| 117th Year, 34th Issue | Thursday, March 30, 2006 | Sparta, North Carolina |
Golf clubs, golf clubs everywhere and not a decent one is in sight. I have been trying to sort through my lousy clubs to find a set that will get me through the summer, or at least the spring.
Since I hadn’t played any golf in several years, I don’t know why I decided to try again. I suppose it has something to do with the fact that the weather is warm and trout season doesn’t open until Saturday.
For those of you who play, please be aware that the game I play barely resembles golf. It’s more like a mattock or pickaxe exercise that I perform for health reasons. A typical game for me leads to hundreds of healthy swings, which encourage the blood flow and increase my range of motion.
At the same time, I help to aerate the golf course and burn the heads off of all of the stupid worms — those which fail to duck — thus preventing them from reproducing more of their kind. In that way, I am helping make golf course worms more intelligent.
Yes, it is has been about two years since I used one of the several bags of golf clubs at the house, mainly out of good sense and concern for the safety of my fellow man.
However, I recently took an interest and pulled them out in an attempt to find a complete set of straight shafts to put to use later this year. Being such a bad golfer, a bent shaft might actually help me hit the ball straighter. Even so, I suppose I will start with at least straight weapons, I mean clubs, as I go back into the sport of my exasperation.
So far, I haven’t made much headway in getting the clubs sorted. I do have a nice collection of wooden tees, balls that look like they spent a few decades underwater and golf bags that went out of style when Jack Nicholas was a very young man. In other words, everything I need to go right back to the level of play that made me decide to slack off on the golf habit a few years ago.
There are more than a few things about golf I don’t understand. I can get the spiked shoes and the loose-fitting clothing. I cannot, however, understand the need for gloves. Who ever got a blister from a golf club?
Well, there was that one time when I hit the ball into the sand trap and took 46 swings to knock the ball out and back over the green to the woods nearby, but that doesn’t happen every time — only when I hit the ball in the sand.
But no matter how badly one golfs, there is definitely something to be said for spending a day doing nothing more than riding around a giant grassy playground in a little car in no particular hurry to go anywhere.
I suppose it could be called lollygagging, or even loafing, but I think golf is a fine word for it.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the feeling of hitting a great shot, of watching that little white ball soar up into the sky and come down in the green grass on a perfect arc. I just don’t get to see it all that often. To give you an idea, I usually take the par for the hole and add two, and then I hope I can make it in that. I usually do more hoping than making, though.
Sometimes I notice those who take the game seriously or even a little too seriously. Those people, who are all better than me at it, also confound me. What could be so important about hitting a little ball that it could make one jump up and down, yell curses and throw away good golf clubs? I use the term ‘good’ there since I’m not referring to my own set of clubs, which I have acquired over the years at such upscale locations as rummage sales and pawnshops. Even so, I can hit a ball just as badly with a $1 club as with a $1,000 club. Minus delusions of grandeur, it doesn’t matter if you skip the ball across the ground with a Wilson or a Ping.
The last golf game I played, I made good solid contact on my ball (after my typically short drive) with a two iron. It isn’t very easy for an amateur like myself to make good solid contact with a two iron, but I did. In fact, the contact was very solid; the top of the club flew off like a helicopter and landed in a muck-filled ravine off to one side of the course. I never did figure out where it, or the ball, went. Since I usually use about an average of one ball per hole, I’m used to that. So you see, my golf game requires good humor and more than a little hiking in the woods. That’s just more exercise for me. If you can’t see the funny side of the head of a golf club taking off like a helicopter, then you better not play with me. I might also suggest a good health and life insurance policy, even though I have yet to injure anyone. If protective gear is ever required for golf, I’ll be to blame. I’ll see you all on the course — just remember to wear your helmet.Golfing anyone? Just remember your helmet
Golf clubs, golf clubs everywhere and not a decent one is in sight. I have been trying to sort through my lousy clubs to find a set that will get me through the summer, or at least the spring.
Since I hadn’t played any golf in several years, I don’t know why I decided to try again. I suppose it has something to do with the fact that the weather is warm and trout season doesn’t open until Saturday.
For those of you who play, please be aware that the game I play barely resembles golf. It’s more like a mattock or pickaxe exercise that I perform for health reasons. A typical game for me leads to hundreds of healthy swings, which encourage the blood flow and increase my range of motion.
At the same time, I help to aerate the golf course and burn the heads off of all of the stupid worms — those which fail to duck — thus preventing them from reproducing more of their kind. In that way, I am helping make golf course worms more intelligent.
Yes, it is has been about two years since I used one of the several bags of golf clubs at the house, mainly out of good sense and concern for the safety of my fellow man.
However, I recently took an interest and pulled them out in an attempt to find a complete set of straight shafts to put to use later this year. Being such a bad golfer, a bent shaft might actually help me hit the ball straighter. Even so, I suppose I will start with at least straight weapons, I mean clubs, as I go back into the sport of my exasperation.
So far, I haven’t made much headway in getting the clubs sorted. I do have a nice collection of wooden tees, balls that look like they spent a few decades underwater and golf bags that went out of style when Jack Nicholas was a very young man. In other words, everything I need to go right back to the level of play that made me decide to slack off on the golf habit a few years ago.
There are more than a few things about golf I don’t understand. I can get the spiked shoes and the loose-fitting clothing. I cannot, however, understand the need for gloves. Who ever got a blister from a golf club? Well, there was that one time when I hit the ball into the sand trap and took 46 swings to knock the ball out and back over the green to the woods nearby, but that doesn’t happen every time — only when I hit the ball in the sand.
But no matter how badly one golfs, there is definitely something to be said for spending a day doing nothing more than riding around a giant grassy playground in a little car in no particular hurry to go anywhere. I suppose it could be called lollygagging, or even loafing, but I think golf is a fine word for it.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the feeling of hitting a great shot, of watching that little white ball soar up into the sky and come down in the green grass on a perfect arc. I just don’t get to see it all that often. To give you an idea, I usually take the par for the hole and add two, and then I hope I can make it in that. I usually do more hoping than making, though.
Sometimes I notice those who take the game seriously or even a little too seriously. Those people, who are all better than me at it, also confound me. What could be so important about hitting a little ball that it could make one jump up and down, yell curses and throw away good golf clubs? I use the term ‘good’ there since I’m not referring to my own set of clubs, which I have acquired over the years at such upscale locations as rummage sales and pawnshops. Even so, I can hit a ball just as badly with a $1 club as with a $1,000 club. Minus delusions of grandeur, it doesn’t matter if you skip the ball across the ground with a Wilson or a Ping.
The last golf game I played, I made good solid contact on my ball (after my typically short drive) with a two iron. It isn’t very easy for an amateur like myself to make good solid contact with a two iron, but I did. In fact, the contact was very solid; the top of the club flew off like a helicopter and landed in a muck-filled ravine off to one side of the course. I never did figure out where it, or the ball, went. Since I usually use about an average of one ball per hole, I’m used to that. So you see, my golf game requires good humor and more than a little hiking in the woods. That’s just more exercise for me.
If you can’t see the funny side of the head of a golf club taking off like a helicopter, then you better not play with me. I might also suggest a good health and life insurance policy, even though I have yet to injure anyone. If protective gear is ever required for golf, I’ll be to blame. I’ll see you all on the course — just remember to wear your helmet.
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