For Whom Golf Is A Religious Experience, Part 1
Ah, the season has finally arrived. The trees have all budded, the grass is greening up, and you can once again hear the familiar sound of small dimpled balls splashing into serene pools of water, followed by a chorus of profanities and excessive self-loathing coming from the person responsible for said errant shot. Yes, of course I’m talking about summer, but more importantly, golf season has officially arrived!
Now I know avid golfers don’t define the golf season by some arbitrary date on a calendar – truth is that they will jump at most any chance to get out and hit the links if it means squeezing in one last round for the year or getting a head start on the new season. You know the type. The ones who you will see out on a course in mid-February when temps have barely creeped into the mid-thirties, just enough to melt the last of the snow and expose the brown matted grass beneath. The usually lush, manicured fairways looking more like some door-to-door salesman’s unkempt toupee, a tapestry of dormant vegetation yet to wake from its winter slumber. Between indoor driving ranges, watching tournaments on TV, golf shows, and mid-winter golf excursions to Hilton Head or the Arizona desert, there is really no start or end to their season. Just a constant blur of golf. To these fanatic golfers, this is perfectly normal behavior. So, when it comes to the religion of golf, they are certainly not going to take their cues about accepted social norms from a bunch of non-golf playing heathens, agnostics who don’t know what it’s like to put all of your faith in a caddy and let your eight iron rip on a blind approach to an elevated green, who have never had to retrieve a wayward bunker shot from the edge of an alligator infested pond, or who would frown upon taking out a second mortgage on their home to pay the green fees and bar tabs for multiple leagues. No, it’s a complex belief system that few understand, and for those of us on the outside, can often resemble more of a cult than some sort of spiritual calling.
There is a group of guys that I have been golfing with since 2012. While I wouldn’t say they’re exactly the type of extreme golfer I described above, each of them are accomplished golfers in their own rite. All three of them are definitely more skilled and serious about the sport than I ever was, so just being around and having a chance to learn from these guys has definitely helped me up my game. But beyond that, it’s the genuine camaraderie, joking around and good-natured ribbing that makes golfing with this particular foursome so enjoyable. Just for laughs, I thought I would present this two-part blog series as a way of introducing you to each of these characters, while recounting some of the funniest stories from our times together out on the course.
