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.