Making Water More Fun to Drink

Posted on August 10, 2015 by David Owen

When I was a boy, I wished I could bring back brilliant people from the past so that I could dazzle them with modern technological marvels. How I yearned to show a moon rocket or a television set to wise old Isaac Newton! Well, I’m quite a bit older now, and I did finally succeed in building a time-transport device. Last week I brought back Benjamin Franklin, the inventor of bifocals and the efficient wood stove. I had given a lot of thought to what I wanted to show him during our five minutes together (the maximum length of visit permitted by the process I invented), and had settled on Times Square at ten o’clock on a Saturday night.

“Well, Ben,” I said. “Here we are in 2015—that’s right, slightly more than three centuries after your birth. This is New York City, believe it or not, and the flashing signs and lighted screens you see on the tremendous buildings all around us are powered by a force you know quite well, if I’m not mistaken. Yes, Ben, they are powered by electricity.”

“Those people over there,” the eighteenth-century sage replied, a look of puzzlement spreading across his features, so familiar to me from the hundred-dollar bill, among other sources. “And over there. And over there. What are those vessels they are carrying?”

“Vessels?” I said. “Why, those are water bottles, Ben. The people are carrying bottles filled with water.”

“Why are they carrying them?”

“They are concerned that they may become thirsty,” I patiently explained. “People nowadays are semi-obsessed with being what we call hydrated at all times. They’re carrying the water bottles so that they can drink from them whenever they want to, Ben.”

Hoping to further spark the imagination of my flabbergasted guest, I pointed to the masses of bright yellow taxi cabs speeding down Broadway, and said, “Ben, have a look at the sleek vehicles racing past us. I don’t see any horses pulling them—do you?”

“Even that old woman has a water bottle,” he ejaculated. “And that child. It’s extraordinary. Virtually everyone is carrying water! For what conceivable reason?”

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That’s enough science for one blog post. I’m not a hydration skeptic, unlike Franklin—who was once described by Firesign Theatre as “the only President of the United States who was never President of the United States”—but I find water sort of boring to drink, and when I’m playing golf in hot weather I sometimes forget to drink enough, with surprisingly disastrous consequences for my golf. I’ve gotten much better about that recently, though, by adding one of these things to my water bottle before I tee off:

They’re basically extra-large Fizzies with electrolytes and other supposedly good-for-golf stuff in them, and Nuun makes several kinds. The ones I’m using at the moment also contain caffeine and B vitamins—but no Advil, I’m afraid. Like most things that supposedly make you better at doing things, they taste slightly weird. (If they tasted really good, you wouldn’t believed they worked.) I tart them up a little by adding a packet of “crystallized citrus,” which I learned about from my wife, the well-known cookbook author:

Do You Get Free Relief From a Sinkhole?

Posted on August 8, 2015 by David Owen

Last year, a Champions Tour event made history by becoming the first PGA Tour-sanctioned tournament to be held partly on a par-3 course. his April, the same tournament returned to the same course, called Top of the Rock, and if the timing had been slightly different it might have made history again. Just a month after the tournament (the Bass Pro Legends of Golf at Big Cedar Lodge, won by Billy Andrade and Joe Durant), four sinkholes opened up near the driving range. Nobody was hurt, but the sinkholes were big enough to have held the full field, with plenty of room left for just about the entire Golf Writers Association of America. Sheets of fake white bunker sand and closely-mown artificial turf drooped over the edges of the main opening, like fondant icing on a wedding cake. The drop to the deepest part was forty feet.

Top of the Rock was designed by Jack Nicklaus. It’s in southwestern Missouri, in a gently mountainous region called the Ozarks, and it’s virtually next door to the town of Branson, which is sort of what Disney World would be if you replaced Epcot Center with Dolly Parton. The bedrock underlying the area is mostly limestone, which consists of the solidified, calcium-rich remains of many millions of years’ worth of dead sea creatures. Rainwater becomes mildly acidic as it picks up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. When it lands on terrain like that, it seeps through the soil and into fractures in the rock, then gradually enlarges the fractures into fissures and conduits and caves and subterranean streams, creating a Swiss cheese-like landscape of a type known as karst. If the voids become large enough, the ground above them can collapse. In 1981, a sinkhole in Winter Park, Florida, near the center of another golf-and-karst region, swallowed five Porsches, a three-bedroom house, and the deep end of a public swimming pool.

Randall Orndorff is a geologist for the United States Geological Survey. Between 1995 and 2005, he spent a lot of his professional time in southern Missouri looking into sinkholes, crawling through caves, and mapping the geology of a formation called the Salem Plateau, which is the rock that’s next to the rock that Top of the Rock is on top of. I spoke with him recently, and he said that a neighbor who saw him using a garden hose to wash cave mud off his clothes once told him, “Thank god my husband’s a lawyer.” He also said that, although natural sinkholes are common in karst areas, human activity can accelerate their development.”

The photo above is of a sinkhole in Florida called Big Dismal. I visited it a couple of years ago while researching an article about sinkholes for The New Yorker—which you can read here. I also spent some time with a group of divers whose hobby is exploring sinkholes and underground streams.

In 2007, two of them set a world record by making a seven-mile traverse through Florida’s Swiss cheese, from an opening called Turner Sink to Wakulla Springs, a state park about fifteen miles south of downtown Tallahassee. The average depth of the traverse was close to 300 feet—about the same as the wreck of the Lusitania—and the total submerged time was 21 hours. Here two of them are getting ready to make another dive in Turner Sink:

Where do golf-course sinkholes come from? “There are a lot of factors,” Orndorff told me. “When you’re on a slope, you have more groundwater draining, and draining more rapidly—almost like flushing a toilet. The pond you see in those pictures of Top of the Rock is man-made, so now you’re changing the hydrodynamics of the area, and collecting water that used to percolate into the ground; you’re also adding weight to the surface. Something we see in suburban development is collapses near the outlets of retention ponds, where erosion is the greatest.”

I grew up in Kansas City, about two hundred and twenty miles north of Top of the Rock, and when I was a kid my family visited the Ozarks fairly often. During one trip, I got into trouble for standing behind my father and pulling his hat down over his eyes while he was driving. (This was the era when dads wore fedoras and nobody wore seat belts.) My sister and I would beg him to stop whenever we passed a billboard advertising a cave, as we seemed to do every couple of miles. He always refused, saying the caves were just holes in the ground and could give way at any time. Now, half a century later, I guess I can see his point—although I still think we should have stopped.

“Some people are asking why they didn’t close the golf course,” Orndorff said. “But that whole area is prone to sinkholes, and the next one could be miles away.” He also said that, as far as my father’s speluncaphobia was concerned, “You don’t hear of too many caves collapsing and killing tourists. In fact, I don’t know of any.”

Let’s Check In With President Trump

Posted on August 8, 2015 by David Owen

I missed the first episode of Donald Trump’s awesome new reality-TV show, on Thursday night, because I was playing bridge with my old-lady friends. I thought I was recording it but when I played it back the next morning I discovered that what I’d actually recorded was a cheap knock-off show starring Rick Perry and Carly Fiorina. Oh, well. I’ve got a pretty good idea what it was like, because Trump and I talked on the phone in June. He was just No. 2 in the polls then, and when I asked him if there was any presidential-type announcement he wanted to make he said, “Yeah, I’ll give it to you.”

Then we went back to talking about golf. I had called him because three friends and I had just played Trump Golf Links at Ferry Point, in the Bronx—a brand-new golf course, which is owned by New York City but managed by Trump on a 20-year-lease. I was pissed because golf carts are allowed but pushcarts aren’t. That’s the only bad thing I have to say about the course, though. (You can read more about all that in my column in the September issue of Golf Digest.)

I assume that one of the first acts of the Donald Trump/Rosie O’Donnell administration will be to nationalize the U.S.G.A. and the P.G.A. of America, and schedule all future American major championships on courses that Trump owns or operates. Maybe the U.S. Open will be held at Trump’s club in West Palm Beach, which is just across the Intracoastal Waterway from Palm Beach, which Trump described to me once as “the richest place anywhere on the planet, in terms of, you know, wealth.” Whether or not that happens, Ferry Point is worth a field trip. And if you have a late flight out of LaGuardia, perhaps while fleeing the country following Trump’s election, you can stop on your way to the airport.

I played with Tony, Hacker (real name), and Gary, our terrific superintendent, and the four of us walked and carried, after dumping a lot of extra stuff in our cars. The photo above is of the guys who were playing just ahead of us. Four guys playing with two caddies are even slower than four guys riding in two golf carts, so I had plenty of time to take pictures. The course is a worthy tribute to Scottish and Irish links golf, and although it’s expensive it’s not overpriced for what it is. Here’s Tony in the native Bronx fescue:

And here are Gary and Hacker:

The views alone are worth the green fees. Here’s the Brooklyn-Manhattan skyline:

And the cemetery where Charles Lindbergh dropped off ransom money for his kidnapped kid, to no avail:

And the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge, which looks like it connects Queens to the eighteenth fairway:

We’re going back, just as soon as we’ve slipped enough hundred-dollar bills out of our wives’ purses.

Why Isn’t the Men’s Member-Guest on TV?

Posted on August 4, 2015 by David Owen

I wish the Golf Channel would drop the Champions Tour and broadcast my club’s member-guest tournament instead. Wouldn’t you watch? Among other reasons, there’s way more drama and beer, and the spectators are appreciative:

The putting is less tedious, especially after dark:

Protracer was practically made for it:

The player endorsements are more persuasive, because you know the players really do use they products they promote:

There are always plenty of refreshments:

We get pizza during the putting contest:

Faster foursomes are allowed to play through:

There are moments of high drama—like when the pro has to explain to a member who didn’t read her email that the course is closed all weekend, except for participants:

And you see shots the pros won’t even try:

How To Play Golf With a Broken Neck

Posted on July 28, 2015 by David Owen

My column in the August issue of Golf Digest is about my friend Thomas Tami, an ear-nose-and-throat doctor in Cincinnati, who broke his neck when he was in college, forty years ago, and took up golf a decade later even though he can’t turn his head without turning his torso.”When I take the club back,” he told me, “I completely lose the ball, and I never pick it up on the way down.” He’s a player, though. His best score for 18 holes is 76 at his home course, Hyde Park Golf & Country Club, which was designed mostly by Donald Ross. Here’s a video of Tami hitting a shot at Hyde Park two years ago:

Try that yourself sometime (on the range) if you think it looks easy.

Florida Man Dumps Irons for Hybrids and Rekindles Interest in Life

Posted on July 27, 2015 by David Owen

Scott Armatti is a forty-six-year-old special-education teacher at a high school in central Florida; he also coaches the boys’ and girls’ tennis teams, and is the football team’s offensive coordinator. He took up golf two years ago, and, like all golfers, he finds the game alternately intoxicating and exasperating. During an especially annoying session at the range, he realized that the only club he was hitting decently was his 5-hybrid (part of a Cleveland Mashie game-improvement set). “When I returned home,” he told me recently, “I ran a Google search for ‘play golf with only hybrids.'” That search turned up a Golf Digest article of mine from 2012, called My Hybrid Advantage, in which I explained why I’d gotten rid of my irons. On eBay, he found a 34-degree X9 Extreme MOI hybrid—the equivalent of an 8-iron—and ordered it:

He told me, “I unwrapped the cellophane at the range, placed the club next to the ball, and immediately had the best swing thought you can ever have: That is juicy—I’m going to crush that little white sucker.” He liked the club so much that he ordered three more from the same series. “Currently, my bag contains my four X9 hybrids, an old Orlimar 3-wood, a driver, a 56-degree sand wedge, and a putter,” he said. “I’ve been playing for a couple of weeks with just these eight clubs. Yesterday, I played a local course with my son, who was home from college for the weekend, and shot 91 from the middle tees. I wasn’t hitting the driver particularly well, and I missed three gimme putts, but I hit most greens from inside 130 yards (and just missed from 130-160), and I really enjoyed playing golf the entire day.”

Armatti grew up in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. “My best friend, Gary, and his entire family were big golfers,” he told me. “Gary always tried to get me to play, but I never wanted to ask my parents for clubs, because I was saving my ‘big ask’ for ski equipment. Gary and I were like brothers for most of our lives. He lives in Ft. Meyers now, about three hours away, and two years ago we got to play golf together for the first time.”

Last summer, during a vacation in Michigan, Armatti also got to play with his cousin Cory, on the home course of Northern Michigan State University. “Cory had to rent clubs that day,” Armatti said, “and he didn’t know until we got to the first green that he had been given a junior putter.”

Let’s all try that next.

How to Make a Golfer Choke

Posted on July 21, 2015 by David Owen

UNIVERSITY PLACE, WA - JUNE 21: Dustin Johnson of the United States watches his missed birdie putt on the 18th green during the final round of the 115th U.S. Open Championship at Chambers Bay on June 21, 2015 in University Place, Washington. (Photo by David Cannon/Getty Images)

(Photo by David Cannon/Getty Images)

When Dustin Johnson screwed up on the final green at Chambers Bay, avid golfers all over the world wept for him. After all, how many of us, at some point, haven’t three-putted from twelve feet to lose the U.S. Open? My friends and I were especially sympathetic, because we have just about perfected choking. In several of our regular games, we play an add-on feature on the eighteenth hole called All Balls Count—and that does it.

Our eighteenth (which is also our ninth, played from slightly different tees) is theoretically a pushover: a very short par 4, just 250 yards or so, slightly uphill:

But it can be diabolical, because there are trees on both sides, and the green is a redan, and there are lob-devouring bunkers both in front and behind, and out-of-bounds is in play from the tee and the fairway and even the bunkers, and when the hole is cut in the front left corner getting close from almost anywhere can be virtually impossible.

Note the expression of agony on Howard’s face:

Shots like that become even harder when guys are sitting on the picnic benches above the green, watching:

And they become harder still when Hacker (real name) announces on the first tee that, even though we’re playing just one best ball that day, on the eighteenth hole all four scores in every foursome will have to be counted. That can be enough to make even a very good player slice his tee shot into the pine trees on the right, then pound his second shot straight down into the pine straw, then have no choice but to take an unplayable lie (still in the pine straw), then skull his fourth shot into the bunker over the green, and so on.

Meanwhile, all three of his teammates—who are feeling even more pressure not to screw up, since they now know that their team score on the hole is virtually guaranteed to be at least four or five over par—are finding their own ways to implode.

Try it.

Which Nine Was That?

Posted on July 18, 2015 by David Owen

ESPN’s scorecard graphic for the Open Championship is labeled “front nine” and “back nine,” but the Old Course doesn’t have a front and back. You play nine holes “out,” making a little loop at the bend of the shepherd’s crook, then nine holes “in.” “Outward nine” and “inward nine”—he preferred local terms—would be more accurate. But not for every course, even on the Open Rota. People often say that out-and-in is a defining characteristic of links golf, but it isn’t. Troon (for example) does play nine out and nine in, more or less, but the holes at Carnoustie (for example) wander around:

And there many variants.

“Front” and “back” actually don’t make sense on many golf courses. It’s rare to find a club at which the first nine holes you play are laid out in front of something, and the second nine holes are laid out in back of the same thing. Sometimes the nines are right and left; sometimes the holes are all over the place; sometimes—as on nine-hole courses, where you play the same holes twice—the nines are essentially on top of each other (upper and lower?).

Bobby Jones wanted TV announcers to refer to the nines at Augusta National as the “first nine” and the “second nine,” partly because “front” and “back” weren’t accurate, and partly because he felt that “back side”—a common variant—was indecently anatomical. One nice thing about “first nine” and “second nine” is that they work for any golf course, including your course, my course, and the Old Course. Golfers will never change, naturally—but if it came to a vote I’d go with Jones.

Storage Problem Solved: What to do With Golf Gloves

Posted on July 12, 2015 by David Owen

My club’s clubhouse isn’t much of a clubhouse. The men’s locker room has a few lockers, but they’re tiny and their only real function is to let guests know that what they otherwise might think was just an old storeroom is actually the men’s locker room. Back in the era before Internet pornography, there were four old guys at my club who played together all the time and kept a falling-apart copy of Playboy in one of the lockers, and nowadays the Sunday Morning Group keeps hard liquor locked up in two of them, but that’s about it. Like pretty much everybody else, I store my golf stuff in the trunk of my car (plus the backseat, the floor in front of the backseat, and the floor in front of the front passenger seat).

To keep my golf gloves organized and easily within reach (both regular and rain), I use their Velcro closures to stick them to the carpet-like lining on the inside of the trunk lid—like this:

The reason I don’t keep golf stuff in the front passenger seat, too, is that that’s where the dog’s car seat goes:

Lyme Disease Central: Report From the Field

Posted on July 11, 2015 by David Owen

Hacker (real name), David W., and Peter A.’s wife, Denise, have Lyme disease, and Reese has ehrlichiosis, which my wife and I both had several years ago and which can be thought of as Lyme disease delivered by sledge hammer. (You can get Lyme and ehrlichiosis from the same tick bite, as I did—a nasty combination.) The standard treatment for both diseases is the antibiotic doxycycline; all three are taking it.

When you’re being treated for Lyme, you have to be extra careful about the sun, because doxycycline can make your skin extremely vulnerable to burning. Gene P.’s daughter once went skiing while she was taking it, and even though she wore tinted goggles the sun made the whites of her eyes turn brown. They stayed that way for a few days, too. Reese played golf while he was in treatment—what else was he supposed to do?—but he was careful to wear lots of sunscreen, and he covered up everything he could bear to cover up:

Appropriately, I guess, we declared last Sunday Lip Balm Day, because the people who make Golfersskin, the official sunscreen of the Sunday Morning Group, had sent us a bunch of tubes to try:

I got careless about sunscreen during one of my bouts with Lyme, because it was mid-October and I wasn’t thinking about the sun, and midway through a round of golf I suddenly felt as though my lips had burned off. Never again. Here’s Stanley, who is also a veteran of both Lyme and ehrlichiosis, putting some Golfersskin on, even though it looks like he’s just pulling on his lip:

We had to tee off at 6:30 on Lip Balm Day—an hour early—because our club had created a new event, called Family Day, to encourage more people to become interested in golf, and had scheduled it for 10:00. That was annoying. Still, there were just sixteen of us and more than seventy of them, and getting home earlier than usual turned out to be a good thing because if you fall asleep before noon you’re not taking a nap—you’re just going back to bed. Here are the people who showed up for Family Day:

It’s never too early to teach golf etiquette. The thing we emphasized to the kids is that, if they serve themselves from the Sunday Morning Group’s kegerator, in the storeroom next to the men’s locker room, they need to leave two dollars in the beer-money box. You would not believe how many people “forget” to do that.

My Usual Game: David Owen

ADVENTURES IN GOLF

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