Golf is usually a relaxing game for me, not a contest. Unfortunately, this golf season has started out for me about the same as a 2-inch snowfall in October so you think you can ski early.
A week of good weather brought out lots of people from everywhere including a rendezvousing group of Nordic Tug owners and two of them even took the golf cart I had reserved before I got there on a bright and sunny Wednesday morning. The young owner of the golf course brought one out that had been on the charger, but survived a long winter of rainy days in the open. The waterproof seat was out of warranty and so we headed down the first fairway with the seats of our pants soaking wet.
By the time we got to our third shot, we had to walk the last 10 yards because the battery in the golf cart had no electricity in it. My partner and I flipped a coin to see who would go and get another cart. Ultimately, I lost because there was no dry place to sit while I waited for him to walk the 250 yards back to the clubhouse and get another cart. I just got wetter.
When he came back with the other cart, we switched our bags of clubs to it and got set to start our game over. After we hit that third shot, we climbed into the new cart, but it only had 15 lineal yards of electricity left in its battery.
Now, we had two carts sitting about three hundred yards from the clubhouse. We walked back while the group of boaters that had taken all of the good carts with sufficient electricity in their batteries, played through us.
The owner took a tractor and got our clubs for us. and in the meantime we had decided to at least go to the driving range and hit a bucket of balls. The course has a wonderful new token-operated ball dispenser. There were no directions on the machine and it ate up $4 worth of tokens before we figured out that it was broken. Back to the clubhouse.
The token-operated golf ball basket dispenser is solar powered and since it had been cloudy for the last five days, there was no solar power stored in the batteries to make it run so the clerked handed us a couple of buckets of balls just like he used to before he bought the expensive, semi-automatic, weather dependent dispenser.
After we diligently tried to hit our buckets of balls, it was back to the clubhouse for my favorite lunch. A made-somewhere-else-on-the-planet, x days ago egg salad sandwich and a root beer. I had already torn open the impossible to open plastic wrap around the sandwich and taken a big bite out of it when I was told, “Sorry, we are out of root beer.” (I certainly can’t eat anything without my root beer.)
I had left my wife at the early ferry for a trip to Anacortes. She and our neighbor friend often take the big boat to the boatyard for work needing to be done. In this case, they were picking it up from the winter’s work and storage. Gives them some talking and knitting time. She’s nearly always picking up after me and doesn’t have much quiet time.
So, I was really looking forward to hitting golf balls until I was exhausted. I was exhausted, but had only hit a bucket of balls. The visiting boaters who had grabbed all of the carts that were in working order that day were having such a good time they decided to play an extra nine holes because they’d found out they could do it for no extra charge mid week. That dealt me out of the use of a cart with a charged battery.
Move forward a few days and I thought I would try again.
By the time I was hitting my third shot, I had already lost three golf balls because the lawnmower had broken down several days earlier and the grass was a golf ball and a half high. This time, we at least had a golf cart that worked, so we decided to drive it down to the token slot machine and do the same drill again. Somehow, when the balls started rattling into the bucket they tipped it over and the bucket of golf balls ran everywhere where they bounced off of a concrete slab before they scattered. We did better with the second bucket, when we finally figured out where to put it when you try and operate the solar-powered golf ball machine.
I again pose the question, why bother keeping score? Just getting to a place where you might be able to keep score is already so far ahead of me. I think a wise man said “Golf is just as dumb as skiing as if you didn’t get off of the chairlift at the top and rode around the boll wheel and back down.” At least the chairlift has a better source of electricity than the golf ball slot machine dispenser.
My once-a-week golf instructor will be here next week and he will be able to coach me in golf cart selection and important stuff such as which club to use for 4-inch high grass. Or, even a more radical idea: Listen to my wife who refuses to even park her car at a golf course much less try the game.
