bank account. Besides which you gotta stay in sight of the flock and no wandering off, meaning the other seventeen. How the coyotes do hate shepherds whacking wee hard balls.

My wife has been buying me golf clubs from St. Vincent’s. One at a time, one dollar each, just the right price for a set of clubs. I don’t use drivers anyway because the ball gets lost. That’s because I only play with one ball; lose the ball game’s over. Sorry, that’s the way I see it, every sport including golf needs an honest broker, whether it’s a white ash bat for baseball, a shot clock for basketball or playing golf with one ball. Too many balls leads to such things as derivatives and mortgage defaults on a scale that can suck-up brick and mortar banks, even undo the Stock Exchange. Good Scots folk knew this. People extravagant about balls didn’t learn the quality lesson as is one ball golf. If maybe two because nature does this…what with two kidneys and two ears. Beyond two is to risk cultural excess.

To confess I also play with used balls, a whole bag full for three bucks; second-hand, weird colors, balls scared silly, complete with flaps and ailerons that tend flight a bit fickly. These balls are a pleasure to watch. It is possible to whack one and have it do a long sweeping arc more boomerang than golf ball. A few have been trainable to come back to the same spot, but that one had a firecracker duct taped to its hide. Our town-road rules of golf don’t match up precisely with St. Andrews, but then they use lawn mowers.

As said, I’m taking up golf. On another occasion I will tell about my golf course, and then there are my golf partners and beyond that the Buena Vista Marsh on a summer evening. Well known as a high quality rough. In the end you’re a better person for playing one-ball golf, the kind I might lend money to…might.