There are many reasons to not play golf. It's expensive. It's rooted in exclusivity, elitism. It encourages the destruction of vast expanses of beautiful natural landscape, to be replaced by vast expanses of monotonously immaculate ersatz landscape that most people (and animals) will never enjoy. Its fundamentals and protocols are eccentric at best, and idiotic at worst.And, of course, most of the people who play the game are intolerable jackasses.
I can say this, because I occasionally play golf, and am aware that when I do, my own already dangerously prevalent asinine qualities are exacerbated exponentially. When playing golf, I have a tendency to cycle through the five stages of grief with irritating melodrama.
Denial: "No, it didn't go in the water — what're you, blind?"
Bargaining: "Please, God, if you let me hit the green in two, I swear I'll go straight home after the round and mow the lawn, instead of stopping off at Hooter's and ending up at The Hub for last call."
Anger: "If I want advice on my swing, I'll ask somebody who doesn't look like an epileptic baseball player when he hits it off the tee, OK?"
Despair: "Why can't I do this? Not only is it not moving, it's sitting up on a little mount for me. I'm a loser, pathetic, beyond nothing."
Acceptance: "Yup. I suck. Wanna do it again next Sunday?"
There are, on the other hand, only two reasons to play golf.
The first reason is actually something that happens while one is playing. At some point during every round of golf — from the first round ever played by a wholly inept pedestrian who's just there to humor a relative, to the most recent round by a professional — a club is swung perfectly, or more perfectly. It makes a certain sound as it strikes the ball squarely, flawlessly, sending it farther and straighter than one really thought possible. The sound and the sight work in concert to produce an immediately addictive rush that those who've never experienced it can't imagine — except maybe an extremely untalented rock star in the habit of stepping on stadium stages after five drinks and a line of cocaine, totally knowing he or she is getting away with something.
That's what all those people in funny clothes are doing out there on the links. The vast majority of them are trying to duplicate that rush, and the few that are actually decent golfers are trying to learn to achieve it more often.
The other reason to play golf is that most of the people who play it are intolerable jackasses.
I'm one of the millions who took up the game after Tiger Woods and Happy Gilmore made it fashionable. Lifelong linksters, the wealthy, and that peculiar breed of middle-aged white man that stakes its self-esteem on being certain it knows everything about everything will tell you people like me ruined the game. I disagree. Sure, I've played with plenty of young frat brahs more interested in smoking pot before every hole and using their pitching wedges as dick-joke props than in making par. But any longtime player who says it's solely the young newcomers who are robbing golf of its gentility and Zen-like qualities probably hasn't played a pricey private course in a while.
Courtesy and stateliness might rule on the PGA tour; at your local country club, however, that shit's long gone. And it recedes farther every time some pot-bellied yutz trying to get nine holes in before work launches his ball at the group in front of him, because they're moving too slow for his liking. Every time some affluent cheapskate spends 15 minutes digging around in the "No Ball Hunting" zone for the little white orb he's proudly aware he spent too much money on. Every time some dedicated weekend hacker wearing $300 golf shoes blows a bump-and-run shot, snaps his eight-iron and tosses the pieces at the green, where they dig ugly ruts upon impact. (People really do do stuff like breaking clubs and throwing their bags into the nearest water hazard, by the way, and it's hardly ever the guys who can barely afford the greens fees.)
It's just sad.
It can also be hilarious, particularly if you're not too hung up that your own game is going south in a hurry.
There are something like 60 courses in the greater Tampa Bay area, ranging from the Copperhead Course at Palm Harbor's Weston Innisbrook Resort, where the PGA holds the annual Chrysler Championship and the greens fees are $200, to south St. Pete's Twin Brooks Municipal Golf Course, where you can play 18 par-three holes for under $15 at the height of the winter season.
I've walked, ridden a cart and hacked my way through my fair share of them. The lower-end public and muni courses are always crowded with slow-moving groups of improperly attired duffers who couldn't tell you what the rule for removing your ball from standing water was if you offered them a free six-pack. But neither could half the folks who play Copperhead, and the golf newbies are generally more polite, and less likely to act like they own the course (or get into a fistfight that's almost sure to end in a heart attack, lawsuit or both).
Over the weekend, a buddy and I played Twin Brooks, a course that many of my other golfing friends declare beneath their attention. We took our time on the short par-54 "executive" track, goofing around, shooting the shit and surreptitiously drinking a few beers while out of sight of the clubhouse. Though the course was pretty crowded, nobody rushed us. Nobody nearly hit us with an errant shot, then stalked over like it was our fault for standing two fairways away. Nobody mistook the containers of sand on the tee boxes for ashtrays or garbage cans. Nobody screamed or argued distractingly from two holes ahead.
Apparently, in golf, as in everything else, if you want the full-on jackassery, you have to pay more for it. But actually getting through a round without having to restrain ourselves from clubbing some inconsiderate bonehead to death was nice, too. And we both a hit a couple of those rush-inducing shots along the way. So we'll both be playing again, at least once.
scott.harrell@weeklyplanet.com
This article appears in Jan 12-18, 2005.