Nothing like a pointless sports rant to get the Dopers all excited…
My wife and I went to the golf course yesterday evening after work to get in a fun little 9-hole round. She’s very new to the sport, only having played a handful of times. She only touched a club for the first time a couple months ago, and her experience has been limited to the driving range and the local Par-3. Right now though, after the initial frustration, she’s going through a phase of really accelerated improvement, and is seriouly starting to enjoy playing the game.
Make no mistake, she’s not going to be a low-handicapper anytime real soon. But I can honestly say she’s picking up the game amazingly faster than I ever did. And that makes me very happy for her…it’s nice to have a new activity we can enjoy together. Maybe soon she’ll be good enough to kick my ass.
The course we played is one that I’ve been on a ton over the last few years, and is on the Air Force base where I work. It’s not open to the general public (you have to be able to get on base) but it’s by no means an exclusive club—keep this in mind. Hell, it’s the cheapest 18 holes of golf anywhere around here. Usually when I go, it’s pretty busy and the play can be slow. Most times, there are a lot of hackers out, and I don’t mind because I’m a terrible golfer, too!
But yesterday was different. I don’t know if it was because it was mid-week. Or maybe it was because it was cloudy and damp. But for whatever reason, there were no other shitty golfers to be found. My wife and I were officially the slowest, crappiest golfers out there yesterday. That’s not a position I’m used to being in, and it’s not a pleasant one either. I’d much rather wait on the group ahead than have someone breathing down my neck. I play even worse than usual when I’m rushed.
(This story has a point…I swear…)
But there were people bearing down on us. Every scratch golfer in the area must have started right behind us, because there was a constant stream of impatient (albeit talented) jackoffs coming up on us. The first group wasn’t mean. They caught up to us after a couple holes, and I could tell by seeing them around the last green that they were pretty good. So I waved them through, no biggie.
But behind them were two 18-year-old-looking kids who reached the fourth tee box when we were taking our second shots on that hole. During my backswing I hear “We don’t have all day!” We couldn’t have put these pricks more than 30 seconds off their pace when they decide to yell that. When we reached the next tee box, we waited so they could go through. I didn’t let them play through because they deserved it, but really for selfish reasons. As much as I wanted to keep them behind us and play extra slow, I knew there was no way I could play well with assholes like that behind me for 5 more holes. But as they went through, I told them it might be easier in the future if they’d “grow up and ask to play through.” Oddly enough, it got no reaction. Fuckin’ punks.
Then, a couple holes later, I’m in the middle of the fairway (Downrange-wise, anyway…Laterally, I was in somewhat taller grass). Out of nowhere, a ball rolls past me, only a few yards away. I look back at the teebox, and the shithead who hit it gives me a half-hearted wave that signalled something between “Sorry” and “Shouldn’t have been in my way, asshole.” The drive was too long and too straight to have come from an inexperienced golfer. Instead, it could only have been hit by someone with enough experience to know that we were within his range, that you don’t hit up on people, and that you yell fucking “fore” if you accidentally do! It was obvious that this was a mean-spirited hit, and not an accident. I thought seriously about walking over to his ball and hitting it straight into the woods, or back at him, but I thought better of it. I’d hate to resort to the same level or shittiness. In the end, I followed the same line of reasoning I did for the last assholes, and let them go through.
Finally, when we’re on the 8th fairway, one final foursome catches up to our tee box. There’s no way they need to go through. We’re half a fairway and a par-3 away from being done, so they aren’t going to get held up that much. They stay as close as they can to us, anyway. When we’re finished, we stopped in the clubhouse to take a pitstop.
As we’re going out to the car, I hear “Hey, can I talk to you two?” And as I turn, I see one of the guys from that last group approaching us. I can tell already that this is gonna be great.
“You guys know that it’s etiquette to keep pace on the course, right? And if you can’t, you should let people play through.”
“I’m aware, but it was the next to last hole. You really expect us to let you play through on the last hole? We added 2 minutes to your round, tops.”
At this point, I’m merely annoyed at this guy’s jack-assery. But then he said something that nearly caused me to grab my 9-iron and commit a horrible felony.
(Looking me up and down, noticing my running shoes, cheap clubs, and my age.) “You guys obviously haven’t played here much, so you might not know how things work around here, but that kind of etiquette is important.”
What. The. Fuck?! Did I mention that this isn’t some exclusive country club? It’s a $20-a-round course on a military base, for Christ’s sake. A course normally full of t-shirt-wearing, pitch-mark-leaving hacks. And this waste of flesh has the nerve to talk to me like I’m not good enough to clean his golf spikes, much less go near “his” course.
He leaves by saying “It’s alright, just remember it in the future.” and slaps me on the shoulder, all friendly-like. I was far too shocked to say or do anything in response. All I could do was silently continue to leave, fuming. It’s probably for the better. The only coherent things that I’d have likely been able to mutter at that point would have been either, A) over the top: “Touch me again and you’ll be playing your next round from a wheelchair.” or B) pathetic-sounding and wasted on his pompous ass: “My wife’s trying to learn the game. Did it occur to you that every golfer, even yourself, was just starting out at some point … ASS?!”
After all this, my wife is feeling a little disenchanted. In the span of a couple hours, she went from feeling good about the game and her abilities to putting a foot back in “golf is for elitist assholes” territory. The irony is that she had a great round and should have left feeling good about it. These gigantic douchebags robbed her of that. And that’s what makes me more pissed off than anything. I don’t care as much if I run into some total jerks, but her ability to enjoy this new hobby is still a bit fragile. If these cocksuckers cause her to abandon a brand new set of golf clubs, I’m recouping the value by tracking them down and shoving an oversized graphite-shafted lady’s driver directly up their asses.
The worst part is, we weren’t really playing that slow. My wife hit half the greens in regulation-plus-one…not too shabby for a total newbie. We finished our 9 holes in 2:20, and that includes significant time to let three groups of assholes play through. So we shouldn’t have been holding the average golfer up. In fact, if left to our own, we’d have come in just under pace for that course. It was more of a case that everyone else out that day was really good and wanted to play really fast. That’s in stark contrast to usual; I’ve never seen this before at this course. Sure, you see the ocasional fast players who are either really good or just in some sort of hurry. But usually, the majority of the players are keeping the same pace. And the ones who aren’t are usually NICE about it.
If I feel I’m playing too slow, I’m happy to let people play through all day long. All I ask is for a little courtesy. It seems sometimes that that’s far too much to ask. I’m not mad that people thought we were playing slow…I’m mad that they were all dicks about it.
So thank you, you stuck-up pieces of dogshit, for souring the game for her.
If you got held up reading all the way through this long-ass post, I’m sorry. Maybe I should hurry up…or let you “post through”
