“It’s a wonderful game.”
“It’s an absolutely horrendous game.”
These statements underline the contradictory feelings of people towards golf.
People who don’t understand golf think it’s a ridiculous experiment in frustration and a complete waste of time. I guess all of us feel that way about any sport or pastime that we’re not familiar with. Mind you, even those of us who love golf often think it’s silly. As Mark Twain so famously said, “Golf is a good walk — spoiled!”
In spite of all that, we still go out on the verdant fairways, slashing, shanking, swearing, and wondering why we're never on the verdant fairways but always in the woods. Golf spelled backwards is “flog,” which sort of says it all, doesn’t it? Golf is like paying taxes. The faster you get to the green, the sooner you end up in the hole.
Some people think golf is easier if you keep score “creatively.” Here is how they do it. When you finally get in the hole and you’re marking down your score, you say, “I had a five there.” Then you look around. If no one is looking at you funny, you frown and start to erase the five, saying, “No, that's not right. I had a four.” This is known in golf as, “improving your lie.”
Six laws of golf:
1. No matter how bad a round of golf you play, there will always be at least one shot so perfect, so on target and so gratifying that you will come back to play again.
2. The best way to get around a tree standing directly in your line is to aim directly at the tree, since you never hit where you’re aiming, anyway.
3. The only time you’ll hit the ball straight is when applying the previous law.
4. Nobody really cares what you shot today — except you.
5. Never carry more clubs than you can afford to break.
6. It is a myth that using an old ball will guarantee that you will carry a lake.
Origin of golf
Blame it on, or credit it to, the Romans. Let’s see, there was Demitrious, Julius, Antonious and ... well ... never mind. Anyway, they came up with a game called paganica, which was played by Roman soldiers garrisoned in Scotland from 100 BC to AD 400.
You knew we’d get around to Scotland, right?
Demetrious and the boys used bent sticks and a leather ball filled with feathers, and would knock the ball into holes placed around the countryside.
Observers mused that the Roman heads might also be filled with feathers.
So, that's how it started. At least, that’s one of the 45 legends and theories floating around about the game’s beginnings. We can only be grateful that they eventually changed the name to “golf,” since “paganica" doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, as in, “Hey guys! How about a round of paganica tomorrow morning?”
Golf whimsy
Did you know that there are only 538 known golf jokes catalogued in the Official Golf Joke Achives in Farnsworth, Scotland? If you didn’t, that’s not surprising, since I just made it up.
Anyway, here are three jokes you might like”
• Golf joke No. 35, the definition of a caddy. A caddy is someone who stands behind you and didn’t see where the ball went either.
• Golf joke No.147, a golfer was having a terrible round. He missed the ball several times and on each mighty swing the clubhead dug deep into an anthill. Finally, one of the ants turns to his friend and said, “Listen, if we want to survive, we better get on the ball.”
• Golf joke No. 320, today’s helpful golf tip. If you’re ever out on the golf course during a thunderstorm and you’re worried about being hit by lightning, hold a one-iron over your head because even God can’t hit a one-iron.
A final thought and a truism. It was a dedicated hacker who said: “If you watch a game, it’s fun. If you play at it, it’s recreation. But, if you work at it, that’s golf.”