Fore! Play (25 page)

At televised PGA events you don’t see members of the ground crew aerating the greens, removing big plugs, with a machine,
while you’re putting
. I don’t think we were being taken seriously. You don’t see dogs copulating on the course on TV either, but you do here.

On the next hole, my drive lands on the fairway—hurrah!—and bounces just barely into the rough. O’Day’s drive is on the fairway,
but not as close to the hole as mine. Mine has a chance of being best ball! Oliphant rushes me to the scene in his cart.

“Your ball has an
awkward
lie,” he proclaims.

“If a ball has an awkward lie, you can
adjust
it?” I ask.

“Yes,” Pat says, “with your feet and hands. You can just toss it to a better spot, although kicking is not as noticeable.”
Without even looking, this BGA pro nonchalantly and adroitly gives my ball two short kicks, soccer-style, out of the rough
onto the fairway.

McMeel arrives: “This is why Pat is known on the golf course as ‘The Tailor.’ He’s a master craftsman at making alterations
and adjustments, shortening, lengthening, moving, letting it out a little.” And I must say, he certainly had tailored my rather
unsightly shot into “best ball"!

The next fairway has a big lake right in the middle of it. McMeel explains to me the physics of golf balls and water, and
the ongoing battery of scientific tests concerning the propensity of water to exert a gravitational pull on golf balls, thereby
pulling them down into the water in a most dastardly fashion.

“Until those tests are completed,” he explains, “the BGA allows golfers to place a provisional ball on the other side of water
hazards without penalty.”

So trying to drive over the water was just for fun, didn’t count. Possibly because it isn’t necessary, I do in fact hit my
drive over the water in complete dryness. So does O’Day, of course, followed by McMeel, who sees two perfect drives sucked
down by that unexplained pull.

“Do you have a snorkel in your golf bag?” asks Oliphant. “A rubber raft?”

Then he steps up and executes the shot of the day. Pat puts a little something extra into his tee shot in an attempt to clear
the lake. His ball blasts off at a low angle, hits the water, but skips twice on the surface, and carries to dry land, where
it hits a tree, ricochets off a fence, hits a golf cart, shoots straight toward a TV crew covering the tournament, scatters
them, and plops back into the water.

We stand in stunned silence. Finally, McMeel speaks for us all: “
That
, is the shot of the day!” Best I’d seen. Ever. The three of us break into applause.

“Do I get the Buick?” Oliphant cries. McMeel says, “No, but you’re up for the Gerald Ford Public Safety Award.”

Possibly owing to shots like that, the galleries are smaller than I’d expected at a national tournament. Apparently they were
bigger last year, but many fans are still out with injuries. Two women sitting on a bench by the next tee say that they sometimes
find it necessary to get behind or under the bench.

The day is peppered with shouts of “Fore!” “Watch out!” “Duck!” “Hit the dirt!” “We surrender!” “Hey, asshole!” and the like,
as these bad golfers spray the course with errant shots. Word is that a squirrel has been killed or perhaps just coldcocked
by one such shot. The course isn’t safe for man nor beast.

“If you hit anybody or anything,” advises Oliphant, “it’s best to leave the area as quickly as you can.” He carries a collection
of other people’s business cards so that if he does any damage he can express his regrets and leave the card so they can contact
“him” should there be medical or repair bills. As the rule book clearly states: “The BGA believes that litigation has no place
in the game of golf. Any maneuver employed to protect the reputation of the game and its adherents is to be applauded.”

O’Day tells of breaking the windshield of a car once with one of his shots and his stunned partners looking at him and asking,
“What are you going to do?” To which he replied: “I think I’ll change my grip a tad, maybe rotate my hands a quarter inch
on my next try.”

The next hole is 592 friggin’ yards. “Can’t be!” wails Oliphant. “Did you bring something to eat? We’ll need a picnic basket.”
We tee off, hop into his cart, and set out to find our balls. When we come upon his—in the fairway!—instead of stopping the
cart he leans out, snatches his ball on the move, and gives it a cart ride another hundred yards. We dub this “taxiing” the
ball to the green. From the moving cart he tosses it onto the green, with great accuracy. Very impressive, but you have to
remember that he’s been cheating a long, long time.

This elongated hole—a third of a mile!—takes forever, after which we’re so tired we decide to skip the next hole. We are encouraged
to do this by the course starter, who makes a special trip out from the clubhouse to tell us we’re playing too slowly. He
is obviously unfamiliar with BGA rules: “Golf is not a game to be hurried. Therefore never allow another group to play through.”

On the next hole, the green abuts a narrow street with houses just on the other side. I hit a ball too hard, over the fence,
over the street, and over a house.

“Hear that?” shouts Oliphant. “I think I heard the ping of a Weber grill in that guy’s backyard.” I can’t try to retrieve
it as there is barbed wire on the top of the fence surrounding the course, which I think has less to do with keeping interlopers
out of the exclusive club and more to do with keeping BGA golfers in. I drop a new ball by the fence.

“Oh, you found your ball,” says Oliphant. “Any barbecue sauce on it?”

As I try to putt, my partners continue to advise and encourage me, jingle change in their pockets, and say, “There go those
two dogs again.” Not to mention, someone drives the cart onto the green itself, parking it between my ball and the hole. I
offer sportingly to putt beneath the cart, but am told that, even by BGA rules, the cart must be moved to another spot on
the green.

By the 16th hole, we’re all dragging, and the gimmee putts grow longer and longer. We’re getting a tad surly. I am roundly
criticized for not keeping my shots close enough to the cart track, thereby taking up too much time and energy. On the 17th
green Pat suggests, “Let’s not putt,” and all four of us pick up our balls and move on. “Whose big idea was 18 holes anyway?”
someone asks, and we decide to just skip 18 altogether.

It’s going to be tough to score this round, but skipping two holes is still one of the quickest ways I know to take 15 strokes
off your game. But where do we stand? Has McMeel made up the scores yet? Who won?

Back at the clubhouse everyone is boasting about how badly they played. But who is bad
est?
Who is Worst-Of-Field? Is it McMeel, or Pat, or me, or someone else? I’m not even sure I’m the worst in our foursome. One
thing is certain: The future is bright for the BGA, what with McMeel and Oliphant leading the way and more and more bad golfers
taking up the game every day.

Scores are difficult to calculate, what with the various ball adjustments and skipping holes and such. And no one ever seemed
to be writing anything down. “Would you?” asks McMeel.

I figure O’Day shot somewhere in the high 80s, plus the two holes we skipped, giving him about a 97. McMeel, Oliphant, and
I were at about 115, plus the throws, kicks, penalty strokes, and those skipped holes, which puts us at right about the 135
mark. But that great shot of Pat’s: skipping off the water, into a tree, a fence, a cart, nearly killing members of a TV crew,
then back into the water—well, that sort of took the cake. I’m not taking anything away from myself, I’m not saying I’m not
as bad or worse than he is, I’m just saying that this day he has been just
sensationally
atrocious.

And, there are rumors that some guy is in the clubhouse, atop the leader board (or buried somewhere beneath it), with a legitimate
188! Extraordinary. The man has almost shot his weight.

Who is the absolute worst? Who is the best of the worst? Who knows? But in the Bad Golfers Association tournament, it can
truly be said that there are no winners, that everyone here is a loser—and that’s the beautiful thing.

“You’ve proven that you belong here among the nation’s elite bad golfers,” President McMeel says to me at the closing ceremonies—and
he does offer to give me a sash proclaiming me the worst in my state.

Unfortunately, with this array of talent, not everyone can lose. This day, I am not the worst golfer in the world, and I am
not the best of the worst. I am nothing. Not to mention, a guy from the pro shop shows up with a bill for $300 to replace
the club I’d beheaded.

At golf, I just can’t win.

Still Par Free

A
t this point, after spending many months at the game, I realize that I still haven’t purchased clubs. This may be a measure
of my commitment. I haven’t bought clubs and I haven’t joined any. I haven’t shopped for golf attire and I haven’t been asked
back by anyone to play a second time.

I believe I have definitely improved, although my scores don’t reflect this. After my lessons, and using my wife’s good clubs,
I can hit the ball straighter more often. And do I ever hit it more often. But still not very far. I’ve developed into a consistently
bad golfer—rather than a spectacularly horrendous one. Golf seems to take time, effort, and dedication—and isn’t that too
bad?

I have developed something akin to respect for good golfers and a better appreciation of the game. I kind of like to watch
it on TV, although I didn’t really need another reason to vegetate in front of the set, now did I? And I can now chat about
golf with friends at parties: “Olazabel faded a 3-iron 225 to the apron, no bite, dead within the leather—rub of the green.”
Abso-friggin’-lutely!

As for my future in golf, I am troubled by a recent court ruling in my home state of New Jersey that held liable an inexperienced
golfer like myself who was playing on a public course and hit a partner in his foursome with his tee shot. Deeply troubled.
The victim was sitting in a golf cart ten or fifteen feet ahead of the tee at about a 45 degree angle when the novice hooked
one. The hittee thought he was safe because the guy had just sliced his first tee shot. This is an all too familiar pattern.
So, on the advice of my golf attorneys, until and unless that appellate ruling is overturned, I really can’t afford to continue.

And besides, I’m still not quite sure I like golf. I like the carts and the cocktails and the idea that even in my “middle
age” (middle of some serious decay) there is a “sport” in which I could possibly still improve. I do like the landscaping,
the rare serenity in this day and age, the escape, and most of all the camaraderie. I’ve had some great fun playing amongst
terribly witty terrible golfers.

As for what we’re actually out here
doing
with all this waggery, this beauty, this tranquillity, this bonhomie—struggling with this maddening addiction in an attempt
to reach the impossible par … well, I’m still not quite sure I get it.

“Geist makes me
laugh
.”—Russell Baker

“Mr. Geist has a gift for uncovering the
quirky
detail that makes the mundane
humorous
.”

—
New York Times

“Very, very, very
funny
.”

—Larry King

“Bill Geist is unable to write an unfunny paragraph.”

—
Chicago Tribune

“Hits the funny bone
dead solid perfect
.”

—Dan Rather