Golf is as dumb as skiing, but you can do it wearing fewer clothes.
When the Yellowstone Club in Montana was opened, it became the world’s only private ski and golf club. I was lucky when I got the job to hang around and ski with potential members, and Tom Weiskopf was chosen to design and build a golf course. When I first met Tom he said that he never had a pair skis on in his life.
I immediately responded by saying that I would trade him ski lessons for golf lessons. Today, Tom owes me about 100 hours of private golf lessons and I lord it over him.
I enjoyed teaching Tom the fundamentals of skiing beginning with “the pointy end of the ski goes in the front.”
Riding on the ski lift one day, Tom told me a few interesting facts about golf: there are 27 million golfers in America and only 5 percent of them will ever break 100 and of those only 2 percent of them will ever break 80. Tom then went on to say “is it important for you to beat the local banker or any other friend? If not, why bother keeping score? So many people forget that golf is a game, it’s not a competition.”
I enjoy playing golf and it doesn’t matter whether I shoot a 46 or 56 for nine holes and let someone else keep score, which most people insist on doing. I just keep track of how many good shots I make. If, in fact, I make any and how many times I have to putt to finally get the ball in the hole, so 55 strokes is a good day for me.
Some golfers travel the world with a bag full of clubs and a suitcase full of proper clothes, and most golf courses charge a lot more for a round of golf than for a chairlift ticket at a major ski resort. Unlike a ski resort where the bumps and snow conditions are different every time you visit, a golf course is the same each time you play it. About the only thing that changes are the sandwiches in the clubhouses, whether or not you need a caddy, or what color the golf carts are.
When you watch golf on television, the pros are slamming the ball out there 300 to 400 yards, while I am lucky if I hit it a 170 yards.
We are lucky living here on our island because we have a nice nine-hole course with 18 tees where you can play a round for $30.
Sometimes I go to nearby Anacortes to play on a different golf course. To do that, I have to get in the ferry boat line at least an hour and a half early, then the ferry ride is an hour and a quarter, and once in a while when I go to all that effort there is a 25 percent chance of rain. After I parked my car and was putting on my golf shoes, it started to drizzle. On the third hole, there was a pretty good-sized puddle and as I walked toward my ball, the puddle sucked off one of my shoes and I had a cold, muddy sock for the rest of the day.
If you’re a skier, I know you have 1,000 stories about lurching from one ski run to the next, and any golfer who is honest, as most are, has as many lurching stories on a golf course. (It’s kind of like fishing stories, right?)
There are 18 holes on a golf course because when the game was invented, the players usually had a bottle of Scotch with them and there are 18 jiggers of Scotch in a fifth.
Did you know that the Scotch invented knickers? When the game was being invented, players were wearing kilts and complaining about having cold legs. One player’s wife was an entrepreneur so she sewed up his kilts and cut two holes in the bottom for his legs.
He looked so different that the spectators started laughing at him. Polite spectators just snickered at how funny he looked in that outfit. Snicker was successfully shortened to knickers and grew in popularity.
In Palm Springs, there is a customized maker of golf carts so that they look exactly like the car you drive on the street. You can buy one that looks like a Humvee, an Audi, a Ferrari or a Cadillac. They can even match the color of the car that you drive to work in and quite often they make to identical carts with or without a cold box to keep your lunch in and drinks in.
With all the fancy possibilities, I still enjoy playing here on our island in the nine-hole course and using one of their golf carts.
Warren Miller is history’s most prolific and enduring ski filmmaker. Visit warrenmiller.net or his Facebook page at facebook.com/warrenmiller. Read more of Warren’s stories at TheTahoeWeekly.com.
