OK, golf gods, I’ve heard you loud & clear: I have no business being on the links
I was excited last week during the nicer weather because golfers were heading to the links. I’m not one anymore and I wasn’t a good one when I played but I usually had fun.
I can’t tell my stories on the golf course anymore so I will get them out here.
Way back when I first started playing and thought I might get better, the golf gods were already laughing at me. One of my early memories is of struggling through a round as usual and then on the last hole hitting a drive so pure and straight that I started to jump with joy.
But then I heard a loud crack like I always heard when I would slice into the surrounding woods. My nearly perfect drive had struck a large tree in the middle of the fairway. A tree in the middle of the fairway. How fair was that? Obviously I was on an unfairway.
But life went on and one day I was playing with a friend and we were shooting our usual lousy game. On one hole he hit over the green and went to try to chip his ball close to the hole. He picked it nicely and it popped into the air and went into a lush pine tree ad didn’t come out.
He was irritated and I was amused. Hadn’t seen that before. Then in his frustration he flung his pitching wedge of up into the tree and it didn’t come down. Okay, now I was ROTGL, rolling on the grass laughing. Luckily the round was nearly over because I was even more useless than usual.
We kept trying for a few years but we didn’t get any better. I got my final omen from the golf gods during a round at the old Westhaven Golf Club, which now is a subdivision. Even it knew enough to give up golf.
We were coming home on the ninth hole when we both sliced into the woods. We drove our cart up a hill and searched among the trees. A couple of guys were behind us so we decided to just sit where we found our balls until they had played through.
I was in the passenger seat, relaxing with my feet up on the dash when suddenly I heard a loud whack and caught a glimpse of a golf ball caroming away. It had gone through our cart, under my legs and over the feet of my partner who was driving,
I figured that was it. The message was finally loud and clear: I didn’t belong on a golf course.
I never broke a hundred, but I never had a bodily injury either. I count that a draw.
This story was originally published March 25, 2023 at 6:00 AM.
