How To Get In Shape For Golf? Seriously?

I admit that there are tougher jobs than blogging. Attendance counter at Cleveland Indians games comes to mind. But still, this job does offer its occupational hazards, if more on the mental anguish side of the ledger rather than the physical one. I bravely scour the internet in search of the inane stories that scream for my trenchant analysis, often boldly clicking on links no sane human would ever dare. You're welcome; my reward is not of this world. An intrepid blogger, though, must still have standards. Thus, while I saw a particular web headline yesterday, I did not click on the link, because, well, because some stupidity should remain ignored. The guilty headline was this: How To Get In Shape For Golf. The first, I can only imagine, in a series of How To Get In Shape for things that require no shape, like taking a nap, lying on the couch (as opposed to the grammatically incorrect, but probably more often used, "laying on the couch," which is another matter entirely and might call for some rudimentary physical training), or drinking a glass of water. Where would it end? How To Get In Shape For Listening To Yanni? Golf, in general, with no adjectival qualifier, requires no specific shape into which you need to get. One cursory drive by any local golf course will confirm that statement. Now if the headline link said, How To Get In Shape To Play Damn Good, Consistently Breaking 80 Golf, then, of course, it would have been worth clicking, especially for me who's never quite managed to round (or more probably hone) myself into that kind of shape. But the more general How To Get In Shape For Golf is pointless. But, as one of the avowed missions of this blog is to scrounge for points for the pointless, here goes, a pretty definitive to-do list of

How To Get In Shape For Golf

• Stretch: Well, sure, I guess some physical stretching can't hurt you. Stretch your fingers to make that frustrated digging into your bag for an extra ball or two when you fail to clear the pond on No. 3 less painful. Stretch your arm (or both, if you have both) to ensure better success when your playing partner has to help pull you out of and off a creek bank you're rapidly sliding down as you search for your provisional ball. Stretch your legs so you don't pull a charley horse jabbing extra hard on the golf cart brake to prevent the cart from creeping backward down the slope of the adjacent fairway. But really, the essential stretch you need to work on pre-golf is the verbal one. "Stretchers" as I believe Mark Twain called them. Stretchers are as much--if not moreso for most of us duffers--a part of golf's vernacular as "birdie," "par," and "nice shot." Read a collection of fish stories to get in the mood. Since today's round usually is not so good (read "sucks," in the modern golfer's argot), the skilled, "in-shape" golfer must rely on previous rounds (ones played without the present playing partners) for the source of much of his "banter." "Well sure I haven't come close to hitting a fairway (if you're not going to count fairways of holes I'm not presently playing) today, Ron, but you should have seen me last week at Hollow Run at Fox's Glen--nothing but the short grass, all day." The most significant type of verbal stretch in this vein is the numerical stretch, though be careful to make sure you stretch both ways: "Yesterday I didn't hit a drive less than 325 all day at Hickory Oak Elm Chase, I walked them all off (this is a particularly nuanced, wonderful verbal stretch: "I walked it off"), and I had more 3's on my card than I've had anywhere since I last played Putt-Putt! Gosh, I don't know where all these 6's are coming from today. Must not have stretched properly this morning on the range." 6 being perhaps the golfer's greatest stretcher. It's not a good score by any means, but not a killer, either. Despite the number of whacks one takes on a hole, everybody's satisfied, including you, trust me, if you just mumble a self-chastising "gimme a six," at hole's end.
• Flex: The tongue is an often over-looked and under-valued physical component of one's golf game. Proper use of the tongue (in addition--or subtraction--to the stretchers above), however, while probably not lowering your score any, could and should result in your playing opponent's ballooning score, which really is even better: you win with less real effort. As far as I can tell, the French are lousy golfers, but they did come up with a great phrase, bon mot. Now a non-stop talker on the golf course can easily find him- or herself wearing (not too fashionably or comfortably) a six iron by the turn, the subtle, well-placed little comments, sprinkled every few holes or so, could go a long way to ensuring your opponent has an awful round. After said opponent makes an early putt, casually, and with a bit of awe in your voice, say, "Do you always exaggerate your alignment like that when putting?" He/she will be praying for three-putts by the end of the round. And yes, cliches are boring, but really, can anything be more effective than the old standby: "I'm no pro, Ralph, but it seems to me like you sure could swing a lot harder at the ball on your shots"? Oh the variations on the usual cuss words you'll be hearing after that one! A personal favorite is the generous-sounding, "But you sure put a good swing on that one," after an especially errant shot by your opponent. A well-meaning, "Watch out for the poison ivy in there," is a nice addendum.
• Lift: Gimmes, as any seasoned golfer knows, are an essential aspect of the game, and usually the difference (with a plus/minus margin of about 9) between breaking one's "number" or not. Show some respect for the hallowed traditions of the game, though. That quick casual swiping of the ball away from the hole is genuinely rude. In addition, the straddling-the-other-guy's-line, half-hearted attempt to "hole out" an obvious gimme is frowned upon; miss a couple of those early and by the back nine your opponent will be quickly at the ready with his pedantic, "I'm gonna have to make you putt that out, Ray," before you can even say, "I guess that'll be a four." Sure it's more physically taxing, and maybe a tad awkward at times, but the authority you exercise by simply bending down and picking up your un-holed-out-yet-but-obviously-will-be-if-we-waste-the-time-for-me-to-line-it-up-and-stroke-it-so-I'll-just-pick-it-up ball is definitive. Hell, some unsharp opponents may think you're marking your ball, and by the time they finish holing out their three-putt from six feet, might even forget all about you. Just bend over, lift that dimply orb, place it in your pocket, and stride confidently to the next tee. A plummeting handicap will be your reward.
• Run: I know it sounds anathema, let alone oxymoronic, to put run and golf into the same sentence, but never lose sight of the utility a quick sprint can have for you on the course. There's the cute beer-cart girl, who, owing to the look of your playing partners, simply ignores your foursome and buzzes down the fairway. There's the alligator/crocodile potential menace. There's the wayward shot that finds itself rattling the skull of the guy a fairway over who flouts the "shirts must be worn at all times" rule, and besides, from a ranger-cart distance, his tattoo-age kind of conceals the fact anyway. There's also, let's face it, as we age, the bladder issue. No need to get all Kenyan about it, but the ability to quickly be able to approximate a running gait is a valuable asset for any in-shape golfer.
• Biorhythm: You may have to channel that long-lost seventh grader in you, and it might require some unsavory practice, but never underestimate the efficacy of a perfectly-timed raucous fart as your opponent starts his downswing.

There you go. A thorough, though not too demanding regimen for anyone serious about enjoying a successful golf season. Shape up now or be a hack all summer.

Cursed Golf (Redux)

(Some days, you just can't win. Originally I had planned a quick, lazy post--a re-post of an Easter/baseball story from a couple years ago. But then the link didn't work. So I shed my laziness and wrote the following post, only to discover after writing the whole thing, that I had already written it a couple years ago--though I must um confess, like un-boxed wine, I think I get better with age. Anyway, in the archives to the right, you can click on "Happy Easter, Frank" from April 2010 to read the Easter/Baseball post, and "True Confessions" from December 2009 to read the original, inferior but still pretty damn good post of what follows here. Me, I'm going to go kick myself.)

I know it's Opening Day here in Cleveland for another baseball season, but the convergence of the ending of Lent and the venerable Masters golf tournament is too much to pass up. Therefore, I pass along to you a true golf story, with a healthy dose of old-fashioned sin and repentance, which was told to me years ago by an old guy I played nine holes with on a blustery October afternoon:

"I was young like you, headstrong and quick to speak before I thought. You wouldn't know it by my creaky swing now, but back then I could hit the ball fairly well, though, just like now, my putting was quite the disaster. I was playing Aberdeen Gulch, which is now a strip mall out near Bucyrus. Good track, tight, lots of water, tricky greens. Something happened that day that changed my entire view of golf, fate, and religion. You see, immediately after the round, due to what occurred on the eighteenth hole, I had to hightail it right to church, right to the confessional, to confess my sin to the only priest I knew who might be able to understand my misdeed, Father McHogan. This is what I told him, and he told me, in the claustrophobic confnes of the confessional.

"'Bless me Father, for I have sinned. It has been four rounds, I mean, three weeks, since my last confession. I cursed up a storm on the golf course today, and I feel so bad about it.'"

"'Tell me about it all, my son.'" (Here, and for the rest of the story when imitating what the priest said, the old guy used an over-the-top Irish brogue that is heard nowhere in Ireland, just in jokes told by Americans.)

"'I was playing great all day, the best round of my life. I chipped in three times, sank two putts from over fifty feet, and hadn't set foot in a sand trap all day. I came to the eighteenth tee needing a par to shoot two over, but the way the day was going, I wasn't discounting the possibility of an eagle and shooting par for the first time in my life.'"

"'Ah, par, the holy grail of golf, innit? Never shot it myself, but there's always hope, my son, there's always hope. Just need to work on me short game, is all.'"

"'But this eighteenth hole is a doozy. Long par four, woods on either side, a big pond right in front of the green, well-bunkered.'"

"'Sounds like Aberdeen Gulch to me. Yeh, I know it well. A bugger of a finishing hole. Makes the nineteenth hole much appreciated, if ye know what I mean, lad.'"

"'I hit a monstrous drive, right on the screws, straight as an arrow. I tell you that ball looked like a comet streaking against the blue sky. And it hit right in the middle of the fairway and took a great first bounce. But then it landed on a sprinkler head and the ball made a right angle left turn and headed directly toward the woods.'"

"'Ah, that's when you turned all blue-tongued and let loose a torrent of cursings, didn't ye, son? Understandable, if still quite sinful.'"

"'No, before I could even comprehend what was happening the ball, as it finished rolling into the woods, was somehow seized like an all-star shortstop by a squirrel who came out of nowhere and fielded the ball right in its mouth and started to run back across the fairway to the woods on the right.'"

"'The varmint! So that's when you turned into a sailor on shore leave with money to spend and not a cathouse or pub in sight, aye?'"

"'No, because just before he reached those woods, the squirrel was scooped up, ball and all, by a swooping hawk who clasped the thing in his talons and started flying away.'"

"'Airborne rapscallions, those hawks! The official bird of Hell, no doubt! Talons the very hands of Beelzebub himself.' (And here, through the opaque screen of the confessional, I could sense Fr. McHogan scrunching up to the edge of his chair.) 'Of course that's when you called down eternal damnation on birds, rodents, golf, and God knows what else, didn't ye?'"

"'Well, no Father, because that bird looked so majestic as he flew farther down the hole, with the squirrel dangling from his talons squealing awful noises. It was a sight to behold. But then, just over the pond in front of the green, either the hawk decided he didn't want the squirrel or the squirrel shook himself free, but somehow the squirrel, with my ball--'"

"'Titlelist or ProStaff?'"

"'Um, neither, Father. I play only Top-Flites.'"

"'Well, my son, you need some guidance of a different kind. But go on.'"

"'The squirrel, with my ball still in its mouth, started falling right down into the pond.'"

"'Ponds in front of greens! The Devil's cesspools! Oh, I can just hear you now, letting loose a string of foul-mouthed utterings that shook those trees on either side of the fairway, no?'"

"'Well, actually, no. Because just before the squirrel hit the water, he let go of the ball, which fell smack dab on top of one of those fountain things they have in the middle of ponds to help circulate the water and the ball ricocheted wildly off it.'"

"'Confounded Man, always defiling nature with his noisy contraptions. That's when you screamed the Devil's litany, didn't ye?' (I don't know, because I've never heard it from anyone since, but I swear I could hear, through that shady screen, actually hear, Fr. McHogan salivate.)"

"'No, not then, because the ball was bouncing right toward the sandtrap.'"

"'Oh, Lord, forgive Your humble servant, but why, why in all Your Wisdom, did Ye have to create sand? I don't comprehend, Lord, I don't comprehend. But, my son, I do comprehend that by now you must have had enough bilious bile bubbling around your tongue to yawp enough filth to cause you to come running straight from Aberdeen Gulch to me with your soul between your legs, begging for forgiveness, of which the cost of repentance will surely be a month of rosaries, am I wrong, son, am I wrong?' (By now Fr. McHogan's face was smushed against that cloudy screen and I could feel his fevered breath shooting through those little holes.)"

"'Well, no, Father, because as the ball descended into the trap, it struck a rake there and somehow bounced up on the green and miraculously rolled to a stop two feet from the hole.'

"There was silence in that confessional, as I hesitated to confess my awful sin, and Fr. McHogan, by now panting, slowly slid his face down and away from the screen, slumped back into his chair, let out a long, disappointed sigh, and, again, I could hear it, shook his head from side to side. And then, in a whispered, but stern, condemning voice, that brought back all the fear of sin and damnation that only Catholic schoolboys experience, Fr. McHogan spoke."

"'Ah, dammit, ye missed the fecking putt, didn't ye, ye dumbass shithead!?'"

The Final Fore

His name, Forrest von Trapp, didn't augur well for his prospects as a golfer. In fact, von Trapp (no relation btw; he couldn't sing a note, well maybe one, but nobody would call it melodious), was not really much of an athlete. As a child he was a mountaineer, and a promising one at that, to hear him tell it, but once adolescence and a nasty case of acrophobia kicked in, he was grounded, in more ways than one (to really rattle his already fragile golf mind, we'd take him to a new course and tell him there were a lot of elevated tees and greens). His clubs were a mix-n-match "set," his balls fished-out x-outs, and his "trusty" pull cart had two uneven, squeaky wheels. No lie, for his fiftieth birthday a few of us chipped in and bought him a lesson; on his first swing in front of the teaching pro, the pro's video camera broke. Ten minutes later, the pro, still fuming about the video camera that didn't work, suffered a coronary--DDOR: Dead, Dead on the Range.

Despite these (and others, too inane to mention, including an uncanny talent for attracting bees; yes, he was allergic) challenges, von Trapp loved the game of golf. A hack in every sense of the word, somehow Forrest was able to maintain a fairly even keel and enough fives on his scorecard so that you weren't too upset when he ended up being your partner. The only golfer I ever knew who wore a leather-sheathed compass on his belt, and who needed one. Fourteen out of eighteen holes he'd hit his tee shot, disappear from view for ten minutes, then reappear on the green, sink a miraculous putt and proclaim, "Bogey!" What a ballhawk. Unless you dropped one in the drink (and even then, with his extra-long retriever, Forrest resurrected many a thought-gone Top-Flite), you'd never have to worry about losing a ball, as long as Forrest was in your foursome. He was a great organizer of outings and was a walking calculator. Just throw him the scorecard at the end of a round, and within a minute he'd spit out everybody's score and the results of all the various wagers. With anybody else, the moment the guy says, "And you owe me five bucks," is your cue to say, irritatingly, "Lemme see that card." But with Forrest, his word was gold. If he said, "Looks like I got you for twenty, Lou," Lou would duly ask the guy in the pro shop where the ATM was.

But, and you can confirm this with any of us regulars or any stray single who ever was paired up with Forrest for even nine holes, the most distinguishing and most distinguished part of Forrest's game was his penchant for and panache at yelling, "Fore!" His voice, when raised and alerting the entire golf course of a possibly incoming errant shot, was positively operatic, in both volume and drama. When you snuck into the men's room at the turn, there always seemed to be a guy washing his hands, somebody you hadn't seen out on the course, who would say, matter-of-factly, "I hear von Trapp's here today." Now most golfers are a little too proud or etiquette-bound to yell "Fore" the way it should be yelled--loud--but Forrest never suffered such insecurity. Maybe that was because, being at heart such a nice guy, he was terribly insecure about his golfing skills and gravely worried about hurting somebody. And so, a couple dozen times a round, after striking his ball, Forrest von Trapp would cut loose with a tree-rattling "Fore!" It got to the point where the standard joke, told, or, performed, only in Forrest's absence, of course, was to take a practice swing, and immediately upon starting the backswing, break out in a loud, "Fore!" In all my years of golfing I have never seen a hole-in-one, but I have witnessed something much rarer: On July 12, 1994, on the seventh green at Briar Oaks, while Hank Sledge and Dennis Judas were distracted watching Misty, their at-the-time favorite beer cart girl rearrange her forty ouncers, Forrest von Trapp, while attempting a par-saving fifty-footer from the back fringe, somehow shanked his putt, and as the ball veered off line toward the drooling Sledge and Judas, Forrest, on the green, with putter in hand, yelled, "Fore!" Sledge nearly jumped into the greenside bunker; Judas, dazed by it all, turned slowly, watched Forrest's wayward putt trundle past his feet, and asked incredulously, "Did you just yell 'Fore!' on a putt?" Amazing.

Anyway, years later, August 7, 2007, we were playing down our local, The Links at Fox Chase/Glen Run (or what we regulars had shortened, not so affectionately, to, The Patch).  Our usual noon tee time had been pushed back to 12:30, as the course was packed and slow-moving. It was an odd foursome, me, Forrest, our old buddy Sal Overtino, and some stray single we got hooked up with, Fritz, I think his name was, an ex-Marine with the attitude and all the stories. We had to wait on every shot and by the fifth green we were ready to shoot Fritz, who wouldn't stop talking. About the only word any of us got in edgewise was Forrest's ubiquitous Fores!, including an extremely embarrassing one when I bladed a shot out of the bunker on the first and it whizzed over the green toward the second tee. Despite the waiting and all his shouts, Forrest was having the round of his life. After six holes he was just two over. Like most of the holes at the Patch, the seventh is an unimaginative one, a treeless, straight forward par four that runs parallel with the sixteenth (I've made more pars on the seventh from the sixteenth fairway than I've ever made from the seventh). On that day, though, the four of us each hit one down the middle, Fritz and Sal several yards ahead of me and Forrest, which was fine by me, because Sal had to stand next to Fritz and hear all about a boot camp mooning contest, while Forrest and I lingered behind, chatting about pretzels, of all things, as I recall. Then, as we still waited for the group ahead of us to putt out, Forrest happened to look up and across and down the sixteenth fairway to the tee. "Are those guys drunk," he said. I looked up and sure enough, there were four guys on the sixteenth tee all windmilling their arms, not frantically, but with determination. It kind of looked like a round, all of them making the same set of gestures, but in different time. Before I could think of something witty to say, bam! a ball hit Forrest right on the forehead and knocked him down and out cold, just like that. Somehow there was no blood, but there also seemed to be no life left in Forrest. I whipped out my cellphone and quickly called the clubhouse. Long before the ambulance arrived, the four guys from the sixteenth tee had driven their carts over to us, and started to try to explain.

Try to explain, being the operative description. After the ambulance came and carted away Forrest (still alive, we were assured, but not much more, it seemed), and after we let a few groups go through us, and after Fritz huddled with the four golfers from the sixteenth and some scribbling on scorecards, it all became clear. The four were old Navy buddies having a reunion. Seems that the four of them had survived an on-ship explosion thirty-four years before, an explosion that had rendered each of them deaf and dumb. Fritz was crestfallen. "Semaphore, dammit," he moaned. "If I hadn't been going on and on about McAfee's pimpled ass, I would have recognized that those guys, doing all they could, you know, without the ability to shout, were using semaphore signals to tell us 'Fore!'"

Sal and I drank ourselves pretty drunk at the nineteenth (our seventh, as it turned out) hole that day, shaking our heads at the irony of Forrest von Trapp getting beaned by an errant shot from golfers who couldn't shout "Fore!" Sadly, Forrest was never able to appreciate that irony. He survived, but he was pretty feeble, and pretty silly looking, to tell you the truth, with a permanent spot on his forehead, all dimpled and with the offending ball's name half-emblazoned into his forehead, backward. Who ever realized that the first three letters of Titleist are a palindrome?: tiT.

In his sad state, Forrest survived a couple years and took to whittling. I still have a few dozen of the lopsided tees he fashioned for us. Finally, mercifully, he succumbed quietly of a heart attack last April 4, at exactly four p.m., the usual time we would be gathering on the patio and he would be adding up the scores and settling the wagers. God bless you, Forrest. Golf is a little quieter without you, but not nearly as fun.

Sponsors Welcome

Somebody should go back and check the Master Clock. It seems like we sprung forward much more than a mere hour back then last week. Here in Cleveland on the first day of spring, it's more like mid-summer. Against the better wishes of the general public, who usually have about two more months to prepare for such a jarring moment, I wore shorts today. Not just around the house, but out in public, all day long. The glare might have been too much for some people, but what's a guy to do when the temps reach into the 80s? At this rate, the Indians will be mathematically eliminated from the pennant race before Opening Day occurs.

Shorts, though, are an easy thing to don. My golf swing is another matter. Usually at this time of year I'm taking slow warm-up swings with the snow shovel and pondering whether or not it's worth it to finally remove my clubs from the trunk of my car for the winter, or just wait it out another six to eight weeks or so. But my God, the Masters--which usually is the first big indication to me that golf on a sunny warm day is not only possible again, but somewhat imminent--hasn't even been televised yet. I could be playing as early as tomorrow, but I'm woefully behind in getting my sponsorships in order. I'm still waiting--while cursing the Postal Service-- for Buick to respond to my generous letter of two years ago, offering my services as their main golfing billboard in the wake of their parting of the ways with Tiger Woods. But, for all of you marketing people, I do have a slew of sponsorship opportunity openings and would like to fill them up ASAP. I need to lacquer on the sun-block like every other hole, so there's a grand option for maximum exposure. Hand in hand, I need hats. Plenty. Now I realize my endeavors on the links don't often end up on network TV, but a ball company would get a great value-added package by supplying me with a year or two's worth of balls: I lose quite a few, so when other golfers (or scuba divers) have to make a quick stop in the woods and they discover the resting place of one of my errant shots, "your logo here" would greet them. After nearly forty years of golfing, I must admit my vast repertoire of clenched-jaw cursings is getting a bit stale. Thus, if you own proprietary rights to any really juicy bon mots, I'll gladly substitute them for my worn-out ones for a modest fee. I'm also man enough to admit that too often one or two horribly-timed sevens creep onto my scorecard and ruin an otherwise respectable round. So, 7/UP, the opportunity of a lifetime awaits you: "What did you make on that hole, Dan, bogey?" "No, Phil, that par four 13th was brought to you by 7/UP. Why make a birdie and go one under when you can hack away and go Seven UP!"

Really, corporate folks, I've got a lot of great ideas like that one, but I don't have the time to go into them right now as I've got to make my July 4th plans before it's too late. Suffice it to say, if you subsidize some of my golfing expenses, my golfing prowess in 2012 will reward you tenfold. The contact info is on the column to your right. Let's do business, on the course, preferably.

Fore

Of course I'm prejudicial. And you're not? At least I have a system, a method to my mad prejudices. When faced with meeting a person, I quickly apply my elevator test: What would it be like to be stuck indefinitely in an elevator with this person? Might I commit murder in the first fifteen minutes? When meeting two people, I apply the Simon & Garfunkel test: Which one's Paul, which is Artie? Things, as you can imagine, develop from there. Three people, it's the Love Triangle question: Which one's bound to be the odd one out--that's my new compadre. Five people, I envision a basketball team and gravitate naturally toward the point guard. Six on up it's a crapshoot; I usually find myself bonding with either the cutest, the richest-seeming, or, most effectively, the one who is most likely to listen to the most Bob. Criticize my methods, sure, but I've got the best friends in the world; you can't argue with success.

But you notice that I skipped a group of four people. Yes, that one's a bit trickier. Whereas the other tests are usually pretty quick and intuitive, a foursome (for whatever reason) calls for a lengthier examination, one based on hard empirical evidence. I can't help it, I've got caddie blood in me, probably because my most impressionable years (age 13-22) were spent looping it, hauling golf bags and chasing carts and catering to the whims of golfers of all stripes. A lifetime education indeed. Thus, when confronted with meeting four people at once, I take my time and envision caddying for them over the course of four (one hopes) or maybe even six (forget it, I'll go it alone, folks) hours.

And so, confronted (an apt word, I believe) with the four remaining Republican candidates for the Presidency (full disclosure--not that I'm likely to vote for any of them, especially when I would never vote for two of them), I've decided to make my caddie test of them public, in the hope, as always, that my words do not necessarily merely persuade, but truly enlighten.

The most difficult job for a caddie is the two-walker, two-rider foursome. You lug two bags and tend to every need of the walkers while still having to keep eyes on the two riders, spotting their golfballs' travels, raking everybody's sandtrap mess, reading putts, cleaning balls, fetching clubs, pampering one and all. An ADHD nightmare, especially if the sun's blazing hot and the breeze is on strike.

Romney and Santorum are the walkers while Newt and RonPaul (some kind of weird amalgamation of RuPaul and Pope John Paul II I keep seeing there) ride. The first introduction for a caddie to the next four plus hours of his life, even before meeting the golfers, is the load--the bags he will carry, which often is all he needs to know about how the day is going to go. Romney's bag is sleek, relatively light, and very manageable. Santorum's is too big with a too small strap that will dig into your shoulder all day. The clubs are of the department store variety and are separated in the bag by individual "tubes"--not a good sign. Add to that the extendable ball-retriever that can't be quite unextended so that it sticks out of the bag like a giraffe amongst horses and the short little golf towel, emblazoned with the logo of some Kiwanis outing from seven years ago, attached to the bag with a metal hoop which will dig into your thigh all day, and already you're cursing this guy.

Get to the first tee for the introductions. Romney, dressed nattily, introduces himself to you right away and asks your name, and you know he won't forget it and will call you by it throughout the round. Santorum just says hi and proceeds to duck into the bag and spend five minutes sifting through dozens of balls to come up with two decent ones (never the same make) to stuff into his pocket. You naturally uncover his driver and hand it to him and he politely says, "No, I can't hit that. I tee off with my five iron, usually." You immediately want to kill him, to save yourself from five hours of torture, but there's something kind of tolerable about him, a small guy out playing with the big guys, an underdog in this foursome, that makes you think, based on past experience, that he might be the only one you like by the 18th green, and the only one to come through with a decent tip. So you leave the jury out on him and stroll over to the cart to meet those duffers and see if there's any way you can ingratiate yourself with them from the start.

RonPaul acts like you don't exist, in fact like nobody exists, and you wonder how he got into this foursome to begin with. His bag is old (a Burton, I believe) and crammed with even older clubs, a genuine "niblick" and woods, actual woods. He's dressed decently, if not fashionably. As you start cleaning off Newt's very old-mud-encrusted clubs (there must be seventeen of them in the bag, you estimate, and are thankful his large, garish, six-toned bag is sitting on the cart and not your shoulder), he introduces himself by farting loudly as he waddles off the seat and, with no further salutation, tells you to clean up the three Top-Flites he hands you absently. His shorts are too short and his purple golf shirt has sweat stains on it and looks impossible to tuck in short of giving the guy a cardiac arrest.

Romney, the de facto chief of this foursome, expertly spins his tee to determine partners and honors. When RonPaul dribbles his first shot, Romney graciously tells him to take a Mulligan. Santorum's five iron dives wickedly right off the tee; his Mulligan merely slices into the rough 150 yards out and he seems deeply relieved as you reach for the club; "No, I use this until I'm up around the green." A definite hack, you realize, but at least he'll be easy to deal with, you think. Romney looks like a real golfer right away as he tees up his ball, takes a couple practice swings, goes through an efficient and well-grooved pre-shot routine, and laces his drive straight down the middle well over 250 yards. Well alright, you think. You look hopefully up at the clouds as Newt limbers up, exposing his ample white belly. "Shit," he mutters as his first shot dribbles barely past the ladies tee; by the time he gets to "-it" of the shit he's got another ball out of his pocket and teed up again. "Crap," he says a little louder as his Mulligan pops up to the right and knocks around a half dozen branches before meekly bouncing back up the cart path. As he puts another ball on the tee, Santorum seems a little offended. "Are we playing 'hit 'til you're happy'?" "This isn't a Mulligan," Newt announces. "The third is called a Callista." He promptly strokes it right into the creek running along the left side of the fairway. "Damn wind. I'll drop from up there," he announces as he shoves his driver back into his bag and dives into a pocket in search of more balls.

As an experienced looper, you can almost predict the entire round just from the doings on the first tee. Santorum blithely walks the right rough with his five iron, requiring little assistance until he finally gets close to the green, where you hand him this "trusty" chipper and then his putt-putt putter. You double check him as he stands on the green looking back over the hole and visibly recounts his strokes; he's always honest when reporting his sevens and eights and occasional fives. RonPaul's short game is pretty impressive, saving him countless bogeys and a few pars. Your only interaction with him is on the 13th green when you pick up his pitching wedge for him. "Thank you," he kind of whispers and heads back to the cart. Romney's easy. He's usually in the fairway and actively seeks your valued input. After telling him to hit the seven instead of the eight on the third hole because it's more uphill than it looks and the wind's picking up, he sticks it to within four feet, smiles, and says, "Good call." From then on he relies on your club selection and reads. He magnanimously gives not so short putts, though Newt quickly takes advantage of this and gives himself all his third putts. Callistas abound for Newt and he's constantly talking about how the layout of the course could be better, what kind of grass the greens should be, and how they need to move that bunker over there--the one he never offers to rake. He calls you "son" all the time and leaves two or three clubs per hole on the green for you to retrieve. Needless to say, the rule about staying on the cart path and walking to your ball doesn't apply to him. By the turn you've lost track of your mental math adding up the differences between his actual strokes and the "gimme a five" he boldly announces after picking up his ball. Afterwards you try to remember if he ever holed out.

After the round RonPaul quietly hands you a twenty and says, "Thank you." Santorum, seemingly proud that he almost broke 100, pats you on the back awkwardly and gives you all the loose change from his pocket and fails to notice the absence of his ball retriever which, on general purposes, you tossed in the pond behind the 14th green. "My favorite hole, the 19th," Newt announces as he walks right past your ostentatiously outstretched hand; lucky for you, he left behind in the cart the third package of Oreos he bought from the beer cart girl. So at least you've got that going for you, which is nice. Romney thanks you by name and shakes your hand vigorously as he hands you a crisp fifty. Nice guy, you think, but you get the feeling he's just going through the motions, as he has all day.

The Perfect Size

Four and a quarter inches.
Enough to entice and
Get lucky once in a while.
Not so much as to get cocky
And turn the loving game absurd.

It beckons you to score well,
To reach it fully:
Never up, never in.

Ten feet
Ninety feet
One hundred yards
Twenty-six miles, three hundred eighty-five yards
--All masterpieces in their own right--
But nothing compares
To the devilishly round perfection
Of four and a quarter inches.

I speak from experience.
God, not Darwin,
Was involved when
The diameter of the golf hole
Was fixed at four and one quarter inches.

Only One Ball Off The Carpet? Not For Mulligan

I've been called a Cracker only once. This is the story.

To begin with, we were never sure if Mulligan was his first name or last. You'd think it would be his last, but Peterson always swore it was his first and in time he (Peterson) persuaded a few of us to at least have doubts; all we were all sure of was that nobody knew another name, first or last, to go with Mulligan. Not that Peterson really knew the guy. Nobody really did, we realized much later. It was that time right out of college when your group of friends is pretty limited--high school buddies, college ones, maybe a childhood friend or two (long before one's network of friends extended to co-workers, neighbors, parents of kids' friends, in-laws)--and everyone not in the core group of us high school classmates could be easily connected to one who was. Except for this guy. A few years later when he was gone from our orbit, when we were telling old stories (as much as thirty-year-olds have old stories to tell) we kind of realized no one could be definitively, as in the Alpha-friend, connected to the guy. As far as we could tell, he just showed up and attached himself. We couldn't even agree on when he showed up: Fischer always argued it was the night of the darts marathon at Shakey's Pub, while Peterson himself claimed it was the night we had to get Straka out of jail. Whatever, he was one of us, and he was only, ever, known as Mulligan.

When I say he attached himself to us, it might sound negative, like he was the hanger-on nobody really liked too much. Not so. I'd say we pretty much collectively opened our arms to him (which, being young and parochial in ways literal and figurative, was no small group accomplishment; I mean if we had known that first night--whichever one it was--that nobody knew him, that he was not friend-vouched-for in some way, we surely would have shunned him, and Straka probably would have picked a fight with him within five minutes); he was immediately and ever after a fun, funny, all for one kind of guy. In those first couple of months/years of hodgepodge transition from college to adulthood, Mulligan was omnipresent. Everybody had had him as a kind of temporary roommate for at least a week or two, if not for two years, like Peterson. Everybody had had his car temporarily cured of its ills by Mulligan's voodoo-like under-the-hood ministrations. Everybody eventually had a girlfriend who had to endure (sort of like a benign hazing ritual) a drunken, clumsy declaration of love from Mulligan. And of course, everybody lent the guy money. But shit, as much as he could irritate you in the minute, you loved him for the hour. He was always the one who'd show up first thing with some suspect van/truck/U-Haul with an even more suspect crony when you were moving to a new place. A twelve-pack, a medium onion pizza, and ten bucks for the crony was all it ever cost you. Need a ride to or from the airport or place of employment in a pinch? Get ahold of Mulligan--he'd be there, always in a different car, to help you within half an hour. Need someone to go out with a girlfriend's friend? Mulligan. Fischer always tells the story of him showing up at one of these friendly set-ups with sunglasses, a cane, and a dog, which effectively ended his blind date go-to status on a high note. It's amazing that after all these years, after all the nostalgicohol get-togethers, everyone, and multiple sub-groups, has at least one Gospel of Mulligan story the others have never heard of.

No one of course could verify it, but it would seem that Mulligan was one of those guys who had a beer belly at the age of seven. And of course he could fart prodigiously and (it embarrasses me to say this, that there were actually a variety of appropriate occasions) appropriately for the occasion. Never what one would call tall, in the few years we knew him, Mulligan seemed to shrink, as if his already low center of gravity just kept sagging. When we first got to know him he had lost a bit of hair in the front and you assumed it would all be gone in five years, but he never seemed to lose any more. If by some miracle we saw him today, I'd be willing to bet his unkempt pile of light brown hair would be the most copious of us all, excepting Peterson's, of course, though Mulligan's I'm sure wouldn't be surgically enhanced. The smallest hands I've ever seen on a grown man. More than one of has said he would have been known as Stubby if he wasn't so completely Mulligan.

Among the many entertaining endeavors Mulligan involved us in, The League of Hackers is, to me, most memorable. He was the worst golfer, between his hyperactvity, beer intake, penchant for new gadgets and "hack thoughts," and fiery temper (always directed solely at himself). It was never a regular league, but a few times a summer you'd get a short message on your answering machine: "Pine Nook, 7:10, 7:18, 7:26, Sunday. Be there with a blank check made out to me, Mulligan. I've got plenty of coolers." The kind of guy who always had plenty of coolers. Why so early, we never knew and never could budge him from. "Dew's good for you," is all he'd say. And every time there was some new exotic bet, but always, afterward, on some patio, sweat-inundated, stubby pencil in his stubby hands, Mulligan would pore over the score cards, eventually emit a soul-aching, "Shit," toss the pencil over his shoulder, and declare, "Peterson gets a buck from everyone, everyone else basically smashed, and I owe everyone five bucks. I'll square up with you all next time." The ensuing laughter was all the squaring up we required.

It's so old by now and done by everybody that it should be aggravating as hell, but it still amuses: the practice swing on the first hole where the follow-thru consists of instantly reaching your left hand into your pocket and muttering, "Shit, I'm hittin' another one." Peterson, naturally, has his own take. When placing his ball on the tee on the first hole, he declares, "I gotta hit another one, guys."

We were playing at High-Lo for some reason once, probably on account of Straka's stalking one of the beer cart girls there. By this time, we had all pretty much followed Mulligan's lead at taking two tee shots off the first tee, though we weren't calling them Mulligans then (that came much later, after we lost touch with him). Almost as if he knew his place, Mulligan naturally hit last that day. By the time he had hit a worm-burner barely past the ladies tee and was re-loading another ball on his plastic, illegally-long tee, the surly black starter was flooring his suped-up cart down to the tee in fits of anger and shouting, "Only one ball off the carpet! Only one ball off the carpet." Mulligan, as stoic as I ever saw him, just waited, standing over the re-teed second ball, idly swinging his driver, watching the guy drive up until he braked loudly and repeated his admonition. "You guys hitting balls all over the place. I got starting times to keep up. Only one ball off the carpet. One ball off the carpet." Mulligan looked at the man and politely said, "Sir, men were born with two balls. It would go against nature and God's plan not to make full use of them." Without even looking away from the starter, Mulligan cranked up his herky-jerky swing and mashed one down the fairway; we agree it was his best shot ever. The starter just shook his head, muttered, "Crackers," and putt-putted his cart away. Straka swears the guy had to work the choke knob a few times to get it going.

One More Shot--Danko, Fjeld & Andersen

Golf Lessons

A couple of wonderful outings the last few days have kept me from blogging: 30+ holes of golf on Wednesday, and seeing/listening to Bill Fox last night. I've written about Bill before here, so today I'm going to write about some of the things I've learned from being around golf as a caddie, coach, and player for nearly forty years (I still haven't learned to break 80, though, more than a small handful of times, so all lessons here are esoteric rather than instructive).

• when you hear the word "fore" yelled at you, the ball never comes close to hitting you; when you don't hear the word, that's when you get clocked
• if you're still missing the putt on your fourth do-over putt, it ain't meant to be
• I'm semi-famous for a quick tee it up and hit it; if I had a nickel for every time somebody talked in my backswing, I could maybe afford a round at a swanky course by now
• replacing a divot after a good shot is a great feeling of communing with nature; replacing a divot after a lousy shot is akin to accidentally finding a wasp nest
• if most golfers were miked as much as Tiger Woods is, Tiger would have the reputation for being one of the best-mouthed players around
• there is no cooler, more unique and special role in sports than the golf caddie
• visors can only make a beautiful woman look more beautiful; visors can only make a man look dorky
• there have been plenty of days when the best part of my golf game has been the 99.9% coverage of my sun-block application
• a canned six-foot putt is much more thrilling than a long, straight, soaring drive--and usually much more important in the grand scheme of things score-wise and bets-wise
• beer (singular) can serve to relax and improve your game slightly; beers (plural) can be a disaster
• wherever two or more trees are gathered in close proximity on a golf course, there you have a functioning men's room
• I like the feel of spikeless golf shoes, but the sound of spikes on a cart path is a sound I miss dearly
• as I remember, the euphoria of driving a golf cart as a kid was greater than that of first driving a car
• if you don't know the vast difference between saying "I had a six on that hole" and saying "gimme a six," you don't know anything about golf
• if you have to convince yourself that sure you can make it over the water, you better have an extra ball at the ready
• if someone "gives" you a putt, pick up the ball graciously at once; those "are you sure, thanks," half-ass swipes at the ball then awkward lurches to tap the in-motion ball into the hole embarrass everybody
• if you look forward to flirting with the beer-cart girl, you're way out of your league and should look into taking up bowling
• you can tell the quality of the golfer by the quality (i.e. existence of) his ball retriever
• Johnny Miller and the other over-analysts on NBC's golf coverage aside, the only "smart leave" is the one where the ball falls into the hole
• I've never seen a tree I can't hit a ball through, and never played a ball that can't find any tree on the course
• the best golf-related true story I've ever heard: my cop friend once stopped a guy on suspicion of breaking into and robbing a stripper's car (true story, I swear); besides having a clutch of Pat Benatar CDs on him, the guy was also wearing golf shoes (in the dead of winter); "so you play golf, hunh?" my friend the cop asked; "yes," replied the man; "what's your handicap," the cop asked; the man replied, in all seriousness, "schizophrenia."

True Confession

Chas had a heavy conscience, something he couldn't shake, so he stopped in his boyhood church, where he hadn't been for years. He wandered around, then got up the courage and entered the confessional. "My God," he thought, "it's been a long time." Instead of the dark closet with a kneeler and a small screen, he now saw, in wonder, a large room with a huge flat screen TV, a mini-fridge, which upon further inspection was stocked with Goebel beer, a laptop with wi-fi capability, and next to that same small screen, a comfy recliner. He sat down, thinking, "Who knew? I gotta try this confession thing more often." Just then he heard the screen open on the other side.

"Yes?" In just one syllable, it all came back to him, the resonant voice of Fr. McGillicuddy, the man who had baptized Chas, gave him his first communion, heard his first several dozen confessions, confirmed him, married him, baptized his kids, and--unless he watched his cholesterol more carefully, thought Chas--might end up burying him.

"Bless me Father, for I have sinned. From the looks of things," Chas looked around the spacious, well-equipped confessional "box" once more, "it's been a very long time since my last confession."

"You're on the wrong side, my son, but I forgive you. What's on your mind?"

Irish bastard, Chas thought to himself, then remembered where he was and why he was there. "Father, I live a pretty good life, but yesterday I lost all control and swore up a storm. Really took the Lord's name in vain. I'm sorry."

"Tell me about it, my son." Admittedly, Chas hadn't seen or talked to Fr. McGillicuddy in a few years, but he could swear the old priest's brogue was thicker now than ever.

"Well, I was playing golf, and I was going along great, probably the best round in my life. I come to the 18th hole, needing just a par to break 75. It's a long par four, woods on the left, water on the right and in front of the green. I stand over the ball on the tee, visualize a great shot, keep my tempo, and murder the ball. High and long, right down the middle of the fairway, 280, maybe even 300 yards. And it comes down right on a sprkinkler head and bounces dead left right toward the woods."

"So that's when you swore, eh?"

"No, I kept my calm. Just watched the ball rolling towards the woods when out of nowhere a squirrel appears and puts the ball right in its mouth and starts running back toward the tee, like he was a dog playing fetch."

"Ah, so that's when you swore, right son?"

"No, because right then a huge hawk swooped down out of nowhere and grabbed the squirrel and flew off with him, the ball still in the squirrel's mouth."

"Now of course, that's when you swore, didn't you?"

"No, it was so majestic, and unbelievable. The hawk actually started flying back up the fairway, hugging the right side, like a draw shot that's not quite drawing. And then close to the green, suddenly he drops the squirrel right over the water, like his mission all along had been to drown the squirrel."

"No doubt about it, hunh? You swore then."

"No, I was kind of feeling sorry for the squirrel at that moment, watching him fall out of the sky right over the water. But just before he hit the water, the ball flies out of his mouth."

"Say no more, my son. That's when you swore, for sure. You're only human."

"No, amazingly, the ball hits a rock sticking up from the water--it's a very well-manicured, aesthetically pleasing course--and the ball, Titleist Pro-V 3, if that matters, ricochets out of the water right onto the green and stops two feet from the hole."

There was a long silence. Chas rocked a bit in the recliner, still amazed by the whole thing. Then he thought maybe the old priest had fallen asleep or something worse, the silence was so long and, well, quiet. Then slowly, from through the screen, Chas heard a slow exhalation of breath.

"Ah, sonabitch, you shithead. You missed the goddamned putt, didn't you?"

Chip Taylor & Carrie Rodriguez-Confessions