Blasts from the past!

Yesterday

Toppings ...

Riva looks down the fairway, squinting his eyes in an obvious effort to concentrate. The walk to the teed orb is deliberate. Another threatening glance down the fairway (#16) and Riva initiates his back swing: he promptly tops it.  No one says anything. Topping the ball is like having the ice cream in your cone falling on your lap—everyone looks away as you awkwardly try to re-insert it. 

Raggio takes the tee, Lyle says something positive, and I confidently place my Taylor ball on the tee and nod my head to reassure him that my ball will soon be threatening the atmosphere. My backswing feels a bit fast and my ball skips down the fairway in the same fashion Riva’s ball did.

Lyle mutters something polite to both Riva and me.  He steps up and hits the ball directly down the middle of fairway, picks up his tee without ceremony, and we all head down to our second shots.  

As we go, I yell at Riva, “I bet I out-topped you!” to which Riva proudly responds, “I doubt it, Raggio!” We race down to the balls and begin arguing about who out-topped who.  Now, depending on the angle from which you make your judgment, it could theoretically go either way. Riva argues that his ball is closer to the middle of the fairway. I say, “We’re not talking accuracy here, Lefty, we’re talking distance!”

Lyle chimes in and says, “It might be a tie.” I spin around and say, “Who asked you, Lyle?” and Riva quickly adds, “Yeah, mind your own fairway!” (Whatever that means.) Lyle, now realizing we’re arguing over who topped the ball farthest, begins his giggle and it becomes LL (Lyle’s laughter). He hops in his cart and deliberately drives down the middle of fairway where his ball sits some 100-plus yards ahead of us.  

Now. Riva and I both wait for the other to hit. First one to hit concedes his ball was shorter. We stand there facing each other, arms crossed, until Lyle starts yelling obscenities. We, at the same time, address our balls and proceed to both top the balls again. Lyle’s head now rests on his arms attached to the steering wheel of his cart.

He exits his cart and yells"It's a scramble!" And then he screams, “805!”

And just like “Ollie Ollie Oxen Free,” the lefties are once again friends.

Over a pitcher and all the other king’s men, Lyle recounts, “Who topped who on hole #16?” I push my glass, Riva pushes his, I push my glass further, Riva …

A Social Insecurity

                               

They say that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome; first thing I thought of was golf. I remember playing golf at a level that nearly preceded sex and food. Range two to three times a week, hitting balls until the evening hid them thirty yards out. I practiced putting on my rug until Johnny Carson came on. I was often the first single out, playing alone in the early morning sun or not. I owned the first composite driver—Yonex, as I recall. Hit it on a rope nearly always. And then, as golfers do, watched a friend with a Titleist driver hit past mine; of course, I quickly bought one.  For years I tried to hit it, and from time to time it obeyed, but mostly it was an enigma without a Rosetta Stone. And so came my introduction to:

“Golf Greed”

Contagious as a cold and as serious as an addiction, it will debilitate you—and your wallet/purse. And there are so many sayings warning you about it:  “It’s not the arrow,” etc. My Yonex, my “guarantee of fairway,” sat proud and quiet in the garage, and I ignored it like the reflection of my handicap or the passing of the Balata Ball.  Still, my game was better than most and I had those rounds I could brag about over my Caesar salad.  

Career, retirement, expectations.

Surely if I thought about the game the way I used to, and if I accepted certain limitations (a man’s got to know his limitations), I would quickly catch up to where I was and surpass then, now.

No.

Retired seven years and my game resembles a piñata after the party. Every time I go into my bag for a club, I can see Medusa in there with green eyes flashing and saying, “No fucking way, Raggio.” And after seven years of rounds, I go out there (I think we all do) expecting, for no reason at all except hope, that we are going to have the round we imagine! We all do it. I know this to be true because we all show up. We have that hopeful grin that reflects that mantra all golfers on the first tee repeat under their hats: “This is the day!” It’s the same grin and hat we wore before the last round and the round before that and …

Why am I shooting my temperature? Is there some internal conspiracy? The grins are looking more and more like grimaces. Ground Hog Day sets in and we’re already looking past today’s score and filling it in with the same excuses and dismissals we did halfway through the last round.   

The affliction of the addiction is not fiction.  Pass the 805, please …

Monday 11/20/17

Fall at Eagle:

1st Tee

                                                    

I wish I could recall what I said to Lyle on #5 as he was setting up for his second shot -I muttered something that made him back off and then bend over laughing hysterically, Coach and I had no choice but join him: it was one of those contagious laughs that "giggled" into the next hole.  I wanted to remember so when he's on the other team I can throw it at him again! Silly day- I think golf came up once or twice...

Coach bought the 805!

(Still no gal)

An Unlikely Scramble

Lyle, Raggio, Riva vs. Dick, Alan, Wade 

With jackets on and expecting the predicted blustery winds and cold, it was decided with unanimous approval that a Scramble format would take the day. Playing in record time with both teams decidedly insufficient even to truly threaten sub-par, the day ended in an even tie. 

PAR for both teams!!  

I can only speak for the team I was on—and I must admit, not once was I able to get off the tee—Riva started in excellent fashion, only to go retro. It was, alas, only Lyle whose tee shots found the middle of the fairway and gave hope to the threesome. On the 16^th, I grabbed Lyle’s arm and asked, “Do you smell it?” Lyle replied, “It wasn’t me …”  “No no no no,” I sprang back, “805, can you smell it?!” Lyle politely put his nose to the wind and slowly nodded. “Yeah, it’s the hops!”

What a fun day (lie). The format was wonderful and we should do more of it—when I’m not suffering from Golf-Tourette’s!

36 holes of golf and both teams end in par—amazing!

(No gal today.)

Something in the sky today...

The Red Tease

It happened on the 16^th fairway, the sounds and smells of a pitcher of 805 being poured suddenly permeated the senses.  I asked Dick and Coach, after they stopped Wade from throwing a rope over a large oak tree branch, if they caught the aroma. Both paused, sniffed the air, and looked at each other- then with perfect patronage nodded their head and allowed their mouths to leak a weak smile.  It only got “worse” no, worse is not the word “better” as we were putting out, Wade missed a two-incher and Coach pointed accusingly and said, “That’s why we putt everything out”!  Dick and I prayed Wade would not bury his putter in Coaches gray matter, he didn’t.  Then Dick suddenly caught the scent: his included chicken wings. We rushed to the 17^th knowing our score was so atrocious it was unnecessary to ask numbers- in fact after the front nine it was clear it was every skin for himself! 

The 18^th was so “memorable” we didn’t fill in the scores until finally biting into small spices pieces of chicken begging to be washed down with 805.

Dick covered our scorecard with a napkin and placed the salt and pepper shakers atop the napkin.  We all nodded a tiny nod scolded the waiter when he attempted to remove the napkin.  “Do you need that hand”, Wade asked. The waiter literally backed off, bowed and was absent during most of what followed.

The first brew did soften things, conversations included; fishing, camping, bowling, darts and a girl named Lucille.  An hour later our competition strode in, Alan’s tanned face confident, sat down and causally announced their score.  The winced didn’t go un-noticed- but then of course we expected to be obliterated, what we didn’t expect was to be atomized as well. Joe, Fred and Lyle all looked like they just had great sex and wanted cigarettes. 

Look, red tees, white tees or blues… if the game ain’t there, it ain’t.  And predicting how you’re NOT going hit the ball doesn’t improve your chances.  I suggest when you’re in that downward spiral you lift yourself out or away with imaging that first great sip of Pinot, cleavage, that time when the Chippy let you go with a warning or that one good shot you had during the round- of course it won’t camouflage your 126 score (from the Red Tee’s) but you gotta walk away with something!

I imagine those old Burma shave signs, myself. Strewn along the last 3 holes reminding me true spirit can be ignored when it’s poured!