Golf is a difficult game. Thanks to a certain course in Maryland, it is significantly more difficult for me.
Golf is a difficult game. Thanks to a certain course in Maryland, it is significantly more difficult for me.
In my younger days, my friends and I played a version of golf at my parents’ house that very much defines my actual golf game today. Each hole was made up as we went, and involved stipulations like going around the house once, past a certain tree and getting your whiffle golf ball into a laundry basket that served as the cup.
We often ended up with a particular shot that involved either going around a line of trees on the side of the house or trying to squeeze the ball through a tiny area between the trees and the house itself. One hundred percent of the time, my shot was the harder one, preceded by the declaration that I was going “skinny to the trees.”
Last weekend, my friend Mike and I played two rounds of golf at the beach, and during our second round I ended up in a wooded area on consecutive holes. Both times I had the option of being boring and knocking the ball sideways-ish safely back onto the fairway, or being aggressive/fun and trying to go between the trees on a straight line to the hole.
Guess which path I chose?
Here’s hole 11, where the flag I’m shooting at is the little white thing waving in the distance in the middle of the picture:
You probably can’t see in the video exactly where it comes down, but note the giant divot the ball left as it nearly landed in the hole:
It finally settled back here, thankfully a few feet from actually going in the water:
On hole 12, the gap between the trees was wider, but the flag I needed to get to was juuuuuust to the right of that tree on the left:
I failed to take a picture of the landing spot, but it was in the middle of the fairway about 80 yards from the hole. I knocked down a par. I also managed to go on to beat Mike (he defeated me the day before), which if you’ll remember from my last post was an unexpected success!
And lest you think I was legitimately being super serious about those shots, here’s how that first video really ends:
Always go skinny to the trees.
Four years ago, Taylor Swift tried to ruin my life.
She and another young blond girl conspired to derail my epic putt-putt golf match against my friend Mike, handing him a victory that rightly should have been mine.
Fortunately, you can’t keep me down for long, and Mike and I returned last night to Down Under Golf, the Australian-themed course that has long been our favorite. Fueled by cheeseburgers and waffle fry nachos (tortilla chips are so 2013), we played a four-round, 72-hole match that included a visit from some local wildlife:
Rabbits of Ocean City are very friendly pic.twitter.com/yg1lbnd2hy
— Chris Hannas (@cjhannas) September 17, 2014
As great as this picture is, we actually missed capturing the best moment. For a solid minute the little guy was chillin three inches from me. Next time we’ll be less in the moment and do the right thing for social media.
The putt-putt action did not start off well for me. The first three rounds ended like this:
Round 1 — Carolina blue ball — Down 3 strokes
Round 2 — Neon yellow ball — Down 4 strokes
Round 3 — Green ball — Down 6 strokes
The black ball disappeared into whatever unknown underground repository that collects such things on the 18th hole and Mike asked if I wanted to go again. I said I wasn’t going down without a fight.
I grabbed a lucky black ball and strode heroically back to the first hole.
“I’m going to make up these six strokes…and then win by three,” I said. He didn’t seem very concerned. Until of course I started knocking down shots and his pink ball betrayed him again and again.
On the ninth hole, I notched a hole-in-one, and when Mike got a two, my six-stroke comeback was complete. All tied up with nine to play.
Then I got a hole-in-one on the next hole too. Mike was pretty concerned.
We headed to the 17th hole with me ahead by two strokes. I won that one, and when we tied on the 18th, my prediction was complete: a six-stroke deficit made up and a three-stroke advantage gained.
Mike’s reaction was pretty much this:
Fortunately for him, today we’re playing real golf, and there’s pretty much no chance I’ll be beating him there. Unless of course, Sage is there.
New things happen to me on the golf course all the time. At least, the few and far between times I play.
The nature of my game is such that I often end up with interesting shots that someone on the PGA Tour never gets to encounter. They include decisions like, should I try to go under this first tree and over the second one, or shoot a little to the right and skip it as far down the cart path as possible?
A few weeks ago I played two rounds with roommate MR, who has beaten me each and every single time we’ve played going all the way back to high school. And that’s fine. I have a great time whether I shoot 92 or 104.
But in our second round, something magical happened:
I won! I should note that under our long-time scoring system, we do not assess penalty shots for lost balls. If we did, I would have lost by roughly six strokes.
So how did this happen? Did I magically get better at golf by not playing all year? No. Sage happened.
As our foursome (with three lefties!) came up to the tee box on the par 3 third hole, a young woman walked toward our carts. I was thinking about which club to hit and thus didn’t take in the whole situation. I figured she was the beer cart lady, and told her we were fine for now.
Then she started talking. Very quickly. She mentioned a hole-in-one challenge that cost $10, earned you a free vacation if you made it and a golf magazine subscription if you didn’t. Your choice whether to bring her on the trip. We all declined.
As we stepped up to the tee box itself, she mentioned that one of her things is to hug everyone she meets. She said we had the option of cashing in this hug before or after we took our shot. I opted for the pre-shot hug, hoping that I could harness some positive energy into a solid swing.
Hug. Swing. Ball eight feet from the whole. Par.
Forget more practice or a functioning five iron (which I broke at this same course six years ago). All my golf game needed was a hug from a pretty girl. #SageHugs.
What happens when you’re eight holes into a round of golf and some guy who works at the course insists you stop playing because of this allegedly dangerous thing called lightning?
For your sake, I hope you don’t end up stuck in the screened-in portion of a snack bar waiting out the thunderstorm cell…and then another…and then another, until the course peeps say you’re not going to play again that day.
But if you do, I have a game you can use to occupy the time. It’s called Foot Putt. That may not be the best name, but it’s what I came up with under those conditions.
Our shelter had three wooden stools, a water cooler and the things roommate MR and I had on our person (golf balls, hats, gloves). So we started with this:
The goal is simple: Kick the ball with your foot and have it go through the legs of the stool. This proved to be rather difficult given the slope of the concrete on which we were playing. So to both make a scoring kick more likely and to spice things up a bit, we enlisted the other two stools:
The wrinkle this time is that each stool has a different point value. The far right is worth one point, the middle two points and, you guessed it, three magical points for foot-putting your ball through the stool on the left.
At first, I thought we would get to maybe 11 points before we got back out on the course. MR was crushing me at that point, so I was glad when the rain would not stop falling and the sky would not stop throwing electricity at us. With a monumental comeback, I finally won 50-49.
As devastated as MR was with the loss, nothing could compare with what happened next. We had already snacked at the adjacent snack bar and during our game had noticed through the window on the door that they had a big Good Humor ice cream cooler just inside. With extreme rain-related mugginess assaulting our bodies, we decided nothing would be better than sampling the cool treats.
But as soon as we walked over to the cooler we saw the cruel joke. It was empty. Pretty sure that should be illegal.
To many people, golf is the most boring sport on Earth. It’s a game for old guys at country clubs that won’t let you play if you don’t have a collared shirt.
To those people, I present the Golf Boys. This video came out last summer, but I just read about it the other day in the New York Times. I’ve watched it easily a dozen times since then.
The video represents so many things I like about breaking the boring golf stereotypes with a group of guys who are clearly having fun with the game and not worried about offending the “tradition.” Best of all, the guy in the overalls with no shirt won the Masters this year. That would be the Masters that’s played at a club so static it doesn’t allow female members.
Did I mention the guy in the overalls, Bubba Watson, WON THE MASTERS?! You certainly would never see Jack Nicklaus doing this. I hope one of these guys wins every single PGA tournament forever.
Today I stumbled on even more magic from this group. They made a pair of behind the scenes videos — one for the singing portion and another for the dancing. You’re welcome:
I’m not the world’s greatest golfer, but that has nothing to do with my skill in playing the game. The problem is my equipment.
Specifically, the issue is that I no longer have a functional 5-iron after breaking it on a driving range during a pre-round warmup session. Never mind that this happened in July 2007.
You may be thinking that at some point during the nearly five years that have passed I could have replaced this club. You would be right. But I have a few reasons for wanting to keep things as they are.
First, it’s been almost five years, a fact that gets funnier as that number grows. Every time I play golf with roommate MR, he always asks when it was that I broke the club and it brings me great delight to add it up and tell him.
Second, at some point during said golf outing I am guaranteed to walk over to my bag and pull out the pieces (of course I carry them around). This either happens in response to the previously mentioned question, or more entertainingly, when I happen to be in a situation in which I would use a 5-iron. Walking over to the ball and taking a few practice swings with just the graphite shaft is comedy gold.
Lastly, when I shoot a 97, I can say things like, “Gosh, if I just had a 5-iron I’m sure I could have made it under par today.” Full set of clubs = no excuse.
I don’t want to lose any of those things. I play an anything-goes style of golf, trying not to take things too seriously. When my friends finish a round with lower scores, I quickly point out that for the same price, I got to take more shots.
Who needs a 5-iron for that?
I’m not sure if anyone else has figured this out yet, but vacation days are awesome.
As I type this, I have been off from work for a solid week and still have a few days to go. I knew this vacation was going to be solid when I got to the airport after working all night, sat down at my gate and saw this:
That’s a Five Guys if you can’t quite make it out through the greenery. And yes, a cheeseburger at 9:30 a.m. is always a great decision. After landing in Naples, Fla., I spent six days doing this:
And some of this:
Whenever I go to the beach I always try to get out to the shore for at least one sunrise. Since I live on the East Coast that’s the only way to see the combination of sun and ocean. On this trip though, I was on the Gulf side of Florida, meaning I could hang out with the sun on a more agreeable schedule. Here’s my half-effort attempt at time-lapsing the sunset:
I also took a short drive up to Ft. Myers to see a Single-A baseball game between the Ft. Myers Miracle and the Palm Beach Cardinals:
I’m spending the rest of my time off back home (avoided using the term “staycation” there, you’re welcome). That means two Washington Nationals games and a little bit of this:
Oh, and some writing too. Updates on that sometime soon.
After a book that takes forever to get through, I always go to one I know I can easily read in just a few days.
After William Faulkner’s “Absalom, Absalom!” the quick read this time was Carl Hiaasen’s “The Downhill Lie.” It’s about his journey as a self-described “hacker” to return to playing golf many years after quitting the sport.
As a fellow hacker, I found it interesting to get inside the mind of someone who plays at exactly the same level. My usual playing partners are both better than I am, so while we are always out there to just have fun there’s something to knowing you are the weakest link in any group.
I think Hiaasen would enjoy my general outlook on playing with those who consistently beat me — if they shoot an 88 and I rock a 95, we paid the same amount of money but I got to hit seven extra shots.
One thing I found troubling about Hiaasen is that he’s a University of Florida journalism graduate. When I worked in Florida, it seemed like three-quarters of my coworkers went to the UF J-school, and really, nothing good can come of that. (OK, they were pretty cool, but having to hear about Tim Tebow every day will wear on you).
But Hiaasen did redeem himself by introducing me to a new term I can use to describe my golf game. Actually, it’s one of Hiaasen’s friends who tells him about “Ray Ray golf.” In the hacker world, our rounds are marked by stretches of a few good holes that make us feel like we can actually play this game, and then holes so disastrous we wonder how our friends can stand to watch such a spectacle. In the words of Hiaasen’s friend, “One hole you play like Ray Floyd, and the next you play like Ray Charles.”
The thing about those good holes is that they are sustaining. It only takes a few good shots to keep you going. “That’s the secret of the sport’s infernal seduction,” Hiaasen says. “It surrenders just enough good shots to let you talk yourself out of quitting.”
He talks later about the effect of even one good shot, the way it feels to swing a club and have a little white ball go exactly where you want it to. “That’s the killer. A good shot is a total rush, possibly the second most pleasurable sensation in the human experience. It will mess with your head in wild and delusive ways.”
He’s right. There’s something about a perfect shot that makes you feel slightly superhuman. When you hit the ball right in the sweet spot of the club, it feels different. There’s an ease with which the ball flies off the club face and continues to an exact point off in the distance.
The setting helps enhance that feeling. You’re out on a narrow strip of grass, maybe nestled between the woods with nothing but the sound of birds around you. You pause for a second in that stillness, the club in your hand and your eyes on the ball in front of you. And then your actions — the way you pull back the club, rotate your body into a corkscrew and then unravel it all — cause this pinpoint flight as if you had just picked up the ball and set it down exactly where you wanted to hit the next shot.
It’s kind of like hitting a home run in baseball. To the observer, there’s the really violent action of a bat slamming into a ball that has been hurled in its direction. But crushing a baseball — hitting it in just the right part of the bat at the right angle — can feel smooth and effortless in a way that can seem totally opposed to the resulting flight of the ball.
You don’t have quite the same control over where the ball lands, but a few of those will definitely make you forget some of the strikeouts and feeble groundouts to second base.
Of course, I must start with a show link. (April 13) Last one of the year. Don’t cry too hard.
And the goods.
Yesterday Jason and I went to the golf course down the street. We wanted to play a quick morning 9 holes, which at 13 bucks was a pretty good deal. Turns out on Wednesdays, you get to play 18 holes for that 13 dollars. Sweet.
We play about 13 holes with these two other random guys, Bob and Bruce. Bruce then leaves, and the FUN begins.
The three of us remaining are putting on the next hole. We look back and see this very impatient-looking woman standing 100 yards away like she’s about to hit a ball at us. After we tee off on the next hole, we ask if she would like to either play through (pass us), or join our group. Thankfully, she decided to join us. Not two seconds into announcing her decision, she tells us that she’s “pretty hot right now,” which I mistakenly thought was a reference to the warm weather.
Turns out, she was actually quite pissed. At her husband. And his “recording equipment on a golf course.” Um. What? I thought she saying her husband had some sort of bluetooth earpiece deal and was rudely taking calls on the course. No no. She said he was taping their conversations. He also apparently could say whatever he wanted, but the second she started trying to add her own opinion to a conversation, he would simply ignore her. Like when she was telling him about what Jane Fonda said “on the TV the other night” about how it was better to have pain in your knees than anywhere else. Um. What?
She told us ALL of that before taking her first shot. Bob, who was a very nice older guy–probably a good 70 years old and a better golfer than Jason or I–looked the woman square in the eye and said “Miss, take your shot.” At this command, the woman took several steps toward the tee box. But apparently she wasn’t done and came right back to us and said she was going to move to Canada and find someone who would treat her right. Um. What?
The husband was apparently also taping everything at home. There was recording equipment all over the house and in her car. The information has already been used against her, and her neighbors have already done her wrong. Um. What?
Things go OK for a couple of holes. She steams quietly to herself while we play and wait for the next treasure trove of information. Nothing new until the end of the round. Typically, after everyone finishes you have this little shake hands nice playing with you routine that takes 20 seconds and you all part ways and continue with your lives. The woman says “I’m sorry if I brought my negativity and situation to your day.” We all say that’s no problem and exchange pleasantries with the others. But the woman didn’t stop there. She went on about how she was ashamed of having a sister-in-law who had the name of Senator Benson and about how she has already tried going to court against her husband, but since she didn’t have a lawyer she didn’t have a chance.
So Jason and I pack up our stuff and get into the car. We mention the possibility of waiting around in the parking lot to see this husband come off the course and a big confrontation to go down. But then another possibility strikes us. What if it was all made up? At this point I’m about 75 percent sure none of that ever happened to her. But I’m also 100 percent certain she brought some added enjoyment to my day.