Shock and Awe

Played a member-guest tournament the other day. I won’t say where or with whom, in order to protect the innocent. But let’s just say it was an eye-opening lesson in the so-called rules of golf. I had been looking forward to this event for days because it was at a very nice golf course and they were serving both lunch and dinner. The swag included two golf hats and a logo-emblazoned divot tool that came with not one, but two magnetized ball markers. Plus we got some free Titlist balls, although I must say the Titlist representative was a bit snotty when I asked if they had any pink balls. “Titlist does not make pink balls, and they never will,” he said gruffly. Well, excuuuuse me!

Anyway, my partner and I were matched up with two gentle-looking older ladies who were dressed to the nines (does that expression come from golf, i.e. the ninth hole?) and wearing enough makeup to go onstage at the opera. I’ll call them Thelma and Louise and soon you’ll see why. They told us they were both 70 years old, and although they looked decades younger, they did act their age. From the way they tepidly sipped their coffees and gingerly removed the head covers from their clubs, I knew it was going to be a slow round.

I was already pretty antsy from having a second cup of coffee (note to self: resist the urge to drink coffee right before a round), and after we arrived at our first tee, I bolted out of the cart and took my first shot as the other ladies were still getting their bearings. I was in such a hurry that I pulled my tee shot way left and couldn’t recover, ending up with a bacon and egg for the very first hole!  

Meanwhile, my partner also pulled her tee shot left, and there was much confusion over whose ball was whose, since we coincidentally both played the same goddarn yellow Titlist balls, and both with the same number 3 on them! I mean, what are the odds? My partner switched her ball in the fairway, even though I said we should wait till the next hole, since it’s against the rules.

Not that rules mattered that day, because Thelma and Louise, those partners-in-crime, proceeded to break just about every golf rule I know. Thelma would regularly move her ball in the fairway if she didn’t like the lie, and if she lost a ball in the trees, she would use a liberal 5 club-length rule to replace her ball. When she lost her ball in the water, she didn’t see the need to drop inside the clearly marked drop zone, and instead dropped a few feet outside it, where the ground was in better shape.

And forget all the rules of putting! If Thelma or Louise made it to within a few inches of the hole, they didn’t count the extra stroke it took to actually hole out. They would also concede each other’s putts if they were three feet out, even though only me and my partner had the authority to give them putts. On the closest-to-the-pin hole, Louise was the only one to make the green, and even though we measured her distance as 32 feet 8 inches from the hole, she rounded it down to 32 feet even.

Throughout the round, Louise kept looking at her watch, and I wondered why, till I realized it was a laser range finder, a device typically not allowed in tournament play. She also carried about 17 clubs in her bag, which is three more than the 14 clubs you’re supposed to carry.

I was so flabbergasted witnessing all the rules-breaking that it mentally exhausted me, and I ended up shooting a giant-leap-backward 109. If I had played by their lenient “rules,” I am sure I would have scored much lower. The format was better ball, with a handicapping system that my partner and I didn’t understand. Earlier in the round, Thelma and Louise offered to take both of our scorecards and calculate the handicapping for all of us. So we never saw our “official” scores at the end. We were supposed to sign and attest each other’s scorecards, but I never saw those scraps of paper again.

At least the dinner was good. Roast beef and crab cakes with Caesar salad and green beans and roast potatoes, plus strawberry shortcake for dessert. Thankfully, Thelma and Louise didn’t sit with us. They went to go sit with their husbands instead. If I shared a table with them, I am sure I would have been tempted to say something.

Instead, I relaxed and ate my dinner, thinking none of the cheating mattered anyway since there was no ladies division for the tournament and the likelihood was the winners would all be men.

Imagine my shock when Thelma and Louise were announced as the third-place prize winners of the tournament! It wasn’t as if the two needed to break the rules; they hit the ball well and carried their own for the most part. It's one thing to bend the rules during a friendly round, but to win a tournament by cheating just seemed so pointless to me. Where is the fun in winning when you took unfair advantages to get there?

As they rose and went to receive their gift card prizes, I just shook my head and got another piece of cake. There’s a saying that goes “If you don’t play golf by the rules, then you’re not playing golf.” So that’s the first time I saw someone win a golf tournament by not playing golf. But -- if I am to believe my husband who says cheating is rampant in these ego-driven member-guest tournaments -- it probably won’t be the last.

The Tell-tale Signs of the Female Golfer

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The Personal Round Timer

Hubby and I had a Sunday tee time at Rocky Point this past weekend with Debbie Harry and her husband. It’s a gorgeous public course near the water, but the last time I was here, I was eaten alive by mosquitoes. This time, it was a sunny day in the mid-70s, with blue skies and not a hint of humidity in the air. The course was packed with tee times every 7 minutes. The rangers were strict too. They carried walkie-talkies, and the ranger on the first hole radioed another ranger, complaining about our husbands. “These guys are waiting too long to tee off. They’re letting their wives tee off first!” But after the ranger saw how far our hubbies drove their balls, he understood why they waited till the group ahead was safely on the green, and he rode up and apologized.

Apparently pace of play is something of a problem at this course. They even have a gadget on the golf cart steering wheel to time each round. The gadget was like a clip-on beeper with an electronic screen showing the time remaining in your round and what hole you should be on, e.g. “4 hours 35 minutes… you should be on Hole 2 Fairway.” As the round progressed, we fell more and more behind, usually not through any fault of our own.

On a tough par 5 on the back nine, we dallied a bit looking for balls in the rough and we sacrificed a couple of balls in the water. That's when we really lost ground. By the 17th hole, our personal round timer said “0 hours 0 minutes… you should be on the 19^th hole.” Well, the 19^th hole, as any golfer knows, is the bar at the clubhouse. But this being a public course, the closest bar was probably somewhere down the road. I don’t think they’d let us drive the golf carts that far.

And what if we took the personal round timer with us, would it continue to tell us where we should be and at what time? “It’s 5 minutes after your round… you should be in the parking lot taking off your golf shoes.” “It’s 7pm… you should be home making dinner.” “It’s midnight… you should be asleep. Why are you still up watching TV?”

Suppose we had personal life timers. What would they say? “You’re 17 years old… you should have lost your virginity by now.” “You’re almost 30… you should be married by now.” “You’re 35 already… you should have 2 kids and a house with a garage by now.” “You’re 45… you should have made your first million by now.” “You're 88… you should be dead by now. Why are you still up watching TV?”

Golf and life have a lot of things in common, but timing isn’t one of them. In golf, you can’t skip holes the way you can skip events in life. Can you imagine someone saying, “I think I’ll take a pass on that par 3… I just don’t think I'm ready.” Yet it is perfectly reasonable that a married woman forgoes having kids and goes straight to the golfing phase of life.

Golf has rules about pace of play. Life doesn’t. Thank goodness for that. 

A Swing Thought Probably Only a Woman Would Have

"Oooh, look at the pretty butterfly! Now, shoo!"

Some Good Eggs

On Tuesday, after a stressful morning due to some work-related agita, I met up with Debbie Harry at a local golf course for an afternoon round. It had rained a lot lately, so the ground felt the way I felt, like a scraggly, beaten-down mess. The sky was overcast, and we played under the constant threat of rain. I tried to shake my mood, but like the gray clouds, it hung around and wouldn’t blow over.

A couple holes in, we joined up with an OMG ahead of us. He was having a hard time keeping up with the two younger guys he’d been paired with, so he decided to join us instead. He was a nice OMG, with kind advice and golf anecdotes, although one time he prefaced a long putt by saying to himself, “Rotsa ruck.” I think he was trying to be funny, and given his age, I assume he was genuinely unaware that the phrase is considered offensive to some folks of Asian heritage, like myself. So I let it slide, especially since he parceled out “Nice shot!” and other compliments to Debbie Harry and me with parity. Deep down, I knew he was a good egg.

He left after nine holes, saying that’s about all he had energy for. Debbie Harry and continued on to play the back nine. My driving held up for the most part and I had two long runners going as far as 193 and 219, though I think there was a helping wind. After shooting 50 on the front nine, I didn’t think I could break my course record of 91, so my new goal was to break 100. I might have made it if I hadn’t landed in a bunker full of wet sand on the 18^th resulting in a quintuple bogey (aka bacon and egg) on the par 5. I took two shots out of one bunker, only to land in another bunker. I spent so much time in those sand pits, I felt like an astronaut exploring craters on the moon.

So the high point turned out to be back at the turn. The OMG left after the 9^th hole, but 10 minutes later, he came riding back, holding up a yellow ball. “I found that lost ball of yours,” he said to Debbie Harry. And she thanked him, surprised. Then he reached back into his cart and handed me this:

“I noticed you were playing Top Flite, and I don’t think that’s a very good ball, so I wanted you to have some of these.” I thanked him, also in surprise. Yup, he was a good egg.     

T. Rex Golf Tip

Reunited the foursome last week – Seri, Bea, Debbie Harry and me – and it was great to see how everyone had improved. That morning, I had just read an article in the latest issue of Golf Magazine where Davis Love III explains his 9 best moves. The tips were all fundamental -- keep your head behind the ball, start with your weight on a flexed right leg, keep your left arm long on the takeway -- but they were great reminders. One picture of Mr. Love reminded me of a right triangle, with his head at the vertex angle lined up almost on top of his right foot at the base.

I kept these basic in mind as I teed off throughout the round, and lo and behold, Big Bopper is back! Out of 11 countable drives (excluding par 3s and one par 4 that I pulled into the trees), my driving average was 177 yards, with none shorter than 165 and the longest one going 200 yards. Maybe it was the drier conditions allowing for more bounce and roll, but I like to think it’s my technique. I kept my left arm nice and long all the way back and through. It felt like the way you would swing a sledge hammer if you were going to hit a gong.

So, with apologies to T. Rex, here was my swing thought that day:

Keep arms long…

Bang a gong…
Get it on!

Of course, I still only shot a 98 for the round. That's because my putting still sucks. Gotta work on that.