:: Surviving the round ::
"You prick! I hope you lose 53 balls (ha!), hit every water hazard and bunker on the course, and get kicked off the course for holding everybody up and generally being the worst golfer in history." - Kelsey's message to me yesterday, after my Facebook status bragged that I would be golfing while everyone else was working.
When I was in high school, I had a friend, let's call him Mike (because that was his name) who loved to tell stories. And by stories, I mean blatant fucking lies. Now, I've never begrudged a person for embellishing a good story ever-so-slightly - God knows I've been known to tell a good drawn-out story now and then - but Mike's fibs were so ridiculous they were beyond believable. In fact, looking back on it now, I wonder why none of us called him on his bullshit, but that's besides the point I guess.
One of my favourite Mike stories included the time he was a pitcher in a Little League game and accidently hit the batter in face, and his pitch was so incredibly fast that the ball stuck in the kid's forehead and when they took it out, you could basically see his brain.
I'm not even making this up - this was the story told by a 15 or 16 year old.
Then there was the time that he took his 2-wheel drive truck off-roading, smashed the shit out of all his fog lights and punctured a tire, then tried to tell ICBC that somebody had vandalized his truck in the school parking lot. The insurance adjustor took one look at his truck, saw the undercarriage caked with mud (which he stupidly didn't think to clean off), and told Mike to get the fuck out, and never try pulling that shit again or he'd be charged with attempted insurance fraud. To this day, he'll never admit the truth.
However, for the purposes of this post - which eventually will be about golf, I promise - my all-time favourite Mikeism was his tale about a round of golf he once played. He told us once that, when he was 13 or 14, he was golfing on a PGA course, and on a Par-3 he got a hole-in-one.
Now, consider so far the holes in this story:
- Mike was just as bad at golf as we were, if not worse. The odds of him hitting a hole-in-one on any course, ever, in the history of time, were about 53,000:1.
- He had never travelled anywhere, and with no local course being of the PGA variety, the mere idea that he set foot on a pro golf course was impossible.
However, despite these pretty significant problems with his story, Mike proceeded to dig himself into an ever bigger lie when he described how it happened. To hear him tell it, his tee shot made it just to the side of the green, then it clanged off the clubhouse (or some other on-course building), then hit an old man who was doing some maintenance (seriously), and then bounced off the man and into the cup.
So...yeah. That is my favourite golf story ever. Me and some friends from high school still laugh about it to this day, about 12 years after its first telling.
And now, the point of this story (I told you earlier I tend to ramble, what the hell did you expect?): Yesterday afternoon, Bobby and I golfed a round at Newlands that, at times, was nearly on par (pun intended) with Mike's story.
Well, in truth it's not really very close at all, but it was still the craziest round I've golfed in a couple years, and I wanted to tell you about it. (But I also wanted to write about my old friend Mike's stupid stories, so I had to find a way to combine them).
We teed off at 11:52 a.m., and the first tee box is oddly situated - it's elevated, and tucked right between the restaurant and the pro shop. I teed off first, and expected to hit a mighty slice (it's just what I do). However, no slice I've ever shot topped this one - after making contact with the ball, it did not travel the usual 85-100 yards before fading right. Instead, it went right immediately after contact, and smashed into the pro shop window.
(editor's note: Hi, I'm the next Tiger Woods. Nice to meet you)
Slightly embarrassed, I took a mulligan and tried again. Clang. Once more, off the pro shop, and into the garden. Lost ball #2. Now I was pissed off. So I teed off one more time, and this time successfuly got the ball 15 yards out - thus missing the pro shop hat trick - before it curved hard right and nearly killed some people on the putting green.
Now really mad, I just decided to hit from somewhere up the fairway so I could get on with things. So, we continued on our way up the fairway, and after Bobby rattled a few shots off some trees, we were both equally rattled and angry.
"Let's just get this fucking hole over with," we said.
So we hopped into the cart, planning to finish the hole asap. I stepped on the gas.
Nothing.
Put it in reverse. Nothing.
The fucking cart was dead.
So, we left our stuff there, on the edge of the first fairway, and marched back to the pro shop to explain what happened and get another cart. Soon, we had a working cart, went back to our old cart and transferred all our gear over. However, as we got set to continue, we realized that there were about 4 different groups on the par-5 hole, including a pair of old guys right where we were.
So we waited. And the people behind us waited. And the people on the tee waited too. We (or, to be specific, the course's broken cart) single-handedly delayed a whole ton of people before even finishing the first of 18 holes.
We rushed through the second hole, a short par-3, and the third was a rush job too. I was so rushed and rattled, in fact, that I lost another couple balls with my terrible slice. It was at this point thatI realized my summer goal of breaking 100 was not to be reached today. If I could break 115 that would be a small miracle.
By the fourth hole, we started calming down, and ended up joining up with the two old dudes in front of us - both of whom were awful golfers too, and one of the guys looked like John Madden's identical twin, which was actually pretty kick-ass.
Anyways, the next 15 holes went OK, although I eventually lost my eighth and final ball and had to borrow a couple from Bobby (plus I found a couple, which helped). In fact, I even had a couple of birdie putts (which I obviously missed) and I re-learned how to hit my three-wood from the fairway, which was another bonus.
But my main source of enjoyment was watching John Madden golf. I already mentioned his age - probably late 60s or early 70s - and because of this, he was certainly not the strongest guy, and his tee shots were pretty short, although usually straight. His mid-range game wasn't too bad either, but what was awesome was his putting.
It was absolutely terrible. He assumed every putt - no matter the green, no matter the distance - had a break on it, and he'd play it as such. He pushed every single putt at least a foot wide, sometimes much more.
And then he'd swear and piss and moan and complain about the course.
"This fucking course is a joke. Where's the break!? We're on a hill for crissakes!"
"I'm never making the mistake of coming here ever again. This is ridiculous."
I'd guess from these outbursts that he was either a) losing his marbles in his old age, and therefore thought he was much better than he actually was, b) having stroke and therefore not seeing straight, or the most likely, c) He was a pretty good golfer in his younger days, and could not come to grips that his game was getting worse as he aged.
Whatever the case, he was fun to watch. He didn't even putt out on probably 8-10 of the holes. He'd just make his putt from 6-8 feet, miss it by 30 yards or so, swear, pick up his ball and stomp over to his cart, where he'd sit and stew until the rest of us were finished.
And after we finished on the 18th green (well, he finished first because he just picked up his ball and went to the cart), we went over for the customary "Thanks for the round" handshake, and all he grumbled was, "You too. Now let's get the fuck out of here and go to the bar."
And then, the best part - when we added up our scores afterward, I had shot a 102.
Somehow, despite losing seven balls (and taking the penalty strokes that come with them) I had, inexplicably shot the best round of my summer.
102. If I took away the shitty first hole, in which I nearly killed a man on the putting green, I would have fucking done it. When I get back from Vegas, I still have a week's holidays, and I plan on golfing that fucking course until I get to 99 or better.
And if I have to kill a man on the putting green to make it happen, or bounce a hole-in-one off the head of John Madden's grumpy identical twin, I'll do it, so help me God.
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