Bunker Mulligan "Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry." ~Mark Twain

I played again today, and there wasn’t any wind. Club selection was tough! Played well though.

In front of the green at #11, a par 3, there is a pond. As we walked between the bunkers and water one of my partners said, “That’s a pretty big snake.” Sticking his head out of a drain pipe in the water was a cottonmouth. He was young, or had just shed because his markings were very plain. It was obvious he wasn’t in a mood to be disturbed. I’ll remember to be a bit more careful around the brush near that hole from now on.

I flagged down a marshal and told him to warn others about the snake. “Oh, that’s just a water snake. They have the same markings as a cottonmouth.” I assured him I knew what I saw, and left it at that. I grew up in the south and have had plenty of confrontations with the specie.

A rattlesnake has a completely different personality. He will look at you, shake his tail, and say, “Aw, man. Don’t bother me. I’m just lying here trying to catch some rays!” Cottonmouths have an attitude. Get close to them and they try to stare you down. “Bring it on. You want some of this? I’ll be glad to dish it out. This is my turf, so tread lightly and get the hell out of here before I chase you out!”

Yesterday I went to Edwin Watts to spend my gift certificate from last week’s tournament. The guys in the store know me, and what clubs I play. I must be spending far too much time there! I tried a couple of drivers in their indoor range. I was a bit disappointed to find that my clubhead speed with the driver has now dropped below 100 MPH. 98, to be exact. With a 2-iron it was 86 MPH. Old age settling in. It will happen to Tiger someday, too.

I picked up a 2-iron. I’ve decided to fill my bag with 1-9 irons, pitching wedge, 52 and 56 degree sand wedges, and putter. That leaves one opening for something else to stay under the 14-club limit. I haven’t decided whether to carry a lob wedge or a wood. I use my 3-wood on one par 4 hole where I can cut the corner and go for the green, but the 1-iron may give me enough carry. I also like my persimmon driver. That’s probably what I’ll carry, just because.

My home course isn’t really long enough in its variations for using all my clubs in a given round. Generally, I end up playing driver and wedge, with a 6 or 7 iron thrown in from time to time. On two of the par 5 holes I can use the 3-wood after my drive. Otherwise, a 5-wood or less is adequate. So, I’ve decided to go for variety and work on my iron play at the same time. It will be almost like playing a different course. The down side may be that I end up hitting one iron all the time, but wind variations may up the ante a bit. With a long weekend ahead, I’ll get plenty of opportunity to experiment.

Kabul Golf Club is now open for business once again.

The Taliban, who hate everything Western, lined the greens with land mines and built a bunker at the eighth hole so they could shoot at fleeing Soviets.

Abdul, 47, who learned the game as a child and was flogged by Muslim fanatics for playing, said golf is Afghanistan’s “game for the future.”

“Although golf is not a common game in Afghanistan, lots of kids show curiosity about it,” he said.

Slice, now you can get a C-130 ride and play 18!

Yesterday and today I played in the Army Aviation Association of America annual golf tournament. We played a scramble yesterday, and today was Best Ball. For you who don’t know such things, all four players play their own ball, and the team gets the best score of the four on each hole. After yesterday we were in fourth place. Today we played the base course and finished second, third overall. I got a trophy. I’ve never received a golf trophy before, even though I’ve won or placed in many tournaments.

We decided to keep the team together next year. We got along really well, and played pretty well together. I had another Jeckyll/Hyde round today. I carried the team (best ball) on the front nine with a 37, but shot 48 on the back with one out of bounds and putts that wouldn’t drop. We finished 1 under today. Not bad for a team with a 15 handicap (me), two 20’s, and a 20-something. The team that beat us today was 2 under, and one of the players carries a 4 handicap. Of course, “brisk” winds can equalize everyone.

The extra added feature was my teaming up with the #2 man here. He is the civilian deputy to the commander. He is also a former maintenance officer (Army), and we got along very well. He and I will begin playing regularly, and another member of our team comes down about once a month from Huntsville, AL, and will join us for a little team practice!

Three new friends, and a new regular playing partner. Successful weekend, and it isn’t even over yet.

Offhand, I can’t think of any game that has been “invented” which gained any popular appeal. One example of an invented game is Flickerball. I love it, but it isn’t played anywhere except as a tool for teaching teamwork. It is a combination of football, basketball, and hockey, and knowledge of the rules is everything.

People who participate in sports are athletes. I’ve been involved in discussions about whether NASCAR drivers and golfers are athletes. Even some baseball players deny being athletes themselves. Yet an athlete, by definition, is someone who can meld the mental processes into some form of muscle control better than the rest of us–hand/eye coordination, as they say. NASCAR drivers have endurance (always considered an athletic trait) and the ability to use their muscles to control a car moving in close proximity to others at 200+ mph. Golfers, likewise, have phenomenal muscle control in much the same way as world-class swimmers and divers. They pretty much use every muscle in their body in graceful coordination.

Sorry…off on a tangent!

Games are an evolutionary creation. Any game with a ball began as someone threw an object, or tried to hit something thrown to them. Golf, like field hockey, began with people hitting a small obect on the ground with a stick. Games picked up rules as they became means of competition. Golfers began trying to hit stones into rabbit holes, then developed into a contest to see who could put their stone into a hole more quickly, or with fewer strikes.

There are other individual sports in which a participant actually plays against himself or some standard. All bowlers want to score 300. But golf is unique. The conditions of play change every day, and often with every stroke. Bowlers may have to deal with hard or soft lanes, but the air conditioning generally can be counted on to work. And it usually doesn’t rain on the lanes.

Even a course someone plays every day offers a different test each time. The tee boxes are moved around, and the holes are cut at different spots on the greens. The wind changes direction and intensity. The fairways and greens may need cutting, or might be soft or hard depending on weather conditions. Or any combination of these variables. Of course, the less skill a golfer has the more likely each round will be different. If I hit a 260 yard drive down the left side of this fairway today, I may hit a 220 yard drive down the right side tomorrow. Is it in the rough, on the fairway, in a bunker, or even the water? Pretty good variance there without even considering the other factors. And a 30 yard pitch from one side of a green can be far different from a 30 yard pitch from the opposite direction.

Yes, endurance does come into play in golf, too. Typically, a golf course is about 6700 yards long, tees to greens, measured down the middle of the fairway. That’s a little under four miles. Not really a long walk, but it is augmented by many more yards from one hole to the next, and plenty of walking around greens and looking for lost balls. Certainly no marathon, but the legs are important for the swing, and when they get tired the swing suffers.

Most of all, golf is a game of the mind. The competition is one between the golfer and his mind, with the course and weather being both distraction and obstacle. I think that is why it appeals to me. I can’t get mad because a lineman missed his block, or the outfielder was out of position. I can’t even allow myself to get mad at me, because that also negatively affects my play. What Yogi Berra said about baseball is true in golf: “You can’t think and hit at the same time.” The swing must be trained to perform automatically. When I’m hitting the ball poorly, I often make things worse by trying to think as I swing. Mind control is everything.

Golf is my game. After many years of football, baseball, basketball, racquetball, flickerball, and softball, I’m devoted to a game without the word “ball” in its name. What my body now refuses to do is react quickly, and that’s what those other sports require. Golf doesn’t ask me to react, except mentally. And that’s an even greater challenge.

This is a topic of interest to most people, although it sometimes becomes too painful to read. This is one of those painful moments.

Based on a bet by the other members of his threesome, Everett Sanchez tried to wash his own “balls” in a ball washer at the local golf course. Proving once again that beer and testosterone are a bad mix, Sanchez managed to straddle the ball washer and dangle his scrotum in the machine. Much to his dismay, one of his buddies upped the ante by spinning the crank on the machine with Sanchez’s scrotum in place, thus wedging them solidly in the mechanism. Sanchez, who immediately passed his threshold of pain, collapsed and tumbled from his perch. Unfortunately for Sanchez, the height of the ball washer was more than a foot higher off the ground than his testicles are in a normal stance, and the scrotum was the weakest link. Sanchez’s scrotum was ripped open during the fall, and one testicle was plucked from him forever and remained in the ball washer, while the other testicle was compressed and flattened as it was pulled between the housing of the washer, and the rotating machinery inside. To add insult to injury, Sanchez broke a new $300.00 driver that he had just purchased from the pro shop, and was using to balance himself. Sanchez was rushed to the hospital for surgery, and the remaining three-some were asked to leave the course.

This wouldn’t normally count, because the idiot didn’t die. But because he cannot reproduce as a result of his qualifying act of stupidity, we have allowed it.

There must have been some serious adult beverages involved.

Don’t you just hate it when you break a brand-new club?!

I played Willow Springs today, one of the dozen or so municipal courses in San Antonio. I decided to play from the tips, in spite of the 7221 yards. The course rating is 73.9 from the gold tees, with a slope of 134. For the uninitiated, a “standard” course would be rated at 72.0 with a slope of 113. The stroke rating is based on play in the fairways, and slope is an indicator of the kinds of trouble that await you when you stray. Length also factors into slope.

I shot 89, which isn’t too bad. I played the front nine alone, stuck behind a threesome who felt they owned the course. On the back nine, another single caught up to me and we finished the last eight holes together.

The guys ahead were not very good, but played like they were. One would pull a club, put it back and get another, change his mind and get another. Then he would take two practice swings, back up and check his line, then get up and hit. The he might take another practice swing because he topped the ball and it rolled 50 yards.

Another in the group was in no hurry to go anywhere. As slow as his partners were, they often had to wait on him.

The third was one of the types that really make me want to laugh and cry at the same time. He consistently hit the ball 150 yards off the tee. He would then stand over his ball and wait for the group ahead to get off the green before he hit his second–which needed to carry 250 yards to reach it. Over and over and over. If you can’t hit your drives more than 150 yards, what makes you think you’ll hit the 3-wood 250?

My pick-up partner made up for the delays. I played much better once I wasn’t standing around waiting on the guys ahead, and had someone to share the fun and pain with–and tell lies to. Golf is good.