Found this ball during one of my Berthoud morning rounds. Right there along the western side of County Road 23 South.
I’ve never played golf, unless you count those fun putt-putt miniature golf courses over by Orchard Beach where you try to thread Windmills and Giant Heads and bank around corners. I understand that the real game has evolved beyond the bucolic courses.
Some of my brothers and my in-laws are die-hard golfers. They would rather spend a day chasing a ball across a beautiful green course for four hours than share a four hour date that includes your favorite dinner, a Broadway sold-out show, and a guaranteed happy ending with the most skillful lover of your choice.
I don’t get it.
But I have talked to enough golfers to understand the game of golf as a metaphor for life.
Like youth, you start your golf game full of energy and hope. Some golfers drive the ball hard off the first tee just to see how far they can send it. And if they are out with a foursome, they want to establish that pecking order and show the others in the group who they are playing with.
Some golfers, like my brother John, have a great long game and can drive the ball like Fred Flintstone. He is rough around the edges – go figure – but he is also incredibly lucky, and has made impossible shots that are the grist of legend all along the east coast. I’m not sure he has ever been to a Broadway show.
Some golfers have an amazing short game. They get through the course in shorter, safer and truer increments, and once they reach the green, they are frugal with their strokes. Meticulous, calculating and thrilled. Few reach the top but none of them are ever embarrassed by their play.
Some golfers are just naturals who repeatedly find the pin effortlessly. Nothing seems to alter their predetermined and excellent outcome. You wonder if they even enjoy the challenge, since there doesn’t seem to be one.
And while all golfers love competition, in the end, their constant and most challenging competitor is themselves. I have yet to meet one who cannot recite the scores of their last dozen matches without blinking an eye.
No matter what kind of golfer you are, since most courses have a set number of 18 holes, you understand the concept of the back nine. Indeed, even us non-golfers get it.
By the time most golfers have crossed the Rubicon toward the tenth hole on the course, they have settled into their game. They can sense how they are doing as far as their overall score. Some decide to accept their fate and relax and enjoy the rest of the game. Others find their stress level actually increases as they try to make up for their prior mistakes or shortcomings knowing that the corrective opportunities before them are limited. The end is coming. Somebody is going to count your card.
If I were going to subscribe to a golfing type, I would probably fall into both categories. I had a lot of fun on the front nine of my life, took a couple of ill-advised chances I probably shouldn’t have and often ended up in the woods, begging for a mulligan. I really didn’t pay much attention to my score until the holes ended in “teen.” I definitely felt that desperation upon entering the back nine.
No one was going to remember my game but me.
Luckily the approach to the 15th hole just happened to pass by the course clubhouse. There, while I waited for the prior foursome to play on, I overheard gaggles of golfers finished for the day standing around in clusters drinking and sharing stories about the games they just had, or recounting apocryphal ones that left the others oohhhing, aahhhing or calling each other out for bullshit. There was raucous laughter and some shit talking. Gone was the forced respectability that those golfers maintained on the links. They were just enjoying the stories. That seemed like fun.
So, I said fuck the game. The last three holes can wait. Especially that 6 foot deep one on the 18th green. I’m going to take a break, walk into the clubhouse and share some stories, some laughs and some shit talking.
No one is going to remember my golf game, but hopefully they’ll remember my stories. Maybe this is my mulligan. No penalty if I get it right.
But before I tell another, I better get my Tuesday started.
You fine, five readers keep playing the course. Without the other players, I have no stories to tell.
I’m going to go out and cuddle some kitties and make my rounds. Two kitties, ten horses and three dogs along that course. Hole in one every time.
I’ve got two mules and Blue making up my foursome for the last few holes. Lisa can check my card on 18. She knows I suck at math.
But no matter how we play the game today, let us make it a great one.
Fore!
6 Responses
Nice metaphorical workout today, Tom. I still remember your decidedly “relaxed” attitude at Cahill’s Summer Outing at Scarsdale GC in the summer of ’83. Classic!
Holy shit, Petey, forgot about that.
That’s one heck of an analysis of the players and the game. I don’t play golf either. I just think I can make better use of my time. There is some camaraderie in the game which I am surely missing, but I am happy enough as it is. Now, if there were a few 77 year-old coots out there who would like to play basketball, I would be all for that. I am not sure what sort of analysis you might derive from a cluster of old basketball players. Maybe it would be that it is a group of guys who like the idea of having an ambulance crew standing by.
Which reminds me, the one and only time I have been in Berthoud was one evening we went to eat there at a restaurant. As we drove up, there was an ambulance outside the place and momentarily a patron was hauled out on a gurney. Despite this omen, we went in and had a fine dinner. We all were able to walk out on our own.
Stu B: No doubt you come from the “no blood, no foul” school of BBall. Sharp elbows and no look passing. No dunking and great lay ups. And anyone who survives going out on a gurney has bragging rights for at least a month.
i don’t get the whole golf thing at all and am perfectly fine with it. I would rather spend hours at the beach relaxing under my hi SPF umbrella reading and hitting the water.
A 2 hour walk on the beach is for me very relaxing and I always meet someone to talk to.
I love today’s blog for so many reasons!👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻