What I learned about golf...

.

I had the opportunity to go to Colonial Country Club yesterday and be a part of a charity fund-raiser for The Gladney Center for Adoption. No, I didn't golf. I was just there to keep score for the foursome I was assigned. Evidently, somebody had to do it. I mean, any time I have ever been golfing that little task was done by those who were doing the golfing but not on this day. On this day things were different. I've not been much of a golfer since "The Incident" (more of that in an upcoming Storytime) and so I have been out of the loop about some important facts about golf, some of which I will share now. The first thing I learned was that I can't afford free drinks. On nearly every hole there were huge wooden containers filled with ice and all kinds of things to drink. There were cokes, water, Gatorade, and beer all free for the taking. I helped myself of the Coke and water as did the four caddies. The golfers each had maybe one beer during the course of the day but mainly water as well for them. I got to thinking about that. While I'm not much of a golfer I know that very few people just give away much of anything so I quietly asked one of the caddies about how much he thought these guys paid for the priviledge of playing at the Colonial for the Gladney Cup. I'm thinking it is probably something outrageous, like four or five hundred dollars. He said he wondered the same thing and had looked it up online the day before and it cost $10,000 for the foursome! Oh, ok, "free drinks", right. The next thing I learned was that gear don't make the golfer. Three of the foursome were pretty good golfers, each hitting about 4 or 5 over par. The fourth guy, whom you could barely see behind all of his equipment, shot 27 over. That's still better than I'll ever shoot but what got me was the amount of stuff, high-dollar stuff, he had. His poor caddie had to lug that oversize leather bag filled with every kind of club known to man with every pocket filled with gadgets and helps. I wanted to tell him that his laser, range-finding, GPS-enabled, hole-seeker thingee he was constantly using and slowing everybody up with was not going to help when you shank it into the woods every shot. And your golf ball retriever needs a snorkel on it there, big boy. Good thing he had that Personalized Full Grain Leather Bag Tag. It matched his Personalized Gold Plated Divot Tool and Cigar Holder. And I hate to think about how much that driver cost. No, not that one. The other one. (Yea, he had two.) Evidently, if you attach a mule's head to a custom club shaft it helps you hit the nearest tree every time. But the main thing I learned about golf yesterday was very important. In fact, according to the consistentcy of usage, the aftershot encouragement cannot be underestimated. You see, after each and every shot all members of the foursome are to encourage the ball and / or the golfer with two syllables. The ball is usually the first to get the encouragement. Common encouragements (remember, always two syllables) are "get up", "lay down", "get legs" or a simple "baby!". Next, the golfer will get his encouragement. It is always positive no matter what zip code the ball now has. Appropriate terms include "sweet strike", "nice out", "big dog", "boom town" or "Arnold" (Palmer or Schwarzenegger, I assume). I hope this lesson has been helpful. Please tune in later for Storytime when I continue my insistence that a good story needs to be told even if it makes me look bad