Tuesday Golf Woes and More

So there's Tiger Woods out in the rough surveying a shot he has hit 70 yards right of the fairway. He takes out one club or another, the crowd gives way and he smashes the ball onto the green. Wimp. Try that on our golf course and you'll never be heard from again. If the snakes don't get you, the swamp will swallow you up. Every time we play our course we see Panamanian rescue teams with machetes in hand hacking away at the jungle in search of lost golfers. At least I think that's what they're doing. Yes, ours is a manly golf course even if the targets aren't as far away as some Tiger might play. We face dangers unheard of on the PGA tour. I mean what if that horse kicks you while you're hopping the fence to his corral to rescue your wayward Titleist? And what about that bridge you walk over on number 6? That looks a little Indiana Jonesy to me. It's true, we don't keep stats like "greens in regulation" or "putts made inside of six feet", but we do have "lost balls per nine" and " how many times you make it past past noon before your game drives you to drink." I hold the record for that one at two only because I don't carry a flask.

You might garner from this that I had a tough day on the links yesterday. Alas, I was not alone. Woowoo Charly and the Old Redneck suffered golf indignities the equal of my own. Shots gone astray like a good teen in a bad crowd were the order of the day and though a couple of long putts found the bottom of the hole, most were short, long, pulled, pushed or snubbed like a leisure suit at a black tie affair. Hit a good shot and there was almost no point in hitting the next. It was doomed, cursed, reviled and destined for the Golf Hall Of Shame. Sure an it t'was a grim day laddie, but we slogged on through thick and thin...thick of hitting it thin, and at day's end there was, mercifully, alcohol.

You see we had been joined on the course by a newcomer named Ron whose golf game was better than ours even on a day when we might have played closer to our B game. (We three don't really have an A game.) Of course having a witness to each shot hooked, sliced, topped, chili dipped and generally butchered in all duffer ways possible only added to our collective grief, but at round's end Ron graciously invited us to his new home over looking the second hole's tee box and fairway for a post round cocktail. (From his balcony you can also see the river that is now home to, I'm sure, hundreds of golf balls, many of them mine.) We met Ron's wife Janet and after chatting amiably for awhile, we invited them to join us for dinner later, which they did.

So, our golf game was a flop like many of our shots, but new friends were made. That's a trade-off that works for me.