Golf is such a tremendous game. I know that’s a word that’s fallen from grace in recent years and debates, but it’s the essential word for the game of golf: it’s a tremendous thing. It’d be cliche to call the game beautiful. The landscape itself can be stunning, but the game always delivers.
I have never been more wet than I was at Unicorn Golf Course in Stoneham, MA today. Your mother may have been this wet before (ask her about me), but I’m a guy who prefers to be dry.
The forecast called for showers and Stoneham had a 46% chance of rain being forecasted for 12 pm - 2 pm at 11 am when I left the house. It looked like it was just going to miss us, like we were going to actually get one past God and scoot around a quick nine. Instead, the man above punished us for our hubris.
On the first tee, we met Rippy. His real name is really long and I think Sri Lankan, but the first three letters of his first name are ‘Rip,’ so ‘Rippy’ it is. Rippy is as good as they come as. He played a quick ball, he didn’t enforce any weird rules and acquiesced with ‘ready-golf’ and he was a total yob to talk with. He told me that my driver was “hotter than two rats in a fucking sock” when I hit a good one. That’s not true: that’s Ichiro’s favorite phrase in English, but Rippy didn’t actually say it. It would’ve been hysterical if had but, instead, he was more of a wise sage having played the course much more than the rest of our group.
He angrily took two phone calls during the rain, but he told us that it was because, a few weeks ago, he almost got hit by lightning on the course (like, it hit the tree he was under as he walked onto the green from having hit the approach shot under the tree), so his wife was checking in to make sure he’d leave the course if it started to thunder. It never thundered, so we got to hang with ol’ Rip for the full nine.
The first three holes misted. Water was among us in the air and was swirling golf balls around clouds. On the greens, it seemed like the ball was more hydroplaning than being frictioned to death by the water on the surface. But, the mist would persist and it continued onto holes two and three from one.
And then we got to the par-3 fourth. Oh boy, jeepers crow, and Judas Priest…it came down. Grips were already becoming wet, gloves were becoming increasingly useless, and phones were being shifted to avoid drowning. That was all when we took refuge under pine trees - the one spot around the fourth that was free of downpourings.
The par-3 was about 152 yards and I pumped my drive into the woods. I swear I pulled the right club, but I missed the green by at least five yards. The pin was in the back in my defense but, still, I was way off. Anyway, I spent a minute or two looking around the leaves and long grass behind the green acting as a border between the woods and the course. When I turned back around, admitting defeat that my TaylorMade had been swallowed by whatever materials birds use to make nests which were all lying along the wooded boundary, there was no going back.
I looked to my friend in the group and we both made eyes as if to say “I’m not going to be the one to say ‘let’s pack this up.’” Rippy almost walked off at that moment as well, and then we decided to play the fourth hole and made jokes all up the fairway about ‘Caddyshack’ and rat farts and priests and about how the rain was surely going to let up.
“I won’t let up, and don’t call me Shirley” said the rain.
So, we played the rest of the round in downpours. I could go on and on about how my shirt was fused to my chest and stomach (wearing white was a mistake; you could see my tattoos through the drenched fabric) or about how I adjusted my swing to not score poorly in the rain or about the misery that comes with wind out on a rainy golf course. But, no. I want to talk about something else.
I want to talk about golf. How lovely of a game it is! I want to pose the question of ‘why?’ Why would we continue into a more miserable sort of world which involves chasing a little while ball through pneumonia-causing weather? How come we did not walk off (besides having already paid $32 to play the course)?
I think it’s because there’s something intrinsically remarkable about the game of golf. Even on a sunny day, it’s man vs nature: it’s the golfer against the world. Everything on the golf course is meant for you to fail: the sand traps, the water-lined holes, the trees and rough, and the sky’s precipitation or wind makes it so that the golfer is constantly being put down by the world. And guess what…the golfer perseveres!
There’s nothing that will stop the golfer. The golfer simply runs out of holes. Otherwise, the golfer could keep going, beating the world and making the most of the land we’ve been given. Robin Williams makes fun of the sport calling it a gopher hole and, instead of making it a feasible distance, we set up the tiny hole hundreds of yards away from us. But what’s a more fun use of a series of hills and their estuaries?
I think we played golf today in the rain not because of paying for the round or because we’re hardos or because the scenery looked pretty or because we were “too deep” into the course itself, but actually because golf is a small test of life. Three bad shots and one good one still makes a par. The shittiest drives are my favorites. Of course, it’s nice to pummel one down the center. But, what’s the cooler story? Punching out of the woods to find a corner of the green or hitting the fairway and then flipping a wedge around the green? Shouldn’t a bad drive fire a golfer up as a chance to prove the sport wrong and defeatable?
Golf is a chance for the golfer to encapsulate their entire life (from imagining the ball on the tee to be a boss’ face or to the woeful emotions that can take over and deplete from a round; which is always something to steer away from as mental illness flare ups are aimed to be avoided) and is an outing for a golfer to enjoy the worst that can be thrown their way.
Jordan Spieth plays the best golf of anyone I can think of. Not only is he an insane person trying to hit impossible shots basically through trees to the detriment of Michael Greller, but his psychotic scorecards only go to show that there are no pictures there. The scorecard only cares about the numbers; the golfer cares about everything else. Spieth cares about the emotions of the round and warding off any PBFU’s. But, the double-bogeys always happen and the birdies will happen just as one will get passed over for a promotion or get the opportunity to buy a nice car from a family member for the ceremonial $1.
We played golf in downpouring weather which nobody else would want to be outside in. I wouldn’t want to walk my dog, play baseball or basketball, or read outside the way we golfed today. Golf’s ability to bottle up life and to test perseverance, resilience, and curiosity is silver to none. It’s a mind-bending concoction of what one can put up with before succumbing to the elements. Of course, it makes it easier to have a cart and to drink and joke with buddies, but that’s a part of life too. Golf is about managing mistakes and misses, not necessarily hitting perfectly-executed shots. It’s about living with the circumstance and making the best of it to par.
I absolutely love golf. I think everyone should play it with the caveat of I don’t care if you’re bad, so long as you don’t slow down the course. If you’re good, play quick. If you’re bad, play quicker. But golf is an unwinnable game. There’s no defeating golf. The goal through nine holes is to do what? Shoot a 9, I would assume given that the point of the scoring is to post as low a number as possible, so a 1 on every hole would be the aim. But, what do we shoot instead? 29? 34? 37? 56? That’s way off from 9!
Go golfing in the rain. Clothes will dry, grips will dry, shoes will return to their proper weight. The worst that would happen would be a subsequent trip to the Apple store to fix a phone (or Samsung store or whatever you Android nerds go to to pretend your phone is real). But, that would be a user-error, not golf’s fault that the broken phone couldn’t simply be kept from the rain in a pocket (either in shorts/pants or the golf bag).
Whether you have a bag of clubs in the garage or the trunk of your car or you “hate” golf as a “waste” of “water” (like a fucking LOSER), you’re living golf. The tests of life are truncated to be felt through nine or eighteen holes or even more. There are no breaks on the golf course, only acceptance.
If you’re a golfer, feel free to get a coffee before your next round.
If you’re still against golf, make a tee time. It’ll surprise you.