International Leaf Rule Now in Effect

Posted on October 3, 2013 by David Owen

All the big tournaments are over now. The club championship has been decided. The kids who worked in the golf shop all summer are back at school. Our Enemy Club has been defeated. The deer eating acorns between the fifth and sixth holes have grown so used to us that they scarcely look up when we play through. The International Leaf Rule is in effect.

I know people who live in places where golf can be played in shorts year-round. To them, the cycle of the seasons is a kind of poverty. But I think they are the ones who are deprived. For them, golf has no beginning and no end. They don’t get to savor a year’s two most consequential rounds: its first and its last. One season blends into the next, and they never reach a point from which they are forced to assess their golf game’s progress or decline.

Hacker (real name) and I had the course to ourselves for our first nine holes on Tuesday afternoon. Barney, who didn’t have to pick up his daughter until four-fifteen, joined us at the turn. We waved to an older member who used to play by himself but now is always accompanied by his son. He uses something called Martini Tees, and when he misplaced one the other day he had his son call the golf shop to report it missing. His son acts as his caddie and navigator, guiding him from hole to hole. Golf is almost over, but not yet.

New Golf Playoff Format: Reverse Putt-Like-Pete

Posted on September 21, 2013 by David Owen

When the Sunday Morning Group’s regular game ends in a tie, we don’t divide the pot—a semi-corollary of Hacker (real name)’s rule that Money Never Flows Backward. We hold a playoff instead, and, over the years, we have invented many compelling formats. Last Sunday, we came up a new one, in honor of Peter P., who is in the hospital. Peter uses a long putter, so Corey, our pro, picked a similar one from the golf shop, and we made the eight playoff participants use it on a long putt on the practice green, closest to the hole wins. To make the competition more interesting, we made them use it wrong-way-around: righties had to putt lefty, and lefties had to putt righty. Furthermore, they had to strike the ball with the round thing on the back of the putter head, not the face. As always in our playoffs, the stymie rule was in effect. Here’s Chic, our new golf chairman, taking his turn:

And here’s Rafael, who is from Mexico:

Putting backward off the round thing on the back of a long putter turned out to be harder than anyone had guessed, and only two balls—Rafael’s and Tim’s—ended up within twenty-five feet of the hole. We couldn’t tell whose ball was closer, so Corey paced them off. (By law, golf professionals wear shoes that are exactly twelve inches long.)

We still couldn’t tell, so Hacker got a measuring tape from the back of his car:

The winner, by half an inch, was Tim:

That’s Tim, in the green shirt, third from the right. Barney, left, was on his team. Fritz is holding the tape, and Hacker is supervising.

Then everybody went back to the patio for a couple more beers.

Hat Day, Bumper Stickers, and Playing in Absentia

Posted on September 17, 2013 by David Owen

My Sunday Morning Group has a certain amount of branded merchandise, which is available for purchase by members only. Our wristbands (above) are free if you wear them, five dollars if you don’t. We also have European-style S.M.G. bumper-stickers, which cost two dollars but are currently not in stock. If you have one on your car (and also if you don’t), you can park in the Executive Parking Lot, between the clubhouse and the Dumpster.

Most of all, we have hats. The original ones, which we designed ten or fifteen years ago, are purple and orange, a color combination we selected because we thought it would get on the nerves of some women who had recently complained about our drunken boorishness, and so forth. (When we wore our new hats on a field trip to a golf course in another town, an assistant in the golf shop asked, “Do you guys all work for Federal Express?”) The most recent hats are purple and fluorescent green. You can see both versions in the photo below:

Nick wanted us to have a POW/MIA emblem on our hats, but he settled for an American flag.

Nick (not pictured) thought we ought to have a POW/MIA emblem on our hats, but he settled for an American flag.

Some guys wear their S.M.G. hats fairly often, but most guys wear them only on Hat Day, when wearing them is mandatory. Hat Day takes place whenever Hacker (real name) says, usually once or twice a season. If you come to Hat Day without a hat, you have to buy a new one (for $19.99), rent a loaner (for $3.99), or buy a reconditioned one (for $9.99). The reconditioned hats are loaners that have been reconditioned by sitting in Hacker’s barn since whenever the last Hat Day was. On the most recent Hat Day, Hacker sold three of them.

Hacker (with the last three purple-and-greens) and Greg, Hat Day, 2013.

Hacker (with the last of the new purple-and-greens) and Greg, Hat Day, 2013.

We had twenty-one guys that day, although only twenty were physically present. Peter P.—who had a horrific car accident shortly before Labor Day—was still in the hospital, but Hacker had figured out a way to let him play in absentia, by giving him a score of net par on every hole. We played two best balls, and Peter’s team needed his ball on seven holes, so he was more useful than quite a few of the guys who actually showed up. Peter also won a share of the Money Hole. During lunch, we used colored markers and construction paper to draw get-well pictures for him:

Here are some of the pictures:

That last one, by Tim, shows Peter himself painting a picture of a golf hole. Peter doesn’t actually paint golf holes, but he is a painter. Just a couple of weeks before his accident, he held a reception in his studio, and a lot of us went—a rare opportunity to learn what someone we hang around with does when he’s not playing golf. Here’s Peter that evening, along with some of his paintings:

And here’s where he works:

And here’s another one of his pictures:

We want him back soon, in person, and not only because he draws better than we do.

This is the Best Golf Towel, and I’m Not Kidding

Posted on August 5, 2013 by David Owen

Caddie, towel, Jordan Spieth, May, 2013.

Ten or fifteen years ago, I noticed that good golfers (or their caddies) often carry a bath-size white towel, which they drape over the top of their bag (or their neck), and carry onto the green with their putter. Conversely, bad golfers often carry a small, neatly folded, souvenir-type golf towel tucked into their belt. I didn’t want to look like a bad golfer, so I snuck a white bath towel out of our linen closet and draped it over the top of my bag. Every three or four holes, someone in another group would holler, “Hey, did one of you drop a towel?” After a couple of rounds, I gave up, and went back to using a normal, souvenir-type golf towel, although I clipped it to my bag rather than tucking it into my belt.

Addison, 2013 Connecticut Open, Torrington Country Club.

At the P.G.A. Golf Merchandise Show a couple of years ago, I met some guys from Colorado who sell a golf towel called Spotless Swing. I talked them into giving me one, and I like it so much that, recently, I talked them into giving me another. Both of them are now attached to my bag, one red and one black, and because I have two I don’t have to waste a lot groping around when I feel like cleaning my clubs—which, to be perfectly honest, isn’t as often as it should be.

A Spotless Swing towel has two features I like a lot. The first is that it’s constructed sort of like a fez. You stuck a clubhead inside it to clean it or dry it, and that protects your hand from whatever you’re trying to remove. The second is that part of the inside is made of a coarse plastic material, which is almost as good as a wire brush at getting crud out of your grooves.

Don’t tuck it into your belt, though. It comes with a little carabiner, which you can use to clip it to your bag.

Reese and Vi (Addison’s parents, with supplemental towels), Denise, Hacker (real name), in Addison’s gallery at the 2013 Connecticut Open.

Phil Mickelson’s Open Victory and the Difficulty of Mentally Influencing the Outcome of Recorded Sporting Events

Posted on July 21, 2013 by David Owen

Rick Hunt, a reader, was at the Open both days this weekend. He took this photo on Saturday

In 2006, my wife and our two children and I flew from New York to Las Vegas so that we could rent an R.V. and spend ten days visiting the remarkable national parks in southern Utah and northern Arizona, after first taking a guided tour of the greatest man-made object in the universe, the Hoover Dam.

Me, standing in awe before one of the many fascinating dioramas in the visitors’ center at the Hoover Dam, June, 2006.

Our flight coincided almost exactly with the final round of the 2006 U.S. Open, and because I am a good father I grumbled very little about having to spend the afternoon traveling with my loved ones rather than lying on the couch at home and staring at the TV. My saintly attitude was rewarded during the flight: there were video screens in the backs of the seats on our plane, and I got to watch the tournament anyway. In fact, the broadcast lasted almost exactly as long as the flight. The picture broke up as we were touching down at McCarran International Airport, in Vegas, but by then the tournament was all but over. Phil Mickelson had just pushed his tee shot on the final hole into the corporate tents to the left of the eighteenth fairway, but he had the thing sewn up, and, besides, the guy’s a magician. Good show, Phil!

The next morning, in my wife’s and my room at the Bellagio (or wherever), I turned on the TV to watch Open highlights. Weirdly, the guys on Golf Central weren’t talking about Mickelson; they were talking about Geoff Ogilvy, whom I scarcely remembered having noticed during my life, much less during the broadcast the day before. Suddenly, I worried that what I had watched on the plane had been not a live program but a videotape of some historical triumph of Mickelson’s. It took me five minutes of careful Golf Channel viewing to figure out what had happened.

Naturally, I blamed myself for Mickelson’s last-hole double-bogey, since I was mentally rooting for him toward the end of the tournament, and the in-flight broadcast cut out at the moment when he needed me most. And this week I blame myself for his victory, at Muirfield, because I wanted Tiger Woods to win but was unable to mentally undermine his opponents: instead of watching the golf tournament on TV, I was (selfishly) playing in a golf tournament of my own.

Rick Hunt, at the Open. If I'd been there myself, I might have had better luck influencing the outcome.

Rick Hunt, at the Open. If I’d been there myself, I might have had better luck at influencing the outcome.

Influencing the outcome of televised sporting events is harder than many people believe, because a technique that brings victory today may have the opposite effect tomorrow. Mumbling obscenities, swaying hypnotically, and making hula-like hand motions in front of the screen will usually keep a long putt from going in—especially if the hole remains on camera and the putter is Lee Westwood—but the same method sometimes fails disastrously, perhaps by accidentally nudging an errant ball onto the correct line.

Curiously, the best method for salvaging victory when things are going poorly is to turn off the TV—a tactic whose effectiveness is explained by quantum mechanics: unless they are observed directly, athletic competitions, like muons and mesons, exist in all possible states simultaneously. Turning off the TV during a big tournament restores the universe’s indifference to the final score, thereby giving Tiger (let’s say) a chance to rediscover his swing. This quantum effect may also explain why viewers are able to influence even videotaped sporting events—as long as the viewers don’t know in advance how everything came out.

For that reason, I had planned to remain ignorant of the Open outcome so that I could watch a recording of the final round when I got home and bring in the winner I wanted. Sadly, though, as I was standing in line at the scorer’s table I overheard some guy telling some other guy that Mickelson had won.

I watched the recording anyway, but without much enthusiasm. I had to hit the mute button many times, because the announcers were so annoying, and I found myself wishing that someone would invent an app (or whatever) that would turn Curtis Strange’s accent into something less grating (converting nahn, fahn, and mahn into nine, fine, and mine, for example); would automatically bleep out the phrase “plenty of green to work with”; and would prevent Andy North from referring to Royal Birkdale, where the Senior Open Championship will be played next week, as a “links-style” golf course.

Hacker (real name), Royal Birkdale, May, 2010.

Rain Gloves Are Also Sweat Gloves

Posted on July 8, 2013 by David Owen

Sweat-soaked rain gloves, July 7, 2013.

It’s been so hot and humid around here that we’ve had to make some adjustments. I’ve started wearing rain gloves even when it isn’t raining, because regular gloves feel slick and slimy when they’re soaked with perspiration. We’ve also tried bracketing the worst parts of the day by playing at the five-thirties: a Two-Hour Eighteen™ at 5:30 a.m. followed by a Two-Hour Eighteen™ twelve hours later, at 5:30 p.m. The course is empty and relatively cool both times, and you have room for a full workday in between, assuming you don’t fall asleep at your desk. And after the second eighteen you get home in plenty of time to ask, “Hey, what’s for dinner?”

Tony, Ian, Other Gene, Tim-o, Rex, eighteenth green, dawn patrol, July 3, 2013.

Kevin, Addison, evening session.

Sunday Morning Group met at the regular time—7:30—and the temperature was around 90 by the time we finished. Doug got so hot that he had to cover his head with a towel:

Corey (our pro) wore shorts, and for the first time in living memory we ate lunch on the porch, to get out of the sun.

Settling up at lunch: Corey (our pro), Hacker (real name), Tom, Tim.

Settling up at lunch: Corey, Hacker (real name), Tom, Tim.

There were only three skins, and Tim got two of them. He was also on the winning team, so next week it will be his turn to bring lunch. Doug had a wife situation at home, so he left as soon as he had eaten. He doesn’t live very far from the course, so in decent weather he usually commutes by motor scooter:

That’s a dual-purpose helmet he’s wearing: turn it the other way and it’s a golf cap.

My Friends and I Like to Play With Glowing Balls

Posted on July 6, 2013 by David Owen

Young Nick, first tee, 9:45 p.m., July 5, 2013.

All golfers brood obsessively about the weather; my friends and I also track the phases of the moon. The reason is that we like to play at night, with glowing balls, and glowing balls look best against a truly black sky. The ideal time to play is an hour or two after sunset during a new moon, but other times of the month work, too, as long as the moon either hasn’t risen yet or has already gone down. I now monitor all that with a free program called Moonphase 3.3.

On Friday night, we met on the clubhouse porch at 7:00, for pizza from The Upper Crust, the official provisioner of the Sunday Morning Group.

Austin, John, pizza, clubhouse porch.

Then we played Putting for Dollars on the practice green while we waited for the sun to go away.

In all our putting contests, we use the stymie rule, which the rest of the golf world abandoned in the 1950s. Closest to the pin wins, double points if the ball goes in. Luke (second from left) was the only competitor to actually sink a putt.

When the sky finally began to seem sort of promising, we turned on our flashing light sabers, to let them warm up.

Then Hacker (real name) and Tim went out in a golf cart to place light sabers in the cups on the first second, seventh, eighth, and ninth greens, so that we’d be able to tell where the holes were. They also put glowing green rings in the bottoms of the cups.

Paul, Middle Nick, Tim, Hacker.

Night golf has been a feature at my club for more than twenty years. For most of those years, we used translucent balls with glow-stick inserts. They were fun to play with, but they didn’t behave like real balls, and they didn’t fly anywhere near as far, and the glow sticks were sometimes hard to cram all the way in. Last year, we switched to Night Flyer balls ($70 a dozen, in six colors, at nightflyer.com). They’re self-illuminating—each one contains its own LED and battery, which isn’t replaceable but lasts for many rounds—and when they’re not lit up they’re visually indistinguishable from regular balls. You switch on the LED by hitting the ball or rapping it against anything hard, and it stays lit as long as you hit it again within eight or ten minutes, which is plenty of time to find it, even in the woods.

We had eleven guys. We played a scramble—each team with its own color—and we all played together. Hacker drove the beer cart. We teed up every shot, including chips, because divots are just about impossible to find at night. Here’s what the second green looked like when everyone was ready to putt:

The red balls look the coolest, both in the air and on the ground.

Austin made a brief video of someone missing a putt on the eighth green. Paul’s team had already clinched the title by then, so the miss didn’t matter.

Last year, I spoke with Pat Chapman, who is Night Flyer’s sales and marketing manager. She lives in New Hampshire but she grew up in New York, and when people give her a hard time she asks them, “Do you really want to mess with a girl from Brooklyn?” Largely as a result of her steady evangelism, night golf has rapidly grown in popularity all over the world. (“Not so much in France,” she said, “but France is France. What can I say?”) Scandinavians have been particularly enthusiastic, she added—perhaps because they spend so much of the year in the dark. She has organized full-scale night-golf events in many countries—for corporate outings, bachelor parties, wedding receptions, and other golf-appropriate occasions—and Night Flyer sells an almost comically extensive line of glowing accessories, including hole inserts, hazard stakes, tee-box markers, and black-stemmed margarita glasses. (That’s where we got the light sabers.)

New Playoff Format: From Bag Room to Practice Green

Posted on July 2, 2013 by David Owen

Brendan (third from the right, in the bag-room doorway) is about to pitch to the practice green in the Sunday Morning Group’s most recent playoff. Sunday, June 30, 2013.

On Sunday, two teams finished at 14-under, so we held a playoff—a form of competition in which, I think it’s safe to say, my club leads the world. The format was a pitch shot from the bag-room floor to the farthest pin on the practice green, a distance of a little more than sixty yards. The shot had to carry the ball washer, the first tee, the first-tee fence, and a small tree, and in order to count it had to stay on the putting surface. As always, closest to the pin wins.

Young Nick, Mike U. (officiating), Gary (our superintendent), and Reese. Gary has teed his ball on a Coca-Cola bottle cap.

Several non-competitors, including me, watched from behind the first-tee fence, which we had to add to the first tee because somebody’s guest in the Men’s Member-Guest once hit a tee shot that ricocheted off the pay phone that used to be on the clubhouse porch. A couple of shots in the playoff hit the fence, but not very hard.

Addison, Peter A.., Rick, Hacker (real name). The target is off to the right.

The first shot to stay on the green was Mike A.’s. The second was Reese’s. When Reese’s ball was in the air, I was sure it was going to finish closer to the pin than Mike’s, but it was spinning so much that it skidded to a halt and maybe even backed up a little. The reason is that Reese hit his shot directly off the crappy bag-room carpet, rather than teeing it up on a bottle cap, as almost everyone else did. Live and learn.

Reese, about to hit. Quiet, please. Notice the tight lie.

Here’s how Mike A.’s and Reese’s balls ended up (if your eyes are good enough to see the tiny white dots on the far side of the green). I’m not sure who hit the yellow ball in the fringe. It may be the one that hit the tree.

The best thing about Sunday, for those of us who didn’t finish in the money, was lunch, which was provided by Slade. Slade is old-school, lunch-wise, and Sunday was the first time in many years that we had burger patties shaped by human hands—in this case, Slade’s wife’s.

Lunch, Slade, Hacker.

Also, we had twenty-nine guys, if you include Rick and Addison, who were playing a match in the Governors’ Cup, which is our handicap championship. Addison won, and I will now play him in the final as soon as he has returned from a summer trip with his family. Also, several of the guys washed down their burgers and dogs with a new Sunday lunch beverage, which we have (tentatively) called an S.M.G. The main (but not the only) ingredient is beer. I’ll have more to say about it later.

Mike U., Coca-Cola bottle cap, Gary.

Summer Begins: Longest-Day Marathon and Other Golf News

Posted on June 23, 2013 by David Owen

The longest day of 2013 fell on a Friday—not a good day of the week to try to commandeer a golf course. The day before, my club had a senior outing—also not good. And the day before that was Ladies’ Day—ditto. So my friends and I conducted our second annual Summer Solstice Marathon three days early, on Tuesday, June 18. The idea was to play “from can to can’t”—from when you can see until you can’t. I set my alarm for 3:30, and six of us teed off a little before 5:00, when the first hole looked like this:

It was still pretty dark when we got to the fifth tee:

On the sixth green, we ran into Gary, who had just cut a new hole for us, in a diabolical location:

After eighteen holes, we went to the little cafe on our town’s green for breakfast burritos, apple fritters, and coffee, just like we did last year. I forgot to take my camera, so the picture below is from last year. The participants were pretty much the same, though, except that Bob G. didn’t show up until after lunch, David W. had broken a rib, Addison was playing in the state amateur, and we didn’t run into Mike A.’s mother. I think Mike was wearing the same shirt, though—for continuity.

That's Mike A. on the right and Mike A's mother on the left. She just happened to be there.

That’s Mike A. on the right and Mike A’s mother on the left. She doesn’t follow him around. She just happened to be there.

When we got back to the course, I hit what felt like a pretty good fairway wood, but the ball tailed off, and instead of going into the hole it went into Steve’s mower cart. Steve said I could play it from the cart, but I elected to take relief.

After forty-five holes, we stopped for lunch—hot dogs and freezer-burned hamburgers from the kitchen fridge—and then went back out.

Young Nick, Kevin, Bob G., post-lunch.

The weather forecast the night before had been decent, but when we got to our fiftieth hole we thought we heard thunder, and when we got to our fifty-second hole we were sure we did. The lightning horn in the golf shop blew, and we all humped back to the clubhouse. The rain and hail started a few minutes later, and pretty soon the first fairway and practice green looked like water hazards:

I had left some socks and a pair of golf shoes on the roof of my car. Should I risk my life by running across the parking lot to get them? I decided I should. Then we all hung around on the clubhouse porch for half an hour or so, watching the gutters overflow:

The rain came down so hard that Mike U. couldn’t get from the golf shop to the clubhouse. Here he is, stranded in the doorway:

We ended up playing just half as many holes as we played last year. That was disappointing, but a few days later twenty-six guys showed up for Sunday Morning Group—very possibly a record. We choose teams by drawing numbered poker chips from a hat, and because we have only twenty-four chips we thought for a while that we might have to send two guys home. But then Hacker (real name) came up with a workaround. Here’s the group:

Sunday Morning Group, June 25, 2013.

If you count the heads in the photo above, you’ll notice that there are twenty-seven, not twenty-six. The extra guy is Harry, who used to play with us all the time but now lives in another state, on account of his wife. He had played with Hacker the day before, but he broke his elbow a couple of years ago and can’t really swing anymore. On Sunday, he dropped by just to say so long before heading home. You can see the scar on his arm where they tried to put his elbow back together:

He has finally stopped smoking, though. So give him credit for that.

The Muny Life: Orlando, Philadelphia, Brooklyn, and Elsewhere

Posted on June 17, 2013 by David Owen

I’m just back from Kansas City, where I grew up. Among other things, it’s the home of Winstead’s, which makes the best hamburgers in the world. When I was a kid, you could order from your car by shouting into a thing that looked like a speaker at a drive-in movie theater, and then a waitress would bring your stuff on a tray, which she would hook over a partly rolled-down window. There’s no more curb service at Winstead’s, but there’s a drive-through window, open 24/7. You can also eat inside. When you go, here’s what to order (no substitutions, please):

Double cheeseburger with extra P.M.K. (pickles, mustard, ketchup) and grilled onions.
Single cheeseburger, ditto (for topping yourself off—just take my word for it).
Fifty-fifty (half onion rings and half fries; ask for the fries to be “well done”).
Large cherry limeade (or, if you insist, large diet cherry limeade).
Frosty (technically speaking, this could be considered a dessert, but the proper way to eat it is as a side dish).

When I was in high school, my friends and I occasionally ate four meals a day at Winstead’s. You’d be crazy not to go, even if you weren’t planning to travel to Kansas City. Between trips there last week, I visited my mother and played three rounds on two terrific municipal golf courses, which I’ll write about in the September issue of Golf Digest, in my regular monthly column. Here, in the meantime, is a photo of the putting grip of one of the guys I played with, who I’m pretty sure is one of the three or four best putters in the world (his friends call him Drano):

My Muny Life column in the May issue of Golf Digest was about Dubsdread Golf Course, in Orlando, Florida. The photo below is of two of the guys I played with there: Fletch, a semi-retired accountant, and Brian, his son-in-law, who is in the building-supply business. Brian lives near the course and gives Fletch hybrid clubs and gentle swing advice, plus the occasional grandchild.

Fletch and Brian, Dubsdread Golf Course, Orlando.

During another round, I watched a guy on the driving range talk on his phone, which he was holding in his right hand, while hitting one-handed wedges with his left hand and smoking a cigarette. As Dr. Johnson said, in a different context, “It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.”

In the June issue, I wrote about Cobbs Creek Golf Club, which is just down the road (and creek) from Merion Golf Club, where the Open was held last week. Here’s the maintenance building at Cobbs Creek, which, like the clubhouse and the course, dates to the early nineteen-hundreds:

Cobbs Creek Golf Club, Philadelphia.

After one of my rounds, I met Hank Church, a regular, who didn’t play but dropped by the clubhouse to see his friends. “I had ten inches of my large intestine removed sixteen days ago,” he said, and he lifted his shirt to show the scar, which was barely visible. He wasn’t ready to swing a club yet, he said—but almost. And, like many of his friends, he served as a marshal at the U.S. Open, in his case on the eleventh hole, which is the one where Bobby Jones closed out Eugene Homans in the 1930 Amateur, thereby completing his Grand Slam.

Hank Church, Cobbs Creek Golf Club, Philadelphia.

For the July issue, I wrote about Dyker Beach Golf Course, in Brooklyn, where my friends and I often go to play during the winter, when our home course is covered with snow. A few months ago, eight of us set out a little before five in the morning so that we could get to Brooklyn in time to play as guests in the regular Sunday-morning game of Shore View Golf Club, a men’s group that plays at Dyker. John Perez, the club’s president, supervised the picking of the teams, using a handicap-based method that he referred to as Captain and His Men. It was kind of dark in the grill room when he did that, so one of the guys used his cell phone as a flashlight when it was his turn to choose:

That’s John Perez at the far right. Dyker Beach Golf Course, Brooklyn.

That day, my friend Hacker (real name) and I played with Ronnie Clyne, who works for a headhunter. “I grew up on the Brooklyn waterfront,” Clyne told us. “If you played golf, we beat you up and took your lunch money.” Like most Shore View guys, he’s self-taught and deeply addicted. “I had a hole-in-one once, at a course in the Catskills,” he said. “As I picked the ball out of the hole, a tear rolled down my cheek. It was the closest thing I’ve had to a religious experience.” Here’s Ronnie cleaning goose crap off his golf shoes on one of the tees:

Ronnie Clyne, Dyker Beach Golf Course, Brooklyn.

And here’s Hacker (looking very serious) with the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in the background:

On the morning we played with the Shore View guys, I picked up Other Gene. and Gary, our superintendent, at Gene’s house. They were waiting in front when I arrived, at 4:45 a.m., and when I opened the trunk of my car Gene’s dogs, which are huge, started barking inside his house. Gene was worried that the dogs would wake up his wife, so he kept saying “Shhhhhh, shhhhhhh, shhhhhh”—very quietly, so as not to make matters worse. I was standing next to him and could barely hear him, so I assume the dogs heard nothing, their famous ears notwithstanding. At any rate, they kept barking and, if anything, got louder. Miraculously, though (we learned later), Gene’s wife slept through the whole thing.

My Usual Game: David Owen

ADVENTURES IN GOLF

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