Editorial
Front Page - Friday, January 21, 2011
Are we there yet?
Tee times
Jay Edwards
I was sitting in the golf cart on a mild winter day observing my son Matt as he tried to hit the ball onto a green some 170 yards away. For someone frustrated by the game as infrequently as Matt is, he really has a smooth swing. When I told him so he laughed and said a lot of people tell him that. “You just never got the bug did you?” I asked him, already knowing the answer. “Nope,” he said. “Well, you should probably be thankful for that,” I suggested.
“He enjoys that perfect peace, that peace beyond all understanding, which comes at its maximum only to the man who has given up golf.” – P.G. Wodehouse
That is a peace with which I am unfamiliar.
It’s my Mother’s fault you know. I started playing golf sometime back in the late sixties when Mom heard from one of her friends about a junior clinic they were putting on at Burns Park. I’m sure it sounded great to her, fresh air, sunshine and at least one of her three heathen sons out of her hair for a couple of hours.
Mom probably had good intentions and could not have known how those first innocent and inexpensive clinics would magnify into 30 years of severe psychological trauma and miserably failed expectations.
So it began. I was exiled with my friends to the links at Burns Park where we began our journey of learning the ancient game.
“I play with friends, but we don’t play friendly games.” – Ben Hogan
Surely that desire to place a wager must be something me are born with – like not wanting to ask directions. It began for me playing for Cokes under the lights on the short nine at Burns and progressed to $2 carryovers with doubles for birdies.
Those kinds of bets ended suddenly one fall day at North Hills Country Club when Steve “Carbo” Carlson made a 30foot snake on number 12 for birdie and a seven hole carry over. As Carbo gleefully danced his way over to the hole to retrieve his beloved ball, the rest of us wished for him to tear a ligament or for a sudden lightening storm. Neither happened.
“Nice putt,” came the words I had to force out of the bile building at the back of my throat.
That was the end of the carryovers. But it really didn’t make losing any easier.
My brother-in-law Bill Hooper and his buddies play for dots. They live in West Memphis. This past Fourth of July I went over and played a round with them. Before we teed off, Bill announced we were playing for dots. I asked him what a dot was worth. Grinning he said, “well 10 dots will buy you about three tees in the pro shop.”
It sounded pretty harmless to me and then Bill whispered to me – “Don’t let up. These guys would chew their right arm off for a quarter.”
We got to the first green and I marked my ball with a quarter. Bill noticed what I had done and warned me to be careful about leaving any silver
lying around.
Hooper is the master of mind games. I remember once when we were in Florida. It was me and him and Bob and Dennis Althoff who are my wife’s brothers. When the four of us get together it is always Bob and me against Bill and Dennis. Dennis tends to be rather gruff at times and so Bob began calling the pair – “Laverne and Surly.”
Anyway, this particular trip we had come to the last hole with the outcome of our match still undecided. I blew up and was on the green with about a 15-footer for a double. My partner Bob was on the same line as me with a longer putt – but for a birdie. Our hated opponents were on the other side of the hole, both with birdie putts. So it was two against one.
I was closer than Bob but stepped up to putt mine first, to show him the line. Before I could even take a practice swing Hooper began protesting vehemently – “whoa, hold it, you cain’t putt first, Bob’s out, what do you think you’re trying to pull – that’s cheatin!” By now Bill had moved well into my space and so I stepped away from the ball and looked back at him and said, Hell Bill, I’ve seen you and Dennis do this a hundred times.”
I knew I had him and grinned to myself thinking that this was as good as sinking the putt. But with Hooper you never get the last word and with a look of total seriousness he said, “But that don’t make it right.”
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