Fore! Play (22 page)

Liz reminds us that no matter how much we spend, there are no guarantees, and that we can’t return the clubs simply because
$800 or $2,000 later we continue to … suck.

“You can have $2,000 clubs and a $2 game,” the salesman says. “You can’t buy a game.”

“Well
that’s
discouraging!” blurts one student, who left and never came back.

A
re your balls reactive?” asks the hawker, as we pass by his booth at the PGA show.

Excuse me? Is this the Ramrod Bar in New York or the PGA Golf Merchandise Show?

“Your golf balls,” he adds, by way of clarification.

“No, I don’t think so,” I reply, after some reflection. “Passive, I would say. Sometimes when I swing at them they go nowhere
at all.”

“Well,” he says, “our Ram Tour Reactive ball has the ‘magic metal’ neodymium core, the most explosive core in golf for maximum
distance or your money back.”

Neodymium? Sounds like the ring I bought Jody in the precious stones department at Kmart.

“Or,” he says, “you could go with the Balata LB with the blend of titanium and lithium balata and the patented 442 dimple
pattern. Or the XV2, a blend of titanium, magnesium, and neodymium with the patented neodymium and polybutadiene core for
the softest feel and maximum spin?”

Huh? Lithium balata? Sounds like a really slow Latin dance. Or the stuff they give hyperactive fourth-grade boys to turn them
into desks.

Polybutadiene I think I’ve heard of. Might be that orange dust on Cheez-Kurls.

He also has the XOC, which comes in orange, yellow, or raspberry, but I tell him I think there’s probably enough snickering
when I play already, thanks.

The Volvik booth offers the four-piece metal model 432 octahedron with the bismuth mixed dual power core and the zirconium
cover. Bismuth? That’s a “miracle substance” (as well as the fine capital of the Minnesota–North Dakota area).

Or perhaps I’d prefer the Air Channel ball with “no-slice technology"—Ha!—and “explosive distance.” Ha-ha! You see, “the Air
Channel connecting dimples reduce excessive air drag for more distance and reduce side spin for reduced slice and hook factors.”
The Wright brothers had less research data for their flight than these balls do.

Titleist has an enormous golf ball exhibit at the show, festooned with huge billboards of pros like David Duval hitting Titleist
balls. The exhibit features about twenty computer terminals where you can enter your golf game attributes and problem areas
(m-y-g-a-m-e-s-u-c-k-s), and the computer tells you what kind of (Titleist) golf balls to buy. In my case the computer urged
me to buy floating golf balls, a lot of golf balls, and a tetherball so I could just move on to another sport altogether.

The next booth has
irradiated
balls! They’re described as “the world’s longest legal balls.” I check the package to see if there’s a warning that their
irradiated balls might affect mine—lowering sperm count, causing erectile dysfunction, that type of thing. Not that it would
matter. Golfers would gladly risk a short putz for longer drives. As you’ll recall from history class, on June 30, 1999, in
Tenerife on the Canary Islands, British golfer Karl Woodward drove the irradiated TNT ball (with the high-energy XD core and
the Surlyn cover and exclusive cross-linked Dura-Shield coating) a historic and almost unbelievable four hundred eight yards
and ten inches! Apparently, in one shot. Sort of like when they tested the irradiated hydrogen bomb on a remote island in
the South Pacific. Four hundred and eight! But isn’t June hurricane season in the Canaries? Karl probably carried a good three
hundred yards down the fairway himself.

On display here, too, are special balls just for putting, like the Bald Eagle, with several “undimpled striking points,” because
“striking a dimple ridge can throw off a putt 5 degrees or more.” But how you go about exchanging that great putting ball
for the “world’s longest legal ball” that got you to the green, without your partners noticing, isn’t outlined in the colorful
brochure. You’ll have to figure that one out yourself. Also, I’m not so sure that I don’t want my putts thrown off 5 degrees.

Sadly, there are no magnetized balls that are just drawn to the tin cup, but there is the EZ-Reader ball with a built-in bubble
level window to show you the slope of the green. And there are “guidance system” balls with arrows painted on them to show
you that your ball is rolling true.

Could any of these things possibly be legal? And, if they’re so hot, why doesn’t Tiger Woods use any of this crap?

There are training balls with badminton feathers so you can swing away in the backyard without those reckless endangerment
charges being filed by the neighbors … trick exploding balls … balls with your former spouse’s picture on them … Eco-Golf
balls, which decompose in fresh-or saltwater within ninety-six hours with no toxic or hazardous residues left behind (but
how does that help
me?
) … glow-in-the-dark golf balls … floating—yes!—golf balls … and the Golden Girl ball for “older women with slower swings,”
which I would definitely buy if the words “Golden Girl” weren’t printed on them … and the Won-Putt ball, brazenly claiming
it “saves 3–10 strokes per round"!

Good Balls: -3–10 strokes per round. That’s 81–88 strokes off my game so far. I’m closing in on par!

N
ow, you don’t have to spend a fortune buying all these clubs and balls
new
. In fact, it’s suggested that novices might want to consider used equipment, because at first we do tend to abuse our clubs
and lose our balls. We don’t call them
used
, of course, any more than we call used cars used. We call them “pre-driven” or one of the “encore series.”

As mentioned, we like to shop at Grandpa Brennan’s Previously Owned Golf Ball Emporium, owned and operated by Jerry, his wife,
Peggy, their children and grandchildren. He has a prime location, albeit a dangerous one, adjacent to Goat Hill. They live
there, too, just a two-hundred-yard slice from the second tee, not more than ten or fifteen yards from the fairway just across
a little two-lane road. Love Canal might be safer.

Merchandise is displayed on a table in the yard, separated into the three-for-a-dollars (to include balata and titanium balls)
kept in a wooden case or twelve-pack egg cartons, and the five-for-a-dollars in a dish strainer. “It’s a quality difference,”
Jerry explains, with some of the five-for-a-dollars showing a slight blemish here and there. At either price, it’s a deep
discount, representing substantial savings over new balls that sell for from one dollar to more than four dollars apiece these
days.

Jerry’s balls bear the names of individuals, banks, beers, investment houses, country clubs, and fast-food restaurants, as
well as encouragements to “Go For It!” and to “Just Say No.” In addition to the classic white, the balls come in every color
not in the rainbow, such as fluorescent yellow, shocking pink, and roadwork-ahead orange.

As we’re shopping, there is a sharp, loud CRACK! as an errant tee shot hits the road ten feet away and bounces onto the Brennans’
roof. “Did they get ya?” Jerry laughs as he comes out of the house. I’m having a damned flashback to ‘Nam—"Incoming!"—but
Jerry’s jocular tone snaps me out of it. He shows me the side of his house, the one facing teeward, which is riddled with
holes, some the size of golf balls, others larger.

“Bullet holes,” he remarks with a chuckle. “There’s some real beauties.”

His wife, Peggy, thinks it’s funny, too. “We’re thinking of having the grandkids wear helmets when they come over,” she says,
and the two of them laugh together. Peggy has been hit, and her friend’s car window smashed here.

The family collects balls from the yard and goes ball-hawking on the course. There are eight kids and eleven grandchildren,
who all join in, equipped with long poles meant to fetch balls from water hazards, but which work equally well in the brier
patches. Jerry won’t reveal his best spots, any more than clammers around here will reveal theirs. It’s fertile ground. The
public course attracts some really bad players, like myself, and there are no caddies to watch the flight of the ball.

Jerry is a retired teacher who started the business to make some money in the summer. He sells about 4,500 balls a year now.
“Many are repeaters,” Jerry says. “Sometimes we sell the same ball over and over and over.”

Jerry sells us some balls as we head for the course. “I think I’ll be seeing these balls again,” he quips. I write “Hi Jerry”
on one with a marker.

There are used club dealers, too. I’m driving along a two-lane road on the North Fork of Long Island when I spot a small display
of golf bags, clubs, and balls sitting in a front yard. I hit the brakes and pull into the driveway of Reg Peterson, whose
porch and yard comprise a showroom of golf equipment.

He ball-hawks, too, in the woods surrounding Island’s End Golf Club down the road, and has thousands of clean, like-new golf
balls—sorted by brand and type—to show for it. He found four thousand last year. He offers Pinnacles at $6 a dozen, Titleists
for $7, and Taylor Mades for $8. He has the new Callaways for 60 cents a piece—the ones that sell new for $4.40 each!

“Some of these have only been hit once,” he claims. Reg knows this because he’s seen them leave the course off the first tee.
“I was out hawking one day and watched a guy hit a ball seven times in a sand trap before he finally picked up his ball and
threw it at
me
. He said I was making him nervous watching him"—and after all, Reg is a bit like the Grim Reaper of Golf. “He said I had
no business on a golf course, and I told him he certainly didn’t either.”

Where did all the clubs come from? He finds some of those in the woods, too. “Most of those I find are snapped in two by angry
golfers,” he says, “but sometimes guys are so mad they just fling ’em into the woods.” He wishes he could get at those water
hazards, a favorite destination when disgruntled golfers hurl their clubs.

He gets some of his club inventory from garage sales or those special big trash days when homeowners can set anything they
don’t want on the curb for pickup. And some people really don’t want their golf clubs anymore.

“People start to dislike the game and can’t wait to get rid of them,” he says. “You’d be surprised.”

“Not really,” I reply.

“These old clubs are better than all these newfangled ones,” he says, taking a handsome wooden wood out of a bag there in
the yard and caressing it. “They sound better and feel better when you hit the ball. These metal things sound like those awful
aluminum bats they use in baseball. The major leagues don’t use them for a reason. That ping and clink drives me nuts.”

Whereas new woods and irons can easily cost $100, $200, $300 or more
apiece
, Reg is selling woods for $16 and irons for $7. He’s offering a complete set of clubs in an attractive (to some) baby blue
bag for $100. He has a complete line of golfing equipment, including left-handed sets. He even has shoes, although this being
the height of the season and everything right now he has just the two pair and both are women’s eight and a halfs.

You ever hear of those super sports stores like the one in the Mall of America where you can try out your clubs in the store?
Reg has had that for years, right there in his side yard. He even has a hole with a flag in it.

He’s been in the business twenty-seven years, although he gave up actually playing golf five years ago when he made a hole-in-one.

“I quit right then and there,” he says. “I never was much good at the game.” And fortunately for him and the missus, most
other golfers aren’t either.

T
here are a few things I’d change about golf. Playing the closest hole, rather than being locked into that whole numbered hole
thing, would be first and foremost on my list of changes, but golf could also use some other improvements like a few more
holes in each green for players like me. And par. Par’s got to go. No other sport has par. It makes 99.9 percent of all golfers
feel bad.

If it is to continue posing as a bona fide professional
sport
, golf needs a lot of work. It’s time to bring this sport or hobby or skill or whatever it is into the twenty-first century,
to ensure its TV viability, and maybe finally get it into the Olympics, where every other conceivable form of human
activity
is on display, to include synchronized swimming, where the “athletes” wear sequins and blue eye makeup, and that one where
people run around in their leotards with streamers and rubber balls.

Right now watching golf on TV is tantamount to tending an aquarium. Herewith, a few modest proposals to get golf
moving
.

Golf is the only sport with carts, so perhaps the game should be
played
in them, with golfers hitting their balls from moving carts, polo-style. This, plus the added possibility of playing polo
golf with lots of players and just one ball, possibly in teams, with a “goal” of a green and cup at either end. Most sports
have goals at either end: football, basketball, hockey, soccer. And with teams you’d have uniforms. Get out of those earth-tone
polo shirts, willya? Get some cool uniforms. Black and teal. You know.

If they insist upon sticking to regular individual golf, maybe on the 18th a goalie could run onto the green as the putt was
rolling and try to make a diving save. Introduce a little
defense
to golf. Like every other sport. Imagine Tiger trying to hit a fairway shot with somebody
guarding
him. Goalies and defensemen, that’s better.

Maybe throw a few windmills on the greens to make things more interesting. Or cross golf with a little croquet so that you
could hit your opponent’s golf ball, and “send” it into the bushes or the water hazard. Hazards could stand to be a little
more interesting, too. Instead of sand, how about Jell-O chocolate pudding in those bunkers? And if traditionalists insist
on sand, why not
quicksand
. That would speed things up.