Cru Jones Society

Mark Twain wrote, “Golf is a good walk spoiled.” He’s right. I can nary recall a long pleasant walk I’ve ever had in the sunshine that ended with me angrily breaking something expensive and spewing ugly profanity while tossing said expensive item into a nearby sand pit. Nor have I ever thought after a walk, “Jesus Tits, I paid $100 for that? Am I out of my fucking brain?”

Such is the way of golf. It’s singularly the most rewarding and infuriating activity any person can undertake. I’ve seen otherwise sane people who haven’t uttered a word of profanity in their entire lives turn into Bobby Knight re-enacting a David Mamet screenplay after a particularly enraging round. I have a great many pressures in my life to take up this ridiculous sport, and just as many preventing me from doing so. So let’s take a look at all the things that make up “My Problems with Golf.”

#1: Golf Is Expensive

In order to play golf effectively, you need a bankroll. I own a set of clubs that I received for a birthday over 10 years ago, so in terms of technology, I probably look like a caveman out there. But in this economy, who can justify dropping $300 on a new set of sticks when there’s bills to pay, weddings to save for, and 12 packs to buy. This means I’ll continue to endure the ridicule from some dick the course randomly pairs me up with wearing some stupid-looking Greg Norman number, as he asks me how I like “swinging that piece of rebar that pretends to be a 3-iron.”

So, the set of clubs I got, and since I don’t want to look like I stumbled out of some backwoods moonshine distillery, I bought a nifty little pair of saddle shoes. That’s another $50 for shoes I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing outside the confines of a golf club. Now I need golf balls. Considering golf ball companies like to claim that their balls fly further and straighter than all the others, you’re looking at paying another $20 for your balls to tour the bottom of some shitty man-made lake. And we haven’t even gotten to the day itself where you’ll need a bucket of range balls to warm up properly, cart costs, extortive greens fees, and a half dozen beers from the illegally hot high school girl driving the drink wagon.

Shit, by the time the day’s over, you’re 100 bucks in the hole, and you’ve probably lost a half dozen balls in the drink. If you choose to play at the ghetto public course, you’ve saved money, but you likely feel like you would have been better off beating back rattlesnakes at the county open space while you scratch your legs like a fiend from the goddamn prickly shitgrass you’ve trudged through all day.

So, y’know, fuck. It’s an expensive hobby to take up.

#2: Golf Is Time-Consuming

Eighteen holes of golf takes around 4 hours to complete provided there isn’t some group of hotshots in front of you playing from the championship tees even though they have the collective coordination of Josh Blue from “Last Comic Standing.”

I don’t golf largely for the same reason I stopped skiing. Between work, writing for this website, planning for a wedding, getting in some quality time with video games and TiVo, and, oh yeah, seeing my woman, I don’t have random afternoons to just fritter away chasing a little white ball across acres and acres of greenery. Nor do I have the tenacity of many golfers to wake up at some ungodly hour of the morning on a weekend to get a tee time that isn’t in the ball stickiest part of the day. How people work normal jobs and then wake up at 5:15 on a Saturday to play golf, I will never understand. It’s just like skiing, I can’t make myself wake up early when I don’t have to in order to drive an hour each way and wipe myself out the entire day while dropping a fucking c-note on the festivities. I just can’t.

#3: Golf Is Addictive

This is one of my biggest hesitations in getting into golf, and is echoed by ESPN’s Scoop Jackson right here. Think about the people you know, and I’m willing to bet you know someone who spends every free second they have on the golf course. Off the top of my head, I can think of four people like this without even really trying. I have enough addictions in my life without adding another one voluntarily. Avoidance of getting hopelessly addicted is the same reason I don’t smoke pot, don’t have a Facebook page, and never played Magic: The Gathering. Generally, people who are into golf are REALLY into golf.

 

They keep a running list of major courses they’ve played and compare the list against other golf nuts. People structure entire vacations around this game and will play in every type of weather event that doesn’t immediately endanger their well-being, and some that will. That level of interest in a so-called hobby is frightening, and something I don’t take lightly when considering a new leisure activity. Case-in-point: Before she got re-married, a certain middle aged woman I know seriously contemplated selling her home, chucking her two cats into a newly purchased RV and following the LPGA tour around the country hitting many of the courses along the way. Needless to say, I’m glad she re-considered as I’m happy the money she most certainly would have spent will now be re-allocated to a certain wedding I’ll be a part of.

#4: Golf Is Elitist

Before I expand this problem further, I must make one clarification. Of all the reasons on this list, I’m annoyed by this one most. Why? Because every holier-than-thou twit who’s had one semester of political science and sociology thinks he’s qualified to speak on behalf of what he perceives is society’s downtrodden bearers of oppression. Oh, eat shit, you bed-wetting liberal fuckface. Because while substantial societal barriers still exist in terms of the lower class taking up golf (money, geography, lack of leisure time) the outright racial and sexual impediments have largely been eradicated due to the natural evolution of society.

Irrespective of the whiner’s incessant self-righteous soothsaying, the real economic and geographic barriers still exist meaning golf is still a white man’s sport. And if you’ve ever hung out with one of the guys from section three who talks your fucking ear off about his last round and won’t shut the hell up, chances are excellent he’s coming off like an elitist prick. Golf costs money, and if you play oodles and oodles of golf, using deductive reasoning tells us that you have plenty of money. The result: You’re acting at least a little bit like a Grade-A douche nozzle.

#5: Golf is a Waste of Resources

UFC President Dana White said in his extensive Playboy interview that he thinks golf is a “fucking stupid game and a waste of time and good land.” This is clearly a man with strong opinions and plenty to do. George Carlin made a similar argument about how much he hates golf in one of his prickly stand-up rants. And when you stop and think about it, yeah, golf is extremely resource-intensive. It’s almost offensive to think about the amount of water it takes to keep a course healthy in an unreasonable place like a desert, but next time you’re in Vegas, ask your concierge about the local courses and he’ll give you a dissertation on your options.

There’s a saying in Colorado that goes something like this, “Whiskey’s for drinking. Water’s for fighting.” If you’ve ever taken a gander at the Colorado River Compact and been privy to a hearing about potentially re-allocating the water, you know what a contentious issue water is to those who don’t have it. John McCain stands a better chance of convincing Senor Limon that the moon landing was fake than he does of taking away Colorado and Utah’s river water for use by his Arizona constituents. If developers didn’t continue installing non-native grasses that require obscene amounts of water in unsuitable habitats, perhaps we could ease the fighting over river water just a bit.

But, like everything else, we abide by The Golden Rule – If you have the gold, you make the rules. Hence, as long as people continue to drive the demand for golf, new courses will spring up all the time and we can continue to get our fix of the most frustrating game on earth all the while exacerbating our growing water problems.

#6: Golf Is the Most Frustrating Game on Earth

As we come full circle, I’m reminded of a round I played when I was 15. I hooked my tee shot on the first hole into the deep rough where my ball rested comfortably behind a tree that looked like it belonged in front of Boo Radley’s house. I chipped that one back into the fairway and proceeded to drop my approach beautifully over the hole into the sand where after two more shots, I three-putted for a tidy 8 on the day’s opening hole. Eight holes later, my opening quadruple-bogey was but a happy memory as I not only managed to shoot the worst round of my life up to that point, but I rammed a ball washer with the golf cart spilling Sprite all over my leg hair that made me nice and sticky in the 90 degree heat. I still remember this day as one of the five worst of my entire life.

As I contemplated ending my relationship with golf entirely, and possibly my life, while walking up the fairway of the par 4 9^th hole after a so-so drive. I sat at least 150 yards out with barely the will to live propelling me to the clubhouse for a shower and a giant cheeseburger. I decided to say fuck it and go large over the water hazard to try for the green Tin Cup-style in two shots. I didn’t have anything to lose and was down to my last ball, so I figured if I lost it, I could avoid the humiliation of more shots and head into the clubhouse early.

Here’s where I’m convinced golf is controlled by Satan and his underlords. Amazingly I cleared the water easily and put myself within three feet of the cup for the easy tap in and a birdie to close out the day. Despite the misery the previous two hours inflicted upon me, that last shot was so rewarding, I was basically ready to go out and shoot nine more that very minute once I wiped the citrus-flavored high fructose corn syrup off my leg, of course. That’s the mystery of golf. You can spend 120 minutes in unprecedented agony tormenting yourself over what an asshole you are for failing so grandly at such an ostensibly easy game. And then magically one shot erases all the evils like the wave of a magic wand and you’re ready to sell your house and follow the LPGA tour for the rest of your life.

 

Golf is where you learn about yourself, where you can spend time with your dad, and where everyone has a shot like my Herculean blast over the water, on the green in two, and tap in for birdie that they recall like the first time they got felt up in Black Bart’s Cave at Casa Bonita.

Golf is expensive, time-consuming, addictive, elitist, wasteful, and infuriating. But I suppose my main problem with golf is that I just don’t play enough.

Until next time…

edagger@crujonessociety.com