My golf name is “El Pendejo” I started playing last year and at the driving range I drilled one through the little triangular window in the safety glass of the ball pick up rake cart thing while it was in motion. The young Hispanic man inside drove it right up to the tee box and that’s what he called me in front of all the other golfers at our club, and the name stuck.
I think it means “Mighty One,” or “He who is highly esteemed,” or maybe it’s just “friend,” or “buddy.”
Anyway I have a 27 handicap, and I’m actually a popular partner in tournaments where it’s net handicap and best ball because I’m improving and playing better than my handicap. Golf is a pretty cool game that way, a beginner can get right up there and play a competitive game with guys that have been playing 30 years and be an integral part of a team.
I’m gonna hit “post” now because if I don’t my iPad will log me out and I’ll lose what I’ve been writing. I’ll be doing this a lot.
It was an ominous and threatening day in the wake of hurricane Juaqin as I, El Pendejo decided to take a chance and play in the Sunday Men’s Open, which is the weekly best two balls 10 buck full handicap game. There were 14 players which worked out two three threesomes and a foursome. In the random draw I ended up in the 2nd threesome with Vinnie (a 55 year old 7 handicapper, and the founder of the Sunday group, very well liked and respected,) and Dr. Fred (a 12 handicap general surgeon.)
It was a great team as their consistency could meld well with my lack of it. My job is to simply have a few good holes. If I hit a par on a par 4 my handicap might make that a 2 which would set us 2 under. The team that is the most under wins the cash. Again golf is a fun game this way, as it is in their best interests to help me do well, and my 5 or six on a hole can end up counting big for the team.
Unfortunately, we were all playing like crap and we were actually 4 or over by the 5th hole, it was cold and overcast, and my clubs felt foreign and unnatural in my hands. My swing wasn’t gelling and I’d already lost two balls. Finally we got to #7 hole, the only par three on the front nine. It’s a straight 165 yards from the white tees, pretty level, with a raised green banking steeply towards the tee. The flag was in the front end of the green, at the lowest point which is the hardest pin position for that hole. Landing on the center of the green means you’re putting downhill.
In my bag I have the maximum allowed 14 clubs. My most feared and fickle is my Ping G30 hybrid rescue club. It’s not really an iron and not really a wood, but an unholy fusion of both, forged from fell metals and carbon fibers. Each and ever club is tempered with the blood of an actual demon, so that the demon and its soul is trapped within the club. The demon that inhabits this particular club is an angry and powerful entity named “Fuckshank.”
I own this club because an attractive witch with big tits showed up on club fitting day, and invited me to try out some clubs. She watched me hit a few balls with my clubs, while managing not to laugh, took and scribbled some stuff on an important looking form. She informed me that I had a clear gap in my bag and should at least consider a hybrid as a rescue club, concluding correctly that I would be hitting from the rough and in need of rescue more often than Matt Damon in “Saving Private Ryan,” “Interstellar,” and “The Martian” put together.
She handed me G30 rescue club, and it literally sang in my hands as I touched it, I lined up and tentatively swung at a ball and basically drilled it 200 yards with no effort, straight and true. I did this about 20 times in a row, and declared that I wanted to take this club home with me. She said. “No. You don’t want that club. That’s a demo that’s been beaten up. We’ll make a brand new shiny one just for you.”
I wrote a big check.
Later I was to surmise that the demo clubs are forged using the blood of angels, not demons. Angel blood is far rarer and much more expensive than that of demons, so they save it for the demo clubs.
Fuckshank is a pretty scare demon even for a hybrid golf club. As I take him out of my bag he writhes and twists in my grip. I carefully remove the stuffed animal groundhog head cover he is stored in (longstanding posters from the previous millennium will recognize and appreciate the significance and appropriateness of this a home for Fuckshank.)
Fuckshank is particularly cruel because once in a while, he does his job and I hit a great shot with him. He knows this and keeps me in a perpetual state of hope which he can crush over and over again. He is also dangerous. He wants to hurt my friends. On the practice tee I, a right handed golfer , was to the right of Jeff, a left hander. We swung at the same time, made contact with each other’s clubs and Fuckshank decapitated his driver. No kidding.
My partners both miss the green, intelligently choosing to be short rather than long. Fuckshank isn’t quiet in my hands as I tee up a Zero Friction golf ball deeply into ground. He is angry and vengeful because I have left him in the bag all day, but nothing has been working and I’m thinking maybe an 80% swing off my front foot might be ok, today. I take a few desultory practice swings, and Fuckshank comes alive, seeking to twist in my grip. I know he wants to dig into the turf when I swing for real, maybe even live up to his nam and shank one into my partners’ cart which is imprudently parked ahead and to the left of the tee. I can feel Fuckshank’s hunger.
I check my stance one last time and begin my backswing. My weight shifts to my Blackfoot, I rotate from the waist, I raise the club and begin to hinge my wrists, my eyes never leaving the ball. Fear and doubt enter my mind.
"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
The motion continues until the fascia in my body is coiled like a spring, like a cobra ready to strike (I know that’s a cliche, but what the hell.)
There is the barest pause at the top, a moment where anything can become or begin, and the I release and accelerate. Fuckshank screams silently in his anger sensing that things have gone terribly wrong from his perspective, that for once I am the master and in control. I follow through on contact.
In our imaginations, great events are usually accompanied by a similarly great noise, a peal of thunder, a cannon shot, the swelling of the orchestra, the ringing of the bells, an explosion.
In life though, the most significant of events of life, both great and ill are understated, silent, or nearly so… The slight click of finality as the love of your life hangs up the phone after telling you she never wants to speak to you again, the barely audible sound of the scrawl of the pen as you sign your name to a 30 year mortgage for more cash than you’ve seen in your life, the polite cough the doctor uses before he gives you the news, the whispered “yes,” when the real love of your life agrees to marry you, the sigh of your newborn child as she rests happily in your arms.
This is an insignificant moment in comparison to any of those, yet it in its perfection it shares that near silence.
The ball goes “click” softly as it leaves my club and takes off like a rocket.
“That looks very good,” says Vinnie quietly. To me, it looks too good, like I am going to overshoot the green by a huge margin. Suddenly the ball drops straight down, and bounces hard once, a shoe length from the cup. It rolls an inch and without drama drops into the hole.
My partners go crazy. Later I am told that there is an unmistakable sound of a hole in one occurring on a golf course. You just know from the yelling.
My two partners are the perfect witnesses. I kiss Fuckshank and replace him in the cover. We approach the green and indeed th ball is still in the hole.
There is a tradition that you have to buy drinks for everyone on the course when you hit a hole in one, and word travels fast. Fortunately, at the beginning of the year I paid $3 for insurance against this unlikelihood. That gets me $300 bar credit.
It’s not enough.
It’s a little bit like your wedding day. Everyone wants to shake your hand, congratulate you and drink on your tab.
It’s a pretty big deal. One guy tells me he’s played 100 rounds a year for thirty years and never gotten one. I hear the story of everyone there who has.
How lucky of me to have it happen, far luckier that it happened amongst friends and witnesses that could share in it with me.
As a former 20-something handicap golfer, congrats! I never came close to an ace. And awesome story-telling, to boot.
I have a story about a hole-in-one that a friend shot that’s significantly more dramatic, took about 45 seconds to happen, and makes the best case yet for the existence of a guiding force in our lives. But I couldn’t tell it with near the panache.
BTW, Google translates El Pendejo as something quite different. Must be a Spanish homonym.
Congrats! I’ve heard of hole in one insurance, but never actually seen it offered or know of anyone who bought it. I’ve golfed for over 20 years and don’t have an ace to show for it.
