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.