I Try Stupid Shots – Okay, so I hit my ball twenty feet behind a row of trees. That gap between them is much wider than the ball! Go around them? No way! I swing. I hit the ball squarely, then CRACK! The ball caroms back at me as fast as it went out, missing my skull by inches. I live to golf another day. Then from behind me, “Ouch! You son of a...” It’s that cute blond I’ve been eyeing for the last eight weeks. I’ve been hoping the front desk would assign us to the same foursome. Now maybe that wouldn’t be such a good idea after all. And people wonder why I’m still single.
TWO
I Can’t Stop and Reset – Perhaps the most admirable thing about Tiger Woods is his ability to stop his swing at the last split second if anything is wrong. I guess that’s part of why he’s a legend. He can be done with his backswing and be coming forward when an inconsiderate photographer snaps a shot. He’ll change his swing to hit the photographer rather than the ball, much to the delight of his adoring fans. Me? I can be set and know that something is wrong. I sense that I may be too far from the ball, my grip may be off, or perhaps a UFO just landed one fairway over, it doesn’t matter. I know I should back off and reset, but I just can’t help myself! And there goes another shot into the trees (or perhaps it was disintegrated by the space alien’s ray gun – yeah, that’s why I can’t find it!)
THREE
Sand Traps – And just who was it that determined that carving out little depressions on the golf course and filling them with sand would make the game more fun? Perhaps one of Osama Bin Laden’s ancestors? Golf came from Scotland, not Algeria! Perhaps, though, we can be grateful that they never came up with haggis traps. That would be disgusting.
FOUR
Hardest Golf Course Magazine Articles - Every now and then I pick up golf magazines, and they just can’t seem to resist having a “Top Ten Hardest Courses” article. Perhaps it’s the hardest course in the world, or the hardest in the U. S., or the hardest on the pro tour, or perhaps the hardest on Fantasy Island, but the operative word here is “hardest”. I have troubles enough breaking 100 at Tilden Park! Why on Earth world I want to know the elite group of courses that would induce me to shoot 150? “Yes, we’re here at the devious Yougottabekidding Country Club” the article extoles, “where even the best golfer is challenged by the 812 yard first hole. This par three is uphill with a two foot wide fairway which winds its way along crocadile-infested waters until it opens up at the far end to a spacious, plexiglass green which slopes at a sixty-degree angle into a lion’s den!” Sorry, I keep looking for a course where all the fairways are cement funnels with the hole at the very bottom. No luck yet.
FIVE
The Stroke and Distance Rule – This is my least favorite rule in all of golf. If you hit a shot out of bounds, not only are you charged for that stroke, you also put the ball where you started from (rather than where it went out of bounds) and are assessed a penalty stroke. So if your tee shot goes out of bounds, you tee another ball up and are now hitting your THIRD shot. That’s just mean.
SIX
The 12th Hole – The twelfth hole at Tilden Park has lately made me utterly crazy. It’s a par 4, which means that if a golfer makes two reasonable shots he should be on the green, then two decent putts and he’s done. Four strokes. The last eight rounds I’ve played at Tilden’s 12th, I’ve shot 8, 5, 9, 8, 8, 6, 9 and 8. Do the math. Better yet, please don’t. For some reason, someone put a ball magnet to the side that sucks my tee shot to the left, where a big old nasty tree reaches out and swats the ball down and into
SEVEN
Pro V1 Snobs – I can generally find golf balls for about a buck apiece. They’re just fine. I know several people who say they prefer the Titleist Pro V1 golf ball. “Oooh, they’re heaven on earth! They have a great feel! You can shape those fades and draws just the way you want!” they tell me. What a bunch of pretentious jerks. The list price for these spherical chunks of manna (which by the way no one has claimed are resistent to the 12th hole ball magnets) is $58.00 a dozen. This game’s expensive enough as it is. Last round I hit my opening tee shot at a 45-degree angle. The ball hasn’t been seen or heard from since. If you weren’t paying attention, that was stroke and distance (see #5). My consolation? At least it wasn’t stroke and distance and $4.83 plus tax, shipping and handling.
EIGHT
I Say Unconfident Things – For those who don’t know, “handicap” is a number assigned to a golfer based on demonstrated ability, used to make matches more even. The lower the handicap, the better the golfer. If you’re in single digits, you’re really quite good. I like to tell people “I’m a seven handicap – grip, stance, backswing, followthrough, pitching, chipping and putting – yep, that about covers it!” Yeah, funny. I also like to call myself “Tiger in the Woods”. Unfortunately, that doesn’t put me in the frame of mind to play very well, so I try not to say negative things like that, even in jest. I just hate it when I do. Sometimes going into joke-suppress mode nearly kills me. If you’re interested, my latest handicap is really twenty five. Not a confidence builder.
NINE
I Can’t Hit a Fairway Wood – A fairway wood is designed to hit the ball a long way, generally longer than any club except a driver, which is used only when the ball is teed up. If I hit mine well, it’s good for about 230 yards. More often it’s about 75 yards, so I just don’t use it anymore. I tell people it’s a “decorative club” to make my bag look full. I swear I’ll learn to use it some day.
TEN
Great Drives Lost – This happens rarely, but it does happen. You step up to the tee with your driver. The great cosmic forces of the universe converge, the gods smile upon you. Time stands still as you just crush the ball far, straight, right down the middle. You leave the tee box tipping your cap to the appreciative oohs and aahs of the lesser beings in your foursome and stride confidently in the direction of your ball. It’s nowhere to be found. Is there some unseen gopher hole? Perhaps it hit a rock and ricocheted to one side or the other, obscured by some hill. Or maybe... maybe... remember those space aliens? But you never find out. I tend to take a Tiger Woods Drop, an oficial golf term I made up. I figure if I were Tiger, I’d have at least a hundred adoring fans excitedly shouting “HERE IT IS, TIGER!” and nudging my ball perhaps a few feet closer to the green. Alas, I’m Tiger In The Woods (see above) and have to be content with dropping a ball somewhere near where I think it should be. That’s not according to the rules, and I’ll feel guilty about it for at least... oh... okay, I’m over it.
* * * * * *
And there you have it. In no particular order, ten things I really don’t like about golf. There are many others I could add, and I suspect that if I put my mind to it, I’d find at least a few more things I like. That’s why in spite of all the above issues, I keep coming back for more.
