The Short Drive
2008-03-12 16:30:00
I decided it was time to renew my affair with the game of golf recently, if nothing more as a stress reliever.
I say golf in only the loosest sense of the word because my game is to Tiger Woods what Paris Hilton is to acting or singing or dancing or whatever the heck she does to earn such attention.
But I decided to pull out the clubs and take a few whacks at the little white ball because no matter how bad one is at golf, there is always that one shot out there that soars against the azure, sun-soaked sky and makes all the hacking done before and after worth the calluses and profane language.
One note should be injected here - it is never a good sign that spiders have taken up permanent residence in your golf bag.
If spiders and other insects have had a closer inspection of your clubs than your own self, chances are those soaring shots aren't coming easy.
And I should also note that my clubs are not exactly state-of-the-art unless one takes a trip in the way-back machine to 1950.
I have irons that are signature clubs, only the signatures belong to golfers long deceased, including several irons branded for Betty Webb, who may or may not have been a famous women's golfer sometime long ago.
You see, the clubs are of more sentimental than monetary value. They were given to me by my grandmother and are a mix of clubs from her and my grandfather, who my grandmother took great pride in beating on a regular basis.
Even while she was teeing off from the men's tees and my grandfather from the women's.
In any case, given the spider webs and general ill condition of my clubs, I decided to start on the driving range, just to see if, after several years of not even picking the clubs up for a practice swing, I was still capable of at least getting a ball off the ground.
Halfway through my bucket of balls, the question was still open and the other golfers on the range seemed to have moved a spot or two away from me, apparently for safety reasons.
They observed the amount of control I had over my slashing and probably decided golf wasn't supposed to be a contact sport.
As the bucket emptied, though, the shots started flying a bit straighter and I decided to go nine holes to see what happened.
I was quickly paired with two brothers, down from Iowa, in the midst of a golfing excursion along the Forgotten Coast after spending time building Habitat for Humanity houses in New Orleans.
That I would be paired with folks from out of town seemed a given when driving into the country club parking lot and observing all the license plates from Ontario, Canada, Illinois and Ohio.
To give return to the vintage of my clubs for a moment, let me point out that one of the brothers, retired from the construction trade and sporting a brand new set of clubs from Callaway, including a Big Bertha driver, had no clue who Tommy Armour, the signature name on my 4-wood, even was.
But Tommy and his buds didn't let me down as somehow I channeled, oh, Kesley Colbert for a time and pounded the ball into the beautiful sky.
Not near any greens, mind you, but that ball sure looked pretty against that bright blue backdrop.
The contact was all that mattered, not the direction, though, incredibly, I did not lose one ball to water or woods or some other spot out of bounds.
At one point, one of the brothers commented that maybe I might want to dial it back a bit, not try to put everything into every shot. But Tommy Armour kept putting me out there beyond those Big Bertha drives and I was pretty full of myself.
So full, I decided on another nine holes and sure enough, whether age or what, Tommy wasn't up to any more of me.
My first tee shot of that second nine ended up with the club head of my 4-wood traveling farther than the ball as the club disintegrated; something that in this age of metal clubs of all kinds isn't likely to be a frequent occurrence anymore.
Although Tommy was an antique, and might have made a swell roadshow item, I decided not to place the shaft back in the bag and retrieve the club head, fearing that luck had finally slipped through the hourglass and I would end the next nine holes with more splinters than a benchwarmer.
And it was a sign to come as ball after ball wound up in the drink during those nine holes and by the end my score, if I had bothered to keep track, surely would have ended in triple digits.
But the passion was re-stoked and I am searching E-Bay for some new clubs.
There just aren't a lot of Tommy Armour 4-woods out there.
I say golf in only the loosest sense of the word because my game is to Tiger Woods what Paris Hilton is to acting or singing or dancing or whatever the heck she does to earn such attention.
But I decided to pull out the clubs and take a few whacks at the little white ball because no matter how bad one is at golf, there is always that one shot out there that soars against the azure, sun-soaked sky and makes all the hacking done before and after worth the calluses and profane language.
One note should be injected here - it is never a good sign that spiders have taken up permanent residence in your golf bag.
If spiders and other insects have had a closer inspection of your clubs than your own self, chances are those soaring shots aren't coming easy.
And I should also note that my clubs are not exactly state-of-the-art unless one takes a trip in the way-back machine to 1950.
I have irons that are signature clubs, only the signatures belong to golfers long deceased, including several irons branded for Betty Webb, who may or may not have been a famous women's golfer sometime long ago.
You see, the clubs are of more sentimental than monetary value. They were given to me by my grandmother and are a mix of clubs from her and my grandfather, who my grandmother took great pride in beating on a regular basis.
Even while she was teeing off from the men's tees and my grandfather from the women's.
In any case, given the spider webs and general ill condition of my clubs, I decided to start on the driving range, just to see if, after several years of not even picking the clubs up for a practice swing, I was still capable of at least getting a ball off the ground.
Halfway through my bucket of balls, the question was still open and the other golfers on the range seemed to have moved a spot or two away from me, apparently for safety reasons.
They observed the amount of control I had over my slashing and probably decided golf wasn't supposed to be a contact sport.
As the bucket emptied, though, the shots started flying a bit straighter and I decided to go nine holes to see what happened.
I was quickly paired with two brothers, down from Iowa, in the midst of a golfing excursion along the Forgotten Coast after spending time building Habitat for Humanity houses in New Orleans.
That I would be paired with folks from out of town seemed a given when driving into the country club parking lot and observing all the license plates from Ontario, Canada, Illinois and Ohio.
To give return to the vintage of my clubs for a moment, let me point out that one of the brothers, retired from the construction trade and sporting a brand new set of clubs from Callaway, including a Big Bertha driver, had no clue who Tommy Armour, the signature name on my 4-wood, even was.
But Tommy and his buds didn't let me down as somehow I channeled, oh, Kesley Colbert for a time and pounded the ball into the beautiful sky.
Not near any greens, mind you, but that ball sure looked pretty against that bright blue backdrop.
The contact was all that mattered, not the direction, though, incredibly, I did not lose one ball to water or woods or some other spot out of bounds.
At one point, one of the brothers commented that maybe I might want to dial it back a bit, not try to put everything into every shot. But Tommy Armour kept putting me out there beyond those Big Bertha drives and I was pretty full of myself.
So full, I decided on another nine holes and sure enough, whether age or what, Tommy wasn't up to any more of me.
My first tee shot of that second nine ended up with the club head of my 4-wood traveling farther than the ball as the club disintegrated; something that in this age of metal clubs of all kinds isn't likely to be a frequent occurrence anymore.
Although Tommy was an antique, and might have made a swell roadshow item, I decided not to place the shaft back in the bag and retrieve the club head, fearing that luck had finally slipped through the hourglass and I would end the next nine holes with more splinters than a benchwarmer.
And it was a sign to come as ball after ball wound up in the drink during those nine holes and by the end my score, if I had bothered to keep track, surely would have ended in triple digits.
But the passion was re-stoked and I am searching E-Bay for some new clubs.
There just aren't a lot of Tommy Armour 4-woods out there.
