My First and Last Blog Entry on Golf
I have never been much of a sports fan and, at times it is a problem. When I travel, I like to sit at the hotel bar to eat. It’s more comfortable at the bar when you’re alone. Inevitably, there is a television. Inevitably, sports are on the television. And, inevitably, someone will sit down next to me and start talking about the game that’s on or sports in general.
Even when I have my ultimate defense against sports fans in my hand, a book, I still get some guy saying, “so how about them ball-tossing, bat-swinging, end-running, jump-shooting, puck-slapping, full-backing, sons-of-pinch-hitters?”
I have a few options in terms of a response.
1) Fake it. Although this is my least favorite option, I am surprisingly good at it, not because I’m a good liar, but because it requires nothing more than a bunch of nodding, the occasional shaking of the head, a handful of grunts, and a few different versions of saying “jeez.”
2) Become a temporary student of the game. This is more honest but less desirable because it requires me to engage by asking questions when I don’t really care about the answers.
3) Admit that I’m not really into sports. Despite being the least desirable, this is the option I choose most often because, as we all know, honesty requires the least effort in the long run, even though it can be uncomfortable at first. The most common response is silence, and I go back to my book.
But this dynamic shifted about a year and a half ago, when I started playing golf regularly. Once I started playing, I started watching more golf and then before I knew it I was actually following golf.
Not long ago my father-in-law asked, “Hey, who is that left handed golfer?” and before he even finished asking the question I blurted out “Phil Mickelson? Mike Weir? Steve Flesch? Bubba Watson? Of course, Phil is actually right handed, he just plays golf left-handed…”
Hearing myself, I stopped. I couldn’t believe it. I was now one of those guys. For years I have been amazed at how people know so much about sports and have wondered if that brain space couldn’t be put to better use. And here I was, naming four left-handed professional golfers off the top of my head.
I play golf at a short, very inexpensive nine hole course often enough that some of the guys who work there know my name. Recently I walked in the door and one of the guys pointed to another golfer and said, “Hey Mike, tell this guy who the architect was for this course?”
“William F. Bell,” I said. “Billy Bell Jr. He and his father, William P. Bell, designed and built dozens of courses throughout southern California and the western U.S. In fact, Billy Bell Jr., the same guy that designed this course, was the original course architect for Torrey Pines. People think it was his dad because the plaque reads ‘William P. Bell and Sons,’ but that was the name of the company and Billy Jr. kept it after his father passed away, out of respect.”
Dang. I am one of those guys. At a recent anniversary party I was standing near the beverage table. A guest walked up and filled his glass, half with iced tea and half with lemonade, and before I could stop myself I said, “you must be a golf fan.” He looked at me like I was speaking Russian and walked away (surely, he must have known that a lemonade/iced tea mix is called an Arnold Palmer).
Last fall I had to get on an airplane during the final round of the Ryder Cup. On the way to the airport I followed the action on my phone via online postings. I rushed through the airport looking for a television showing the Ryder Cup, then stood, dumbstruck, watching the American’s tee off, one after another hitting brilliant drives. A guy next to me asked, “What are we watching?” I looked at him like he’d been living under ground. “The Ryder Cup.” He looked up again at the screen and asked, “Golf?”
I turned, ready to let him know that this wasn’t just golf, it was the Ryder Cup, the pride of America, redemption, pay back, stompin’ time. But I just said, “Yeah, looks like golf.” He moved on and I moved closer to the crowd huddled near the TV. When Anthony Kim took yet another hole from Sergio Garcia, I actually jumped into the air and yelled “yes!” But so did everyone around me. When I arrived at my seat on the plane to discover it came with a TV screen (something I was not expecting on Delta), I almost cried. I flew from Atlanta to California while watching and savoring every stroke of the 2008 Ryder Cup.
And so I have evolved into something I scarcely recognize when it comes to golf. I am a fan, a student of the game, its history, its tactics and strategies, its lessons both real and imagined. I have opinions on equipment and rules and approach to the game that so far exceed my ability to play that the chasm is quite simply embarrassing. On the rare occasion that I am in the company of others who take the game seriously, I don’t actually let on how much I know about golf for fear that they may one day see me play and expect great things.
In the end, I will not claim to be different from those sports fans who have been sitting down on the barstool next to me for years, except in this one respect. I get to play the game I love to watch and read about. Even though I have a long arcing slice with my driver that I prefer to call a “power fade,” I get to play the game. Yes, I still top the ball when I’m nervous, I tend to read too much break in a putt, and try to hit the ball too far out of deep rough, where I often find myself. But I get to play golf.
When I watch Tiger Woods bounce on to the green from the rough 200 yards away, I know it’s impossible. I not only know it in my head, but I know it in my feet and my arms too, and in the palms of my hands because I’ve been in the rough 200 yards from the green. I’ve stood over that little white ball snuggled down in the deep grass with a 5 wood in my hands and felt like it was the first time I had ever addressed a golf ball in my life. No spectators. No money. No reputation to speak of on the line.
On a good day, I put the fairway wood back in my back, pull out my 7 iron and advance the ball carefully into the fairway a 100 yards closer to the hole (give or take 25 yards in either direction). On a bad day I swing hard and hack away with the 5 wood, hit it fat or don’t hit it at all. Then, on a rare day, I might inexplicably pull out my 5 iron, swing like Freddie Couples on vacation, and drop the ball between the bunkers, 25 yards shy of the green where, 70% of the time my 52 degree wedge will leave the ball in one-putt range.
I had one of these shots just yesterday when, for the first time, my wife and two young daughters went golfing with me. We had a lot of fun, with everyone playing as best they could with almost no coaching from me. As long as the ball is steadily moving toward the hole, and we are not disrupting the play or the pace of others, what else is there to worry about except having fun? Today, all three of them are asking when we can do it again. And I really did hit the 5 iron shot described above. My wife, playing her first round of golf ever, said “wow.” Heaven, that.
Shots like these are the high that brings me back and they are at the heart of why, if you don’t play golf, you will carefully avoid ever asking me about golf. My enthusiasm in answering your question will be disproportionate to your actual desire for an answer, and I might go on to answer four or five questions you didn’t even ask. And I know how annoying that can be.
So here it is, my first and last, rather rambling, blog post about golf. It is already my longest blog post to date, and I could keep writing. Like a good sports fan, I have included some lingo and references that not everyone will understand. I didn’t do this because I’m so myopic on golf that I assume everyone will know what I’m talking about. Truth is, it has been done to me for so long by sports fans that I wanted to be on the other end of the slightly arrogant assumption. But I apologize. I only enjoyed it a little bit.
