12/29/2007: "New Driver"

Hi All,

Hope everyone's Christmas went well, and everyone got whatever they asked for. I didn't have anything I wanted this year, but it was nice to get a new driver for my golf sack (I don't have a golf bag; I carry my clubs and balls around in a green garbage sack, which angers many golf 'purists,' but as I also fish with dynamite and brew my coffee in an old sweatsock, I'm not worried about angering purists of any stripe)

... so, the new driver for my golf sack. It's a floor-model Ping, 12 degree loft, rigid shaft. It's been pawed by potential owners so it probably's got a bit of duffer-stink I'll have to knock off it come spring.

Some people are surprised I'm into golf. I'm not really competitive about it---I have enough things I need to compete in in life; sometimes I think my existence is nothing more than one brutal prolonged competition that, sooner or later, I'll forfeit---so this is why I'm able to enjoy it so much.

If I hit a shitty shot or duck-hook one into the weeds, or the forest, or off a cliff or into the lake, well, I'm equitably disposed about it. Some of my golfing buddies and my father, who's a big golfer now he's retired, are psyched about it all: they're buying Medicus practice drivers and watching the Golf Channel and putting balls into overturned glasses in the "off season" and sleeping on dimpled pillows to "dream golf" and screaming "get in the hole!" at inappropriate times and erecting closet shrines to Fuzzy Zoeller and saying things like, "We've all got a little Tiger Woods in us."

Me, no. In fact, probably what's holding me back from being a better gofer---aside from my complete lack of coordination and physical tools---is that I'm not really serious about it. I golf a fair bit but I never record my score, rarely get angry at myself for crap shots, and have coined a special phrase for when I get myself into tricky golf binds:

"LUCKY VEGAS!"

I scream "LUCKY VEGAS!" when I hook a shot into the woods or behind a tree trunk or into a birds' nest or an alligator's mouth and need a little divine intervention for the next, so-called 'recovery' shot... it is my plea to the golf gods. If, for example, I'm deep in the woods and there are trees all over the place and the smart shot---ie: the shot I never take---is to punch onto the fairway but I can see the flagstick through a thicket of branches, I say to myself, "Hell, that's 80% air through there!"---ie: the thing idiot golfers say to themselves before attempting a shot with no chance of success---then, to aid my cause, I shriek: "Lucky Vegas!" in a trilling singsong voice and swing my club wildly and if I'm lucky the ball doesn't ricochet off a tree and hit me in the head and rob me of the few brain cells I have left.

It's cathartic, though: the scream of "Lucky Vegas!," the giant cut I take at the ball. All of it. I’m not a real proponent of 'taking one's frustrations out' on some inanimate object like a golf ball (I subscribe to the crawl-into-a-dark-corner-and-sob-silently school of frustration management), but I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy hammering holy old hell out of a ball with a driver.

And the great thing is technology has made it possible for uncoordinated shlubs such as me to give hell to a golf ball; drivers are now big as a baby's head. They're ALL sweet spot! I still have an atrocious hook---or, as my seasoned golf buddies sometimes call it, 'une banane'---but that hook still goes an awful long way. This summer I got to use my buddy's club: an 'illegal' John Daly driver. I guess there was too much compressed gas in the head, too many ccs of it, thus making it illegal. Ooooh! The sweet criminality! I felt like I was golfing with a giant bag of crack tied to the end of a stick, or with an AK-47 disguised as a golf club; I kept thinking a course marshal would drive over on his golf cart and try to boot me off the course for possessing such an imposing, illicit piece of hardware---at which point I would tee up, blast the ball as far as I could, and very suavely-yet-toughly state, "My concern for your rules lays where that ball now lays---a million miles away!"

Hey-yo!

Well, okay, so I can't hit the ball a million miles. In fact, sometimes I whack at it so hard I end up squibbing it into the bushes beside the tee box. Nevermind. All in good fun. The point of it, or the fun I derive, is just rearing back and blasting at it.

The buddy who loaned me his John Daly driver---he bought a new sleek Cleveland driver---is a study in how body type doesn't necessarily dictate power in golf: he's a big, muscular guy but he's got this golf swing that somehow leeches all the power from his body, transferring something like 0.043% to the golf club. I've never seen so big a guy hit his driver 120 yards with such steely consistency. He's a good sport: he'll just look at where his ball landed (often up at the lady's tee), look at his us, look at his golf club, shrug, smile, and generally seem as baffled about it as we are.

And it's even funnier because this guy's brother, who's allergic to exercise and has the undeveloped forearms of a spider monkey, can just PULVERIZE the ball; every time he crushes one, he makes sure his brother knows. This led to one of the funniest moments in last summer's golf weekend: the two brothers got into a 'divot fight,' hacking giant clods of earth at each other---like a duel at five paces with nine irons---and after they'd torn up a good deal of turf (poor groundskeeper the next day, coming to the tee box at the fifth hole to see a giant crater) and gotten all dirty, the older chased younger brother all over the fairway until the younger brother's golf shoes lost traction and he went down begging for mercy ... I honestly don't know what happened after that; I was convulsing with laughter back at the tee box. Couldn’t see for the tears in my eyes.

Golf. It’s a grand old game.

All best, Craig.