Fore! Play Read online

  We head to the first tee, kind of a dead-man-walking situation, except I already feel dead and look forward to playing 18 holes about as much as taking a few thousand volts.

  Billy finds some phosphorescent orange cheez–peanut butter crackers still in his bag from last season and graciously offers them to us. And here in the cold and rain of this Easter dawn we partake of the glowing crackers … and they’re not that bad. I do, however, feel that something is terribly, almost cosmically askew with this whole picture.

  Billy is resplendent in a red plaid tam-o’-shanter cap and matching, billowing knickers and long red socks. He’d better be good. Being the commissioner, he dictates that he and I are partners and that I’ll receive a two-stroke handicap per hole, Bert one stroke, and he and Dave no handicaps at all. He and Dave, the younger, will walk the course. Bert and I get a cart. My only break of the day, except I can’t get the seats to recline.

  The custom of making excuses begins. I learn that excuses are a big part of golf: “Sorry I’m not playing my best but I have an inoperable brain tumor today.” Common excuses include hangnails, blisters, flulike symptoms, new glasses, and death-of-pet. A lot of guys will limp, and say that six months ago their doctors told them they’d never walk again, let alone play golf. I was watching a golf documentary the other day (yes, I’m becoming one of Them) and it turns out that many golf greats over the years were in horrible accidents where the doctor told them they’d never walk again but each came back to win several championships. Inspiring, yes, but I couldn’t help but wonder: Was it the same stupid-ass doctor misdiagnosing every case?

  Bert complains of a sore wrist, and the compassion flows. We surmise that the sore wrist might have something to do with Bert’s date the night before—himself. The candles, the Hungry Man dinner, the single wineglass … This pretty much set the tone for empathy and human kindness shown throughout this Easter match.

  I have a phobia about the first tee. There are always other people standing around. I’m a private person. I always close the door when I go to the bathroom, for example, and some might suggest that what I do on a golf course is analogous.

  But my first drive is okay. My second shot, however, rolls into a ditch and my third into a sand trap. Not an auspicious beginning. No sense in holding back. I want them to see my complete game. After extricating my ball from the bunker there is a lot of putting, past the hole one way, then back past it the other, pendulum style, with the strokes becoming shorter and shorter until my ball finally plunks down in the hole. I think I had a 7 or 8 on the first—fairly short—hole.

  But hey! What chance do we have? It’s 43 degrees and drizzling and the Big Guy Upstairs is probably pissed off that we’re out here playing golf instead of worshiping Him. I mean, it is Easter!

  On hole 2, Bert hits into a sand trap. What’s worse, it’s a sand trap back on hole 1. Dave is already peeing on the bushes. I hit my drive behind a tree and use my first official foot wedge, kicking my ball ever so slightly just so I’m not behind the tree anymore. Bert hits out of the sand trap and his ball lands right near the green. No, not that green. He is in good position for par, but on hole 5. From behind the evergreens we hear him grumbling that he can’t find his ball, but he finds someone’s and blasts it clear across fairway 2 onto the campus of Bergen Community College, nearby. Fortunately, no students are present on the holiday.

  The fact is, the three of us don’t really see Bert all that much this day, as he plays on fairways of his own choosing, behind the tree lines. But eventually we all meet up again on the greens, and it’s always nice to see him again.

  Putting on those greens is a problem. They’re soaked and the ball inevitably rolls over a worm or two on the way to the hole. The place is crawling with ‘em. In my case, this could help. Anything that throws my putt offline is all to the good, either as an excuse or as something that might correct its course. There are currently a couple of pounds of mud and worm meat on my cleats. I’m letting it dry for jerky.

  On the third hole, Bert’s drive comes to rest in a little hole behind and touching a small tree. He could use the foot wedge, but doesn’t, a testimony to his character. From here he has to hit the ball left-handed with the back of his iron, an almost impossible shot, as he so demonstrates. Even Dave is struggling, playing over on another fairway. The cart path is missing, perhaps flooded out, and the golf cart becomes an all-terrain vehicle, bouncing in and out of gaping mud holes. Yet somehow, amidst all this, I garner a 6! Which is good. And another 6 on hole 4! With my 2-stroke-per-hole handicap, I actually win the hole! This is a Pyrrhic victory since it now makes me fair game for their relentless harassment.

  Hole 5 is a par-3, and the other three all put their first drives on the green! It is not a difficult hole. It is a downhill par-3 and Richie, the son of a friend of mine, once hit a grounder hole-in-one here—the only wormburner hole-in-one I’ve ever heard of.

  I do not hit my drive on the green. I opt to hit mine into the sand instead—thick, wet sand, with this huge protruding sod lip—a lip like you see on those tribesmen in National Geographic with the salad plates inside—hanging out and curling over my ball like a wave on Waikiki beach. I hit the ball, and it in turn hits that big lip, and rolls back into the sand. I hit it again! It hits the lip again, and rolls right back again, and I remember what Liz said about just giving up and picking your ball up at some point, which I finally did. I also remember to call the ball a son-of-a-bitch.

  On the green, they’ve laid the flag way over to one side, a good ten feet away from the line between my ball and the hole. “Is the flag in your way?” Billy asks politely, and they all laugh while I 3-putt.

  On the 6th, they harass me even as I try to tee off, a condition that only worsens when I become the only one of us to hit the ball onto the correct fairway. That same level of sportsmanship continues on the green. As Billy lines up his putt with intense concentration, Dave jingles coins in his pocket. Bert drops a club. I drop two clubs just as he swings, and two make infinitely more racket than one. He misses the putt, which is bad because he’s my partner. But I am learning the nuances of the game, the kind that are not taught at golf academies.

  On 7, a par-4 hole, I somehow make it on the green in 3 strokes. As I line up my putt for what would have been par—par!—Dave drops the flag, and so close by that it almost spears me. I blow the putt. But I tap it in for a 5. A real honest-to-God bogey! I am proud. I see pros make bogeys, and just to equal a golf feat that makes Tiger Woods furious makes my day.

  On the next hole, Dave steps up his attacks, which is flattering in a way. He purposefully steps on my ball in the fairway, driving it so far down into the soft rain-soaked earth that a backhoe couldn’t advance it. When he isn’t looking, however, I dig the ball out with my hand and place it on a tee. Bert sees me do it and helpfully suggests that when using tees illegally in the fairway, “always make sure they are green tees.” Thank you, Bert.

  I notice Dave peeing again, and immediately lodge a protest with the commissioner, asking that he invoke and enforce an arcane golf statute drafted by myself ad hoc stating that players must urinate at least one club length away from the cart path. But it is too late for an injunction this time. Just more “casual water” on a sodden course.

  Bert does well on 8, with the advantage of, in essence, having already played this hole. While playing a previous hole, he’d hit two errant shots here on 8, including one from a sand trap. On the fairway, Dave replaces my ball with one that’s been sawed in half and I of course don’t notice until after I’ve hit it—and even then it’s sort of hard to tell, closely resembling my other shots.

  Nine, I don’t want to talk too much about. It’s 544 yards and I do not hit for any kind of distance. 544? Would there be someplace along the way to stop and rotate the tires on the cart? I begin the long struggle and a mere 7 strokes later reach that far and distant green. Bert plays three fairways to get here. We embrace each other on the green like long-lost friends. He l
ooks older. He is. And I am older than everybody. After a mediocre shot, Billy complains: “That’s the trouble with being thirty-four.” Thirty-four? I have aftershave—Hai Karate—that’s thirty-four.

  “We’re half done,” Billy announces. Half? Three of us go into the clubhouse for strong coffee and to use the bathroom. Dave, you will recall, doesn’t need to use the bathroom. Left alone, he proceeds to the 10th tee and hits God-knows-how-many drives he’ll not tell us about before he hits one he likes.

  Hole 10 is good, in my opinion. I score a 6. Bert hits a fantastic drive, high and deep and this time right down Broadway. “Great shot, Bert,” says Billy. “Too bad about that lake.”

  “What lake?” asks Bert.

  “The big one there,” says Billy. “I guess you’re too short to see it over that little rise.”

  “This is your course,” Bert complains. “You’re supposed to tell us about that stuff.”

  “Oh yeah,” says Billy.

  On 11, I make another 6 and win the hole outright! I think everyone else had 8s. We don’t actually see Bert playing the hole, but we hear a lot of screeching of golf cart tires from behind a berm where he keeps hitting the ball and moving ten feet, hitting the ball and moving ten feet. We worry for a moment there’s been a head-on cart collision back there from the sound of things.

  A hundred yards beyond the 11th green lies another green on a different course, the adjacent yet worlds apart Ridgewood Country Club. Public golfers have been known to hit one over there and see what it’s like to putt on a green that costs more than fifty grand to play.

  On 12, Bert hits a particularly bad, short, wood shot, and Billy reminds him, helpfully, that this is not croquet. “Tough love,” Billy explains. “It’s the only way he’ll learn.”

  This is to be my best hole. A par-3. I hit a relatively bad slice off the tee, which goes to the right of the cart path, hits a tree, and lands in a flower bed behind some sort of … house … or something. I don’t really know what it is, but I do remember from previous experience it’s not good to be near dwellings. I hope that maybe the little house is some sort of way station on the course, with Bloody Marys and bathrooms and wood nymphs inside, but it turns out to be a … mausoleum. Probably filled with golfers who say things like, “Hey, Bert, this isn’t croquet.”

  The old mausoleum is cool. Better than the obstructions you see on mini-golf courses. I know it’s a mausoleum because there is a sign reading: “No Climbing On The Mausoleum.” And if I do? Are there specific penalties set forth for Climbing On A Mausoleum?

  This mausoleum lies between my ball and the green, and without being able to even see the green, I somehow hit a 9-iron out of the flower bed, through some trees, over the mausoleum, and onto the green about ten feet from the hole. Of course I miss the putt, which comes up one inch short. But one inch from par! Hallelujah!

  So, this is golf. One good shot, one good hole, and you gain a measure of confidence. You think maybe you have momentum, you think perhaps you’re “in the zone”—but, of course, you are not.

  And so it is that on the next hole—13—I drive a nasty slice into the trees, producing a clear, crisp, honest KNOCK! Somehow, it is pleasant to the ear. My next shot hits high in another tree and drops a good hundred feet straight down on the cart path, bouncing straight back up and, not to brag, quite high. That is kind of nice, too, in its way. Dave had just given me a ball with the name of a lumber company and millworks on it, and that seemed especially apropos as it struck wood twice in two strokes. I hit another 5-wood, then another and another. Maybe that’s what the numbers on the clubs mean: Hit the ball five times with the 5-wood.

  My fifth shot on this hole goes into the water. Bert tosses me another ball, but the toss is short and it, too, goes into the water. It’s that kind of day. I’m just thinking that all my shots are way too short, when someone else hits way too long, over the 13th green, and there is a loud THWACK! as the ball strikes the Bergen Community College Science Center. A good physics major in there can probably figure out how fast that ball was traveling when it impacted the building.

  Bert tees off on 14 and again his drive hits just short of the green … on 16. He plays that shot into a sand trap on yet another hole before holing out with a 7. Playing on other fairways was fairly common. I experience a number of hockey-style face-offs on the 14th fairway with guys going in the opposite direction toward the 13th green. No shame in that. But you do have to hit the dirt occasionally when truly bad golfers are hitting balls right at you.

  Billy—my partner!—is red hot, and dressed like he is, and with all his trash talk, he’d damned well better be. He’s red hot and not at all gracious about it. I admire that: a guy who is doing really, really well and still takes the time to belittle those less fortunate. On Easter. On the par-3 15th, his drive lands three feet from the hole and he birdies it. On 16, I myself am “up and down,” they tell me, meaning I chipped onto the green and 1-putted.

  Again, the confidence is rising, the momentum’s clearly on my side now, as I step to the next tee and drive what is to be the first of three attempts at a decent drive. After considering my options, I go with the second drive. I learn a valuable golf lesson. In golf, there is no frigging momentum.

  I notice that over on an adjacent green, a guy is actually throwing his putter and yelling “goddamnedsonofabitch!” His companions look frightened. We critique his style, which is just a straight toss, rather than the preferred windmill whipping action you like to see.

  Being guys, at the 18th tee we decide we’ll all just hit the ball as hard as we can, and this approach always yields some breathtaking shots.

  Let’s talk about Dave’s, shall we? Dave hits one of those drives that sort of reminds you of Challenger, as it rises majestically, higher and higher, farther and farther, like a rocket, and you go “ooooo”—until you begin to get this sick feeling in your stomach that something is going terribly wrong. In Dave’s case, it’s that his ball is going to land not one, but two fairways over. Bert gives him a lift in the cart, since he’s going that way after his own drive anyway. Bert is just the one fairway to the right and his second shot carries over the correct fairway onto the fairway to the left just short of a cemetery. A friend of mine refers to this as “military golf: left-right-left-right.”

  Personally, I once again hit my ball into the sand, and while the three of them leave to retrieve their balls from fairways unknown, I take the opportunity to just pick up my damned ball and toss it. I haven’t played in sand so much since kindergarten.

  After I toss the ball, I kick it toward the hole for good measure. After the sand problem, I have somehow managed to hit two successive decent shots and am very excited to be putting to perhaps win the 18th hole outright, until I remember about the tossing and kicking.

  I sink my putt, and joyously—because we’re finished—toss the ball toward a Dodge Neon in the parking lot, but of course I miss that, too.

  I am “in the clubhouse” with a solid 120. Bert holes out with an even 100. Dave a 91. Billy an 83. But, then, Billy has the scorecard. The team of Billy and me wins. My brother-in-law owes me six bucks (to this day). Once I get my 45 handicap legally established I’ll be beating them all.

  Being Easter and everything, I figure we’ll all hustle home to our families. Nah. We go into the bar for breakfast. We are a group of mud-splattered heathens, taking our own sweet time before heading home to righteously ill tempered spouses, who have hunted colored eggs with the children, dressed them, and taken them to church on Easter morn.

  We are golfers.

  4

  Do This, Don’t Do That: A Game of Rules and Etiquette

  Liz strongly suggested we learn the rules and etiquette of golf before hitting the course, and it was obvious I wouldn’t be learning them from Bert, Billy, and Dave.

  I purchased a copy of The Rules of Golf as approved by the United States Golf Association and the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews, Scotland, and was horrifi
ed. One hundred forty-four pages! And they said I really needed the companion 481-page Decisions on the Rules of Golf to boot.

  It appeared that not only the USGA and all the Royals and Ancients had put their two cents in, but the Pope, the Supreme Court, and various and sundry state legislatures and city councils as well.

  The books are as byzantine as any tort law tome I’ve ever laid eyes upon, chockablock with definitions and all manner of restrictions regarding provisional balls, casual water, crossing the margin, free drops, grounding of the club, lateral water hazards, loose impediments, nearest point of relief (not the men’s room), and (ouch) embedded balls.

  The rule book addresses such issues as whether snow and natural ice other than frost are “casual water” (any temporary accumulation of water on the course that is visible before or after the player takes his stance and is not in a water hazard) or “loose impediments” (natural objects such as stones, leaves, twigs, branches, and the like; dung, worms, insects, and casts or heaps made by them, provided they are not fixed or growing, are not solidly embedded, and do not adhere to the ball). Ice cubes, of course, are an “obstruction.” Having determined whether said snow is “casual water” or a “loose impediment,” the golfer must then turn to the applicable chapters to research what can legally be done about it. It’s surprising that golfers are only accompanied by caddies, and not by golf attorneys as well.

  Some sections are amusing, I must admit, and useful to players of my caliber, such as rule 25–3 regarding what to do when you find yourself on the “Wrong Putting Green.”

  The USGA receives hundreds of calls a year to rule on certain technicalities, and some of the decisions seem cruel. If your ball lands near an alligator in Orlando you must play it—dead or alive. A ball within ten feet of a rattlesnake in Arizona, however, may at times be deemed unplayable. If you hit a ball from within a water hazard and a fish is beached along with the ball and said fish blocks the next shot (not a common occurrence but it did happen in a recent NCAA women’s championship), the fish may be tossed back in the water with no penalty—if it is still flopping. Alive, the fish is defined as an “outside agency”; dead, it’s a “loose impediment” and moving it would cost you a stroke. Keep that in mind.