Once upon a time, as most fairy tales begin, I thought that since I was a pretty fair athlete in high school, I should be able to be a pretty fair golfer. Duh.
These old retired guys who play golf regularly are usually labeled with something called a “handicap.” For the uninitiated, that’s an indication of your ability. You’re given a number of strokes and that’s added to your actual score. It sort evens thing up for duffers playing against everyday golfers.
Ahh, don’t worry about it. Only serious golfers do anyway.
So, on that first outing, I had never even taken a practice swing. I didn’t know a driver from a putter, which as it turns out didn’t much matter.
To further discombobulate everything (that’s not a golfing term), only two guys in our foursome had ever played golf for any time. One was a coach at the local high school and he was a fair golfer. The other was a banker who had only played a few rounds. The third guy was the chamber of commerce executive director and he’d played a couple of rounds. And, me …exactly zero.
Some foursome, huh.
I whiffed three or four times on the first tee before I finally hit the golf ball. It wasn’t a long hole, distance-wise, but it certainly had enough hazards for me. Trees. Dogleg bend. Sand traps. Cuss, cuss, cuss.
Broad-beamed banker thought he was better than he was. Watching him tee off turned into a laugh fest. As he addressed the ball, he wiggled said broad beam several times and that brought on the guffaws. He blamed us for his shot that took off to the left from the tee, bounced off a couple of trees and wound up in the rough, oh, maybe 60 yards from the tee.
Coach hit a fair tee shot and went walking (no carts for us “gettin’-in-shape” dudes) down the side of the fairway, ambling just a few yards and waited, behind a tree as I recall. I thought he was still in danger the way we were hitting the ball and the ricochets off trees. I never knew where the ball was going.
Chamber exec sliced the ball to our left and it landed in the trees off the fairway.
I swung four times (each counting as a stroke if you’re playing “legitimate” golf) before hitting the ball and it bounced about 30-40 yards down one side of the fairway.
To make matters worse, golf balls in those days were easier to damage with a golf iron. Almost every one I hit had a slice in the surface and, as the saying went then, “smiled back at me.” Except, serious athlete me wasn’t smiling much. Frustration wiped any grin right off my face. Oh, we all tried to laugh at ourselves and our pitiful performance, but when you think you’re supposed to automatically master a game or sport in a short time, you can’t do anything but laugh. And, of course, we know real men don’t cry.
As we bumbled our way through the course, my frustration only increased.
When I DID get on a green, putting became another giant needle in my failed-athlete side. Who invented this game?!! I’m grousing.
For most of the next year, I joined the other three guys a couple of times a month. My game barely got better and I finally won a hole, the final one on the last day I ever picked up a golf club. But, I still never finished better than third in the foursome.
And, since my ol’ cowboy daddy always told me: “Son, if you can’t afford to lose, don’t gamble.” So, I never have been a betting man … unless it has to do with my profession. After 70-plus years, I’ve learned a thing or two, especially about gambling. Oh, and about golf … don’t play golf.
Willis Webb is a retired community newspaper editor-publisher of more than 50 years experience.
wwebb@wildblue.net
