Every Once In Awhile We Have To Sacrifice A Caddy To Keep The Gators Happy



What really happened to Jack Nicklaus



"It took me seventeen years to get three thousand hits in baseball. I did it in one afternoon on the golf course." ~ Hank Aaron

"Baseball reveals character; golf exposes it." ~ Ernie Banks

"The ardent golfer would play Mount Everest if somebody put a flagstick on top." ~ Pete Dye

"Golf is a game in which you yell fore.... shoot six, and write down five." ~ Paul Harvey

"I have a tip that can take five strokes off anyone's golf game. It is called an eraser." ~ Arnold Palmer

Ah, the accursed game of golf. You'll note that I don't call it a sport. Not with guys dressed like that. And not considering that your typical golfer tends to be older guys sporting a beer gut, whose sole athletic part in the activity is swinging a club at the ball, before getting into that golf cart and going to the next hole (their heart just won't let them walk that far, their knees ache, and they've got a cigar to smoke, you know...). So no, golf does not qualify as a real sport. And yet, for some inexpicable reason, millions of people play it.

Even the Grim Reaper likes to play from time to time. Doesn't he have enough to do?

This is the time of year, of course, when like the birds flying south to migrate, some of the golfers in our northern reaches are busy. They're playing a few final rounds on the links, getting in as much as they can. Because soon it'll be time for them to drive south, to warmer climates, and spend the whole winter playing golf. It's not enough that they're out on the golf courses sixteen hours a day up here; they feel compelled to spend months in the heat of Florida, the Gulf Coast, and Arizona (at least the North American variety of homo golfus fanaticus) playing their favourite pastime all winter long.

They'd just better mind the local wildlife. Gators find stray golfers a tasty meal. Lots of fat and meat on them, you see, usually basted in alcohol, which leaves a unique taste to the meal.

Up here in summer, the golfers still have to mind the wildlife....

When they're not taking advice from their caddies, of course...

I'm not a fan of the game. I find it tedious, to say the least, and I strenuously object to how much land is wasted on these sprawling courses. No other sport (er, activity, since I've already conclusively established that golf is not a sport) takes up this amount of room. I don't understand its appeal. I really don't get why it pulls in the television ratings it does. Let's face it. As boring as golf is, watching it on television is even more so.

My uncle has a brother (or brother-in-law; I've never clarified which one it is), who's obsessed with the game. That little migration scenario I mentioned above? That's him, by the way. He and his wife live in a retirement community linked to a golf course in Ontario's cottage country. All summer long, he's out early in the morning, on the golf course, playing the game for hours on end. He'll come home at the end of the day, thinking only about the next day's playing. His wife, like so many other golfer spouses, is in effect, a golf widow. At least golf widows know where their spouse is, out on the course. As opposed to being in a strip club stuffing fifty dollar bills in the g-string of a stripper named Amber.

This time of year, with the leaves changing colour, he's no doubt playing his last few days of golf, and getting ready for the drive south to spend the next few months. They've been doing it for years now, wintering in the southern states, so he can keep playing golf.

I've already established it's not a sport. And it's not an activity either, really. It's a full blown obsession.

For a good number of years, the golf world has been centered on one player. The not so mighty (anymore) Tiger Woods. He played the game, seemed to have the world at his fingertips (at least the world that takes this idiocy seriously). And he made a lot of money. Then things started going wrong.

Tiger was indulging his fondness for women who weren't his wife, chasing every skirt in sight. In the words of his chief sponsor, he was "just doing it." And of course, as so often happens in these cases, the wife found out. Elin wasn't happy.

These days Tiger's game is gone. His marriage fell apart under all of the strain. He's routinely fallen behind in competition. It seems the life has been drained right out of him.

These days, Tiger has to play where he can, even during a military engagement.

Tiger takes out his hostility on the photographer, while Cigar Guy lurks nearby

What is it about golf that draws the golfers in? Are they unhappy at home? Are they deluded? Do they like screaming at little white balls and clubhouse caddies? Do they enjoy lying as they write down their scores?

Ouch!

Mind the gators, lads.

Mark Twain said it best: golf is a good walk wasted.

If you're marrying a fanatic golfer, don't say you weren't warned. Get used to doing a lot of stuff on your own. Yes, you thought you could put up with it, but the game often means more to your spouse then you do. I warned you, but would you listen? No!

And if you're a golfer (why? I ask you again, why?), one piece of advice: really... mind the bear. He doesn't like golfers either. It just shows that he has very good taste.

World Domination Protocol #34: Get Your Own Navy

The Royal Navy announced recently that they're selling one of their aircraft carriers, the HMS Invincible. If you've got a couple million spare dollars floating about, you can have your very own aircraft carrier. An aircraft carrier, as Tom Clancy would tell you, is a projection of power on the seas. With the planes it carries and the ships that accompany it, the carrier owns a huge chunk of the water around it. Tom would go on from there and tell you how the carrier was built, where it was built, what company won the contract, the names of the crews who put it together, and go on and on about rivets and bulkheads and... well, by then you'd be asleep or clobbering Tom over the head to get him to shut up.

The Invincible was once the pride of the fleet, and saw action during the Falklands War. Now, what with the Brits trying to sort out their financial house, certain items like decommissioned aircraft carriers have no place in the fleet. So it's up on the market, though obviously not for someone answering to the name of Bin Laden. At least we hope not.

Well, in my occasional musings on the matter of world domination, it seems that a carrier would come in handy. Particularly if she comes fully armed and including the planes. It's not much use otherwise. So, what would I do first?

I'd need time to give the Invincible a shakedown cruise. And get some target practice in. I'd like to start with using Justin Bieber's house for target practice, but I somehow doubt an aircraft carrier can get up the Welland Canal, into Lake Erie, and up that river to the town of Stratford. Besides, even if it could, I'm sure the town fathers would resent having their town bombarded like that.

So, what else to use for target practice? Well, it would have to be somewhere along the coast for proper operations. There's one good choice there. Golf courses. I hate golf. And in the new world order I'll establish, golf shall be banned. In fact, anyone even thinking of playing golf will be shot on sight.

Therefore, St. Andrews-By-The-Sea would be fair game. And so would these guys:

We all know that wiping golf off the face of the earth would be doing the world a favour, so bombarding those golf courses in advance will be fair warning. Tiger, time to set your clubs aside and find something else to do. Aside from chasing whatever bimbo of the week catches your eye...

Golf: Sport Of The Loons

"Golf is a good walk wasted." -Mark Twain

The great Mr. Twain and I are in agreement.

Is it really a sport when most of the players who play it for fun have beer guts? When the only athletic activity involves taking a club and hitting a ball? The answer, of course, is no.

I've played the game a couple of times. Enough to know it's one of life's most boring pursuits. So I've developed a deep dislike of golf as time's gone on. The great Canadian columnist Arthur Black reminds us that golf spelled backwards is flog. Apt, isn't it?

Where to begin? Probably with the fact that growing up where I did, there were plenty of the accursed courses to be found. And whenever late in the summer we'd have a drought, those golf courses would still be as green as ever, even while people were being asked not to water their lawns. Oh, sure, they have their own ponds to draw on, I know that. It's the principle of the thing. As a kid, it didn't seem right.

Then there's the game itself. Played at the competitive level, for some inexplicable reason it draws big ratings. Especially where there's a philandering player with an animal for a name getting back into it after his fall from grace. Incidentally, shouldn't the story from the last Masters have been about the guy who won it, and the fact that his wife (cancer patient at that) was right there cheering him on, rather then the insincere, attention seeking sleazebag everyone was chasing around?

But I digress. I could go on about Tiger Woods all by himself. This is about golf. What is it about the game that draws ratings? Who really gives that much of a damn about it? It's really very, very dull when you get right down to it. People in really bizarre clothing hitting a ball after conferring with the caddie for endless minutes. Swearing when the ball doesn't go where they want it to. Yelling at the caddie for giving them bad advice. Going down on the nearest porn actress that catches their... oh, right, this is about golf. Not Tiger.

I hate the game. It's boring. It takes up way the hell too much space. No other sport takes up that amount of space. It's utterly pointless. But how to get rid of it? That's the question, isn't it?

I've been asked, rhetorically, what I'd do if I was the Prime Minister. I say rhetorically, because there's no way in hell I would ever go into politics. That's a matter for another time. The answer, though, is relevent here. The first thing I'd do is ban the game of golf from ever being played. Yes, a rather bold statement to make.

The problem is that the golfers would just go off to other countries. Those who couldn't would be very angry with me. So I'd have to have an army of bodyguards around me. Still, I wouldn't be satisfied with merely abolishing golf from the Great White North. I'd have to abolish it everywhere. Which, of course, is where world domination comes in.

Yes, taking over the world would have to be the next logical step. Only then, as Supreme Emperor of Humanity (you may bow), could I pass an edict declaring that anyone even thinking of playing golf will be shot on sight. Ah, yes, that sounds just about right. A world free of golf. Think about it. It sounds lovely. Lovely!

Just one problem with it. Everyone who ever tried to take over the world failed. Alexander. Genghis Khan. Napoleon. Hitler. Rosie O'Donnell. Spongebob Squarepants. All of them failed. And let's face it: running the world is just too much work.

So there's plan B. Let's change the way golf balls are made. Put some uranium in the core of the ball. Something along the lines of nuclear material. Let players buy them. In a few years, they'll be sterile. They won't have children to pass on their love of golf to. With that, in a generation, golf will die out! Wouldn't that be terrific? Can't you just see it?

Yes, we can dream. We can hope. It's not too late, you know. The golfers can be brought down. All we have to do is believe. And maybe fill in the holes on your nearest course with cement late at night.