Fore! Play Read online

  “The Tour Power copper-magnetic wristbands provide copper to your body and allow more oxygen-rich blood to flow to your muscles,” explains the pitchman. “Biomagnetism works in the human body through the circulatory system, the nervous system, and the endocrine system to take strokes off your game.”

  There are magnetic gloves and gel insoles, acupuncture insoles, ionized yin-yang bracelets that are “a Gift of God,” and whole wearable electromagnetic fields by PulseGen.

  On display is the HP-568 Lux I massage chair for golfers, which did feel damned good after two days of walking the merchandise show. And the Golf-Doc first aid kit, with big bandages in it! Not since my friend was smacked by a windmill blade on the miniature golf course have I seen a need for bandages on a golf course.

  Out in the hallway, where booth space is cheaper, there is a man hanging—all day long—by both arms from what appears to be a swing set or medieval torture device. He is smiling, however, because he wants others to think he is enjoying himself and to buy his Soft Stretch machine that stretches out golfers in just the right way and makes them feel better.

  Pain Relief (physical): -3 strokes

  Cosmetology comes into play. You need sun protection, of course, but not just any sun protection, special sun protection formulated especially for golfers, like “Claro skin-care especially for golfers” that is nongreasy and sweatproof. When golf clubs fly out of your hands, it should be on purpose, in anger.

  Titanium is a magic word in the golf kingdom these days and there’s even a titanium golfer’s sunblock called Golfstik. I wonder if you look like the Tin Man after application.

  “If you don’t think sun protection will improve your game, just try playing with a really bad sunburn sometime, buster,” says Valerie from behind the Claro counter.

  Golf Sunscreen: -3 strokes

  “If you look good, you play good,” says the golf clothing salesman. “It goes without saying. It’s all about confidence.”

  The days of those hideous pink and green plaid golf pants for men are, unfortunately, over. It’s the one aspect of the game I truly enjoyed.

  Today’s golfer looks like Al Gore running for President, after consultants told him he looked too Washingtonian and he began wearing casual earth-toned polo shirts (Excuse me, is that the new Polo goose crap green you’re wearing?). When Gore wears them, they too look dull, by association. Like dress-down Fridays at the funeral home.

  So these guys tell me I must spend scads of money on top-of-the-line, drab golf wear. But should I? Is there anything worse than looking like a pro and playing like … me? And where to begin? All pro golfers seem to have their own lines on display at the show: Ben Crenshaw, Greg Norman, Jack Nicklaus, the noted golfer Tommy Hilfiger, Leon Levin (should I know him or is he Tiger Woods’s CPA?), Fuzzy Zoeller. Bobby Jones has a line but I don’t want to look like him … dead. There is also a line of nice golf clothes called Divots for some reason, which might be just the thing for me.

  Sharp (i.e., Dull) Clothes: -1 stroke

  “The hat you wear will make a difference in your golf game,” suggests the Tilley Hat salesman.

  While the new Miracle Visor at the show is “headache free,” “windproof,” and “dishwasher safe,” and the Greg Norman and Crocodile Dundee hats are enticing, we like best the extraordinary sales pitch for the Tilley Hat. It’s worn, we’re told, by elephant trainer Michael Hacken-berger, of the Bowmanville Zoo in Ontario, who has had his Tilley eaten and thoroughly digested by an elephant three times. He has retrieved it, back there in the back, each time and still wears it. “That ought to tell you something!” says the enthusiastic pitchman. Like: never stand downwind from Michael Hackenberger.

  Hat: −1 stroke

  We didn’t see any golf pills at the show, something I had seen at an infomercial convention in Vegas. Yes, there was a claim that taking a pill made you a better golfer. However, we did find at the PGA show Hole-In-One-Bars, snack treats sporting three power-packed herbs: ginseng, ginkgo, and guarana—the ginseng presumably for more energy to drive the ball; the ginkgo perhaps to give you the mental acuity to cheat wisely; and the guarana to … uh … replenish the body’s crying need for guarana after golfing? The bars come in lemon crisp, banana zinger, chocolate crunch, and the new peanut butter chocolate, and are also available in baseball, basketball, football, soccer, and tennis wrappers.

  Will this bar make me hit a hole-in-one? And can I eat eighteen in one day? “We cannot totally guarantee immediate holes-in-ones, but it should improve your game,” says the sales rep.

  Wash it down with Gatorade, according to folks at that booth, and your scores will plummet. Not to mention what will happen if you drop in a couple of LiFizz effervescent vitamin tablets, official vitamins of the PGA Tour.

  There is even a booth pushing human growth hormone spray, or “biogevity” spray, for better golf, not to mention enhanced “athletic performance, energy, cardiovascular functions, cholesterol levels, sexual function, musculature, weight management, injury/surgery healing, and feelings and vigor of youth.” The mouth spray is touted as cheaper and less painful than human growth hormone injections and can be carried in your pocket or golf bag. More socially acceptable than shooting up on the first tee, too.

  There are special golfers’ chocolates and golfers’ peanuts that have unspecified benefits. Maybe they’re titanium peanuts.

  Hole-In-One-Bars washed down with Gatorade spiked with official PGA Tour vitamins and a spritz of human growth hormone: -5 strokes

  And finally there is the power of prayer. At the Fellowship of Christian Athletes Golf Ministry (“impacting the world for Christ through golf”) booth, a representative reminds us that God is all powerful and could definitely help our golf games if He or She so chooses.

  But there are famines, wars, pestilence, floods, and so forth that could distract Him or Her from lending a hand with our putting. And we reminded ourselves that He or She just might decide to adversely affect our games, too, especially when we’re playing on Sunday mornings when we’re supposed to be worshiping Him or Her.

  God: −2 strokes (tough to figure, but we think the Omnipotent One oughta be good for 2 strokes—providing we don’t yell “Goddamnit!” or “Why God, Why?” after every shank, hook, slice, sand trap, or flubbed putt, for chrissake)

  So, let’s see, that works out to a grand total of:

  −59 strokes (if you forgo the Caddy Girls and club alarms). And we still haven’t deducted a massive number of strokes for space age golf clubs and high-tech balls.

  I still won’t break 80, but it’s a start … on one man’s journey to a glimmer of respectability.

  7

  Tiger and Me: Different Strokes for Different Folks

  Maybe if I watch Tiger Woods on TV, and imitate him. Golfers do, you know. I’ve seen them watching golf on TV and swinging their clubs along with him right there in the family room. Just like their wives do to Richard Simmons’s Sweatin’ to the Oldies tapes. The golfers break stuff, sometimes, lamps and things, but it’s for a good cause.

  It’s a perfect summer Sunday, 80 degrees, sunny and dry with just a wisp of a breeze. I know that only by way of the Weather Channel, because I’m sitting indoors all afternoon watching golf on television as are 20 million other Americans. Have we no lives?

  The telecast is sponsored by the good (solid) people at Viagra, which is a complete waste of money unless they can make the pitch to all these golf zombies that they might be able to use their new erections for putting. Their wives would have to dress up in Astroturf and lie down like a green to get any action from this crowd. And even then, I wouldn’t bet on it, wouldn’t take the flag stick out.

  Tiger Woods is on! He’s battling at Valhalla in Louisville for the PGA Championship, which he won the year before, and will of course win this time as everybody watching already knows. It’s worse than the World Wrestling Federation, where the underdog occasionally wins to maintain the suspense. Not here, not in professional golf
, not since Tiger arrived.

  I grab one of my wife’s irons and watch. But Tiger’s game is difficult to relate to. These touring professionals aren’t really playing the same game as you and I. Their shots look a lot different and there seem to be far fewer of them. And where are the mulligans? The gimmees? How can they play like this?

  Their shots even sound different, neat little Clicks! Not like mine that go: Thdth! Nwack! Thwup! Boink! Blutz! Gank! and Frang!

  Once in a while I hit a shot like the pros hit, and once in a while they hit a shot like I do. But you really have to look closely for their negatives to find common ground.

  And, yes, between those three-hundred-yard drives and thirty-foot putts, the negatives are there—even for Tiger. I watch him and am pleasantly surprised to note that he is clearly upset about his golf game much of the time—just like me! He shakes his head and mutters to himself when his shots don’t turn out the way he’d hoped. Just like me. Except, of course, his hopes are somewhat higher.

  I see Tiger seething when he misses a twenty-five-foot putt—same as me, except mine would be three feet. His putt is for 2 under, mine for somewhere over. He sticks his tongue out at the ball. I stick out my finger.

  Later, this very best golfer in the world actually misses a one-and-one-half-foot putt! For a double-bogey! I understand. I’ve had rounds with double-bogeys, too, but I was happy about them.

  He hits one into a little creek and the announcer explains he was “too quick in his transition.” I start to write that down, but realize he might just as well have said “transmission” because I don’t know what the hell he’s talking about.

  Tiger also puts his ball in a sand trap. Now, this is where I’d discreetly toss it at the hole. But he really can’t. Big gallery, big TV audience. And, anyway, his blast out of the sand lands 6 inches from the hole—and, frankly, I can’t throw it that accurately.

  And I loved this one. Tiger hit a ball that struck the cart track, bounced so high it hit some tree limbs, then rolled another fifty feet down the track away from the hole. That could have been me!

  I’m starting to relate. I draw back the iron there in the TV room, and on the backswing the club unfortunately catches the curtain rod, pulling it down. Just a little caf矣urtain, but it made quite a racket.

  “What was that?” Jody yells from the other room.

  “Scooter!” I scream, referring to our cat, who is also blamed for foul blustery aromas.

  Tiger’s cart track–tree shot looked just like mine, except he does not then go on to shoot a 9 on this hole, as I would. He pars the son-of-a-bitch!

  At this point the announcers pronounce that something is direly wrong with Tiger’s game today. On the other hand, the guy is winning the tournament, now isn’t he?

  Tiger yells “Goddamnit!” after one swing—just like me. Glad to see Tiger cursing. Thought he might be an automaton. His profanity-inducing, really bad shot has landed in tall grass, but his recovery shot comes to rest just inches from the hole. The man sure does recover well. I don’t recover. I’m terminal.

  The announcer says that Tiger’s shot from the high grass to the green “redefines courage.” Golf announcers say some pretty stupid things when they try to be profound. The announcer trying to wax poetic about Nicklaus passing the baton to Tiger sounds less like a poet laureate than he does like Jack Handy with his Deep Thoughts on Saturday Night Live—or a waitress at the IHOP delivering sickening blueberry-pineapple syrup to your table.

  The announcers say a lot of things I can’t quite comprehend, in large part because they’re describing a game so different from the one I try to play. They say things like “putting for the eagle”—things I never hear on the course. They say “an eight-footer for bogey is no fun,” when it sounds like a riot to me. They say Phil Mickelson’s thirty-foot putt is “certainly makeable” but to me it seems certainly not. When he hits one in a sand trap they say it’s “shocking.” Why? And they say things like “the second cut [of grass, apparently] is affecting backspin.” Could that be my problem?

  When a player makes a par they lament his “mistake … a squandered opportunity.” When a thirty-five-foot putt stops two and one half feet from the hole they call it “woefully short.” Harsh. And who can putt on such greens? They undulate wildly. Putts break one way, then the other. On one green they go downhill, then sharply uphill, before breaking at a 45 degree angle. Why not toss a couple of windmills and Goofy’s nose on the green while you’re at it?

  I’m sure glad I don’t have to play with these guys whispering into microphones about my game. When Fred Funk misses a putt they mutter a mournful “mercy,” and when he bogeys a hole they call it “a disaster.” (Frankly, a guy named Fred Funk needs no further aggravation.) Sergio García is only 2 under par, so they feel compelled to explain that he has a fever. When Olazabel (the man with the unfortunate middle name “María”) chips, they cry “oh noooo!” even though he’s chipped onto the green. And winds up shooting a 63!

  Davis Love misses the green with a 140-yard iron. “Awwww!” goes the crowd, as the announcer intones: “You wonder how he can hit a shot like that”—meaning “that badly.” Hey! Over here! I can answer that.

  They jinx people, like Fred Funk, who they call “the greatest driver on the tour” a nanosecond before he whacks one into the woods. They call hole 2 “juicy white-meat” for some reason, and they say things that make absolutely no sense to the bad golfer, like, “He doesn’t want to hit it too close to the hole; he wants to be able to take a full swing.” Doesn’t want it too close to the hole??!

  The broadcast is all very soothing, conducive to snoozing. I wonder if advertisers get built-in discounts for the snooze factor? Jim Nance, the announcer, has a pacifying, mellifluous voice. If he interjected “Russian ICBMs are scheduled to hit fifty U.S. cities in ten minutes, folks,” you’d still remain in your La-Z-Boy to see if Notah Begay made his birdie. And Jim would remain there at the mike to call it for you. (Notah Begay, while sounding like a curried muscle balm, is actually a player on the tour. As is the aforementioned Fred Funk, who sounds like a perpetually depressed cartoon character.)

  I hear Jim comment on the fragrance of the flowers, hear him describe shots as “lovely.” Does he ever do hockey? Unlike announcers for the NBA or the WWF, for example, golf announcers whisper a lot. They are speaking quietly and reverently, as if in church. The color commentator has an English accent, adding a veneer of sophistication to the proceedings.

  The courses are beautiful, the fairways mown in patterns, the greens perfectly smooth, the bunkers brimming with white sand. Flowers bloom. Birds are constantly chirping. None of that damned “CAW-CAWing” I hear in my yard at 6:00 A.M. either, just little tweets and chirps. You can hear the birds so clearly it seems they’re either wearing lavalier microphones, or somebody in the truck is “sweetening” the sound with birdcall tapes.

  Even the applause, which comes after almost every shot, is soothing, sounding muffled somehow.

  Occasionally you hear piano music in the background. Now, where the hell is the piano? Where I play, on ratty public courses, it’s more like Dr. Dre on a boom box.

  The game of grace and beauty being played before these announcers lends itself to such genteel coverage. This game is more akin to ballet than the break dancing in water skis style that I play.

  These pros hit with beauty and grace, but also with the precision of machines. I recall attending a PGA Seniors tournament, where I stood behind a green looking back down the fairway at tiny, barely perceptible figures hitting golf balls that seconds later somehow plunked down on the green and bit down still. Astonishing! These guys know they hit a certain iron 192 yards—no more, no less—and by God they do, shot after shot. My best guess for that same iron would be, oooh, let’s see, somewhere between 35 and 125 yards. If I was in the artillery, I’d wipe out every soldier on our side with “friendly fire.”

  I see the pros lining up their approach shots on 13 at Valhalla, where
their target is a green raised up twenty-two feet and sitting on a wall of rocks surrounded by a moat. And I watch them lofting the balls, and I see the balls gently landing and staying still right in the center of the green. And in that same instant I picture myself hitting a low line drive into that rock wall, and I hear the awful crack, and see the ball ricocheting into the water. I even see my next shot, where the ball overshoots the green and plops down in the water on the other side. I see that all very clearly.

  They play a different game. These players don’t do doglegs. On the first hole, Tiger doesn’t go down the fairway with his first shot, then turn left and go down the dogleg with his second. He cuts the corner, hitting it over the trees so he winds up in the same place after one shot that he would have been after two. If I were playing against him, I would call that cheating. But, then, I wouldn’t be, now would I?

  A graphic comes on the screen showing Tiger’s drives are averaging 308.5 yards. I think they must mean feet, because that would work out to about 100 yards, which is a nice drive, in my opinion. The graphic says he hits his drives with 82.1 percent accuracy, whatever that means. Everything is quantified: He has a 61 percent sand save average. I don’t even like to keep score.

  Scott Dunlap is Tiger’s partner! How’d you like to be Tiger’s partner, with thousands of people watching you and millions more on TV and you’d never ever won a tournament? Somehow, however, he manages to stay with Tiger the entire round, matching him stroke for stroke, and the announcers refer to him as “the improbable Scott Dunlap.” He finishes the day just one stroke behind Tiger, but when I tuned in for the next day of the tournament Scott wasn’t listed anywhere among the leaders, and most of them were far, far behind Tiger. Where was Scott? Probably in a Home For Tiger’s Partners now, finger-painting and banging his head against the wall.