Fore! Play (4 page)

“Now on a New Jersey public course,” she continues, “the sand is going to be different than at a nice private course in Florida,
where it’s dry and fine. Here it’s heavy, wet, rocky, muddy New Jersey muck. And you’ll have to swing harder.”

“And oh yeah,” she adds. “After you’ve swung three times unsuccessfully, pick up your ball and leave. But remember to rake
the sand. In golf, etiquette is very important.”

She says if we are polite and not slow we will be welcome to play anywhere, despite being bad.

“It should only take four to four and a half hours to play,” she says.

“You mean for 9 holes,” says a student, speaking from experience.

“Nooo,” says Liz, patiently, “that would be for the full 18.”

After putting class, we take up scoring, which is something of a sore subject with this group. Liz’s first piece of advice
is: “Once you’ve doubled par, pick up your ball and move on for the sake of golfers behind you. It’s just not that important
if you get a 13 instead of a 14.”

Liz defines terms like “eagle.”

“Why would we need to know that?” a student asks. Good question. Occasionally we have to remind Liz how bad we are, like when
she starts telling us that a red flag means the hole is on the front of the green, or how to toss grass to gauge windage,
or reading yardage marks on sprinkler heads. We really don’t have much use for that kind of detailed information.

Liz tells us of birdies, pars, bogeys, double bogeys, and more useful terms like triple bogey, which is something we can certainly
all shoot for. Other useful terms include colorful phrases like “snowman,” which is an 8, and “picket fence,” which sounds
like an 11.

Naturally, students bring up cheating as a way to improve their scores. Liz doesn’t condone putting down a 6 when you shoot
an 8, but admits that partners may not catch you or call you on it, providing money isn’t at stake.

“A true golfer isn’t paying attention to
your
shots,” she says. “True golfers are only paying attention to their own.”

I write that one down. I’ll want to use that to admonish any golf partner who accuses me of lying, e.g.: “If you were a
true
golfer you wouldn’t even have noticed I shot a 12 instead of a 6!” Bastard.

Her other practical scoring tips include: “A whiff, where you swing and make no contact with the ball, doesn’t count.” Great
news! Although the United States Golf Association disagrees.

Also of immediate help: “If you hit a bad tee shot and the starter’s not watching, re-tee and hit again,” she advises. “My
husband is good at this, very fast. He does it almost every time. He says: ‘If you can’t afford lots of balls, you shouldn’t
be playing golf,’ and I always say, ‘But, George, 18 balls every round?’ ”

“My husband is always reminding me that he’s better and always telling me what to do,” a student complains.

“You don’t golf with someone so they can tell you what to do,” Liz replies. “If you golf as a couple, your husband is only
there to tell you where your ball went, to fetch sodas, and to pay.”

“Don’t
ever
play with your husband!” yells another woman, who has good reason. “The first time we played I was four months pregnant and
he wouldn’t let me go back and pee. I had to go in the bushes.” I jot down a reminder to ask Liz about the rules of urination
during our etiquette instruction.

“My husband has an 8 handicap,” complains another student, “and I’ve played three times. It’s not fair.”

“Well,” says Liz, “if he shoots 80 and you shoot 120, take your handicap and tell him you win.”

Handicaps are our next class subject. Students are excited. Handicaps may be our only hope. My golf handicap is so high I
should get to park in the specially marked spots by the front door at the grocery store. If there was a Special Olympics of
golf, I’d be there. At this point they should stop calling it a handicap, and say I’m golf-challenged. Would it kill them
to be a little
sensitive?

Handicaps “level the playing field,” as they say, giving me a chance to “beat” anyone on the professional tour. I’m not sure
I understand the point. Am I supposed to feel better about my 125?

Handicaps are (almost) enough to make you stop cheating.

“Can we use tees on the fairway?” a student asks.

“No,” says Liz, “that’s cheating,” and then reminds us: “Cheating on your scores will only drive your handicaps down.” I’d
never thought of it that way. She says some “sandbaggers” will shoot eight pars in a row then purposely shoot a 12 on the
next hole to keep their handicaps up. That’s getting a little perverted.

However, it does occur to me this might be an excellent excuse for my atrocious golf game. Maybe people will think I’m playing
poorly on purpose to keep my handicap up.

Liz says there’s great news on the handicap front! “They’re giving people 40 and even 45 handicaps, way higher than they used
to.” Let’s see, 45 plus par 72 is … well, it’s still not quite enough, but in a comprehensive program with some throws and
kicks it’s going to help a lot.

At the sixth and final class there is real danger. This is the night Liz teaches us how to tee off. Students bring drivers
and swing them wild and hard. Diana hits another student in the head with one of her balls. “Medic!” he yells. Jack can’t
seem to hit the ball with his driver—at all. He whiffs over the top of the ball or he hits the carpet and sends it flying.
A couple of times there are thuds and clangs as he hits under or behind the carpet swatch, thwacking the linoleum floor. He
may have even produced a linoleum divot on one attempt.

“Take a breath and count to three,” Liz says, consoling him. “Keep your chin up but not when you’re hitting the ball!”

She instructs another student to stand farther away from the ball with her driver.

“Why?” the student demands to know.

“Because it’s longer,” Liz replies.

“Don’t let your tee shot psych you out,” she warns. “It can ruin your whole game. My father taught me to play golf using only
a 6-iron. No tee shots. That would be a good idea for you. Just throw that first tee shot if you have to. Or if it gets too
bad, just pick up your tee and go.”

And with that, school’s out for summer. Some of the students stick around to ask individual questions like why pro golfers
wiggle their butts and their clubs before hitting the ball, but our golf instruction is over.

Can you really learn to play golf in six hours for sixty-nine bucks in a grade school gym in New Jersey?

Nope. And, to a degree, yes. Liz introduces us to the clubs and to the fundamentals of how to swing them. She succeeds in
making us feel like we know enough to at least go out and try to play. And when no one’s ever told you anything about the
grip or the swing or the clubs or the etiquette, and you find yourself walking out to that first tee, you really do feel a
bit like you’ve been beamed down to an alien planet.

Liz saves her best bit of advice for last: “Don’t keep score, not for a long, long time.” We turn in our carpet swatches,
wish each other luck, and go out into the cold.

C
hrist had an easier time getting up on Easter than I did. Exactly what time
did
he have to rise anyway?

My alarm went off at 5:00
A.M
., four hours after I went to bed. I’m not an early riser. Why, I didn’t get up till nine in the
army
. True, we lost that one. ‘Nam. These days, I’ve found a job where we don’t have to be in the office until ten or ten-thirty.
And if any fish out there ever wish to be caught by me, they can damned well wait until noon.

Something they don’t tell you when you’re learning golf is that you can’t actually play! There’s no place to do it. There
are golf courses everywhere you look in this bountiful land, but they’re all jammed. Is there a better reason to support Zero
Population Growth and put up electrified fences along our nation’s borders? Malthus warned us about this. There are now six
billion people on this planet and if we don’t get our heads out of the sand we’re going to run out of food and tee times!

The county I live in has tens of thousands of golfers registered to play at three public courses, and Lord knows how many
unregistered. Golfers are like dogs in this respect. Indeed it’s dog-eat-dog for tee times.

They’ll arrive at the Paramus, New Jersey, course at 10:00
P.M
. on a Thursday night, for example, so they can be among the first in line at 6:00
A.M
. Friday when the sign-up sheet for Saturday tee times is put up. “I used to tell my wife that these people are nuts,” one
of them named Billy tells me, “and she’d say, ‘That’s right, they sure are.’ ”

There’s a phone-in reservation system by which you can, theoretically, reserve a tee time seven days in advance. Golfers can
call at 12:00:01
A.M
. Sunday to reserve a spot for the following Sunday, but by the time their calls go through the course is somehow already
booked. The scorned suspect skullduggery.

Regulars do know, however, that there’s a raffle over the winter for tee times. My brother-in-law joined a
conglobation
of twelve duffers who entered the raffle for an entire season of tee times. And they won, sort of, if you want to call it
that. They won the right to buy twenty-five weekend tee times from April through October for $1,800.

But their allotted tee time was 6:18
A.M
.!
Moreover, only four of the twelve can play each week, so newcomers like my brother-in-law, Bert, received the less-than-prime
dates, such as Father’s Day, Mother’s Day, and Easter. Some dates are so unpopular that they need substitutes to fill a foursome.

And this is how I am blessed to rise on Easter morning at 5:00
A.M
. to play golf. Bert invited me. It is raining. It is 43 degrees. And pitch dark. But we’re going, come hell or high water.
And in this case we have both.

I put on my golfing attire, such as it is—and a ski parka. And gloves. Not golf gloves.
Winter
gloves. I make a mug of instant coffee, using two tablespoons of coffee and one tablespoon of sugar. At Starbucks, this would
be “The Coronary Grande.”

I have time to take this strong medicine only because my golf partners arrive five minutes late to pick me up. They had trouble
rousing my brother-in-law, and had to mount a Janet Reno–style raid—battering rams, assault weapons—to extract him from bed.
His hair resembles the Statue of Liberty’s crown when he knocks on my door.

“It’s not too bad out,” he says. I point to the TV screen where the Weather Channel is telling me it’s 43 and raining. “Oh,”
he replies.

I have a long history of unfortunate experiences with my brother-in-law, some involving sports. He once represented himself
as a fisherman, for example, and talked me into going with him on a fishing expedition to Canada, where he implied that trophy
fish just jump into your boat. There, too, we arose before dawn on the first day … and caught … nothing. He looked good, however,
donning an Orvis fishing vest and other accoutrements, but it quickly became apparent that he knew not. It is unclear if he
knew not that he knew not. He ceremoniously withdrew from his tackle box an antique sterling silver lure from Scotland, tied
it to his line, and made his cast … a beautiful cast, sailing out and out and … “Son-of-a-bitch!” he cried, realizing he’d
not tied it securely and the family heirloom was splashing across the waters before plunging to the depths. Gone. Things went
from bad to worse. I caught a fish, a northern pike (possibly) that displayed such fearsome fangs Bert insisted on knocking
it unconscious before bringing it aboard. As I brought it up, he smacked the fish in the head with a paddle, a glancing blow
that knocked it off my line, and we watched it swim away. Hours went by, uneventfully, until we saw a fish swimming in the
clear waters directly toward our boat at a depth of less than a foot. Bert again grabbed the paddle and began thwacking the
waters, in an attempt to cold-cock the fish. But that approach also failed. And so it went for an entire week until my wife
was lucky enough to land a suckerfish.

So, naturally, I am a bit wary about golfing with him. Billy—yes that very aforementioned golf nut—is in my driveway in his
minivan. He is the “commissioner” of the twelve-man golf league. It is under his auspices that I’m playing (and so he should
be named in any legal actions resulting from the round). With him is Dave, another league member, and as we drive to the course
they carry on steady, good-natured banter, the kind of thing I can’t stand at such an hour. Turns out these guys like to get
up at four and five in the morning. They should get a Dunkin’ Donuts franchise.

“This is our first golf outing,” Billy says.

“Me, too,” I say. “Of my life.” They laugh. Why?

“You all have kids?” I ask. They do. “Don’t you guys catch a lot of flak at home for not being there on Easter morning for
the baskets and church and everything?” They do. Yet … they are here. They are golfers.

The sky begins to lighten a bit as we pull into the parking lot at six sharp. And the rain has slowed to a drizzle. I’d hoped
for a while that the weather would worsen and we could all go back to bed, but I came to realize that there is no going back
with men like these. These men are nuts. Golfers.

We take our bags out of the minivan and head for the clubhouse, which is very nice indeed for a public course. I mean, check
out the public basketball and tennis courts sometime, with the bent rims and no nets. Here there’s a nice bar, a restaurant,
and locker room facilities. It even has a drink cart that runs around the course—unfortunately not at this hour.

Right now the guy behind the desk is saying that due to a computer error we may not have a tee time.

“What’s the problem?” Billy asks genially. “We will kill you,” I add.

But he finds our reservation and chirps: “And the weather’s pretty nice now.” Relative to … ? He must be from Seattle or Ireland,
where they have twenty-six words for rain, and drizzle isn’t even one of them. “Drizzle” is one of their words for “nice day.”