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 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.

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.

Rain is the Avid Golfer’s Best Friend

Posted on June 28, 2015 by David Owen

Not because it makes grass grow, but because it makes non-avid golfers decide to spend the day cleaning out their basement. Two weeks ago, the Friday-afternoon meeting of the Sunday Morning Group had to begin an hour late because the 16 participants in the Ladies’ Nine-Hole Member-Guest Tournament, held that morning, took three hours and fifteen minutes to play nine holes on an otherwise empty course. One group was still finishing when we got to the second hole:

Then, because the course had been closed to non-participants all morning, we ran into traffic after we made the turn. Sunday was way better, because rain fell hard all night on Saturday and was still falling hard in the morning, and the forecast for the rest of the day was worse. Sixteen guys showed up anyway, and, because of the weather, we didn’t have to share the course with anyone:

One difficulty with rainy-day golf is that rainsuits are not designed for weather that isn’t cold and windy as well as wet, even if they supposedly “breathe.” Tim and my brother, John, who played with us, have short-sleeved rain jackets, which work pretty well:

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Rain pants are a problem, though, even if you don’t wear regular pants under them. One solution is to leave your rain pants in the car and wear a swimsuit (as Tony did) or nylon “hiking shorts” (as I did). Both probably violate our club’s dress code, but anyone who might have complained was at home, hiding indoors. I just ordered a pair of 100 percent synthetic Tony Hawk Plaid Performance Shorts, on sale at Kohl’s for $22—which will be my warm-season rain pants from now on. Shorts are much more “breathable” than Gore-Tex, because the leg openings act as vents, or chimneys, and who cares if they get wet?

Shoes are a problem, too, even if they’re supposedly waterproof, because if you’re wearing shorts water runs down your legs and into your socks. One solution: FootJoy golf sandals, like Barney’s (photo below). I just ordered a pair, also on sale, from GolfLocker.com.

Semi-miraculously, there was a break in the rain around the time we finished (as it happens, after three hours and fifteen minutes), meaning that we could eat lunch where we usually do, rather than on the porch.

Then more rain, just in time for a nap. Another perfect day.

The Best Beer-Oriented Belt for Golf

Posted on June 24, 2015 by David Owen

I don’t like the belts that tour players wear nowadays—the ones with gigantic rectangular buckles:

I don’t like them even though they remind me a little of my beloved Mattel Shootin’ Shell Buckle Gun, featuring “exciting secret ‘no hands’ firing,” which I wore when I was a kid until I broke it. It had a built-in derringer mounted on a hinge, and the derringer swung out and fired a real projectile when you pushed your stomach against the back of the buckle — something that was harder for me then than it would be now.

A belt like that could be problematic for golf, because it might go off when you leaned over to line up a putt. But my favorite grown-up belts are perfect, because their buckle is also a beer opener:

They’re made by Bison Designs, and they aren’t expensive. (Prices range from 18 to 27 dollars, plus shipping, depending on what sort of pattern you choose.) We gave them as tee gifts at our men’s member-guest last year, and most of the guys actually still wear them, unlike some of the other crap we’ve handed out over the years. I just bought two more, bringing my collection to three:

The two on the ends in the photo look the same, but they’re not. (The one on the right is for formal occasions.) The buckles really work, too. My brother visited over the weekend, and between golf days we took my wife out to dinner at a Thai restaurant that doesn’t have a liquor license yet. We remembered to bring beer but forgot an opener, so I took off my belt and handed it across the table. Problem solved.

A Miraculous Shank, a New Playoff Format, and a Burger Breakthrough

Posted on June 15, 2015 by David Owen

Getting a head count of the Sunday Morning Group is tough, because nobody stands still. Recently, it occurred to me that counting bags might be less confusing than counting heads. On Sunday, we tried it. And it worked! Twenty bags, twenty numbered poker chips in Chic’s hat, five teams of four, two best balls per hole.

The other guys in my foursome were Ben, Hacker (real name), and Tim. On the thirteenth hole, a par 5, Tim shanked his third shot, from 120 yards away. His ball squirted over the wall and into the woods, out of bounds:

We assumed that it was lost forever, but after what seemed like an impossibly long time it ricocheted not just back into play but onto the green, and ended up maybe five feet from the hole:

Tim missed the putt, a side-hill slider, and he figured the miss had cost him a skin, but it turned out that net eagle wouldn’t have been enough, because Mike A., after hitting a lousy second shot, holed his third from 180 yards away, for a net albatross. And those weren’t the only birds we had to deal with:

My teammates and I played so poorly on the first nine that we gave up all hope, and, probably because we had stopped caring, we began to play really well. (Despair is the poor man’s confidence.) We ended up in a tie for first place, at -18. The playoff was lob wedges off a ketchup-bottle lid, from the little patio near the grill to the putting green, closest to the hole. As always, the stymie rule was in effect. Here’s Ben, holding his finish:

And here’s Tim, hitting what turned out to be the winning shot (worth $25 to each of us). His ball ended up just inside the ball of Corey, our terrific pro:

Lunch was provided by Reese, who didn’t play because he’s coming down with what we diagnosed over beers as Lyme disease. He served burger dogs, which he learned about at the Olympic Club a month and a half ago, when Addison (who is Reese’s son) and Todd played in the 2015 U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship. Burger dogs are an Olympic specialty. They are burgers that are shaped like dogs:

Making the patties takes work, Reese said, but fitting them onto the grill is easy:

You have to cut slices of cheese to fit:

You need just one kind of bun, plus mustard, ketchup, pickles, and onions:

We may insist on them from now on.

These are the Best Post-golf Beer Glasses, and I’m Not Kidding

Posted on June 11, 2015 by David Owen

Hydro Flask, a company for which I am an unpaid shill, makes my favorite golf beverage bottle, which I own in three versions: one for water (21 ounces), one for coffee (18 ounces), and one for lots of water (32 ounces). There have been golf rounds during which I have carried all three, using various pockets and beverage holders on my golf bag and pushcart. This year, Hydro Flask introduced insulated beverage glasses, called True Pint. They hold 16 ounces, and they have a finish that won’t come off in the dishwasher, and they have a clever ridge inside, down near the bottom, which lets you stack them without getting them stuck together. They work for beer, of course, but they also work for hot stuff, and they are now my go-to container for the gallon or so of coffee I drink in my office during the day while I supposedly work. I took my collection to the course on a recent Sunday, and let the guys test-drive them after our round.

They liked them so much that I worried I’d never see them again if I didn’t keep a close count.

Chic, our chairman, said maybe we ought to get them for everyone, and keep them on a shelf in the men’s locker room. That way, Mike A. could stop going to Costco after work to buy cases of red plastic beer cups. We could have our names printed on them, and maybe some other stuff, too.

Meanwhile, Les—whose wife has spent the past year regretting that she gave him an electric pushcart for his birthday, because he can’t control it—finally ran it into the creek. (The photo below is kind of fuzzy because it was taken from two fairways away.)

Will Les’s cart ever run again? Everyone hopes not, but we won’t know until it has dried out.

Is This the World’s Greatest Golf Course?

Posted on June 1, 2015 by David Owen

On Memorial Day weekend, I played Friday afternoon (lost five dollars), Saturday morning (came in third in a two-man scramble, playing with Tim), Saturday afternoon (advanced to the final in the member-member, also playing with Tim), Sunday morning (won six dollars), Monday morning (won low gross in the nine-hole Memorial Day mixed shamble, playing with Madeline—my golf wife—and an actually married couple), and Monday afternoon (lost five dollars). Then I played again on Friday (lost five dollars) and Saturday morning (won the member-member, one-up, playing with Tim.) That was a pretty good eight-day run, so I wasn’t totally bummed when we had thunder, lightning, and heavy rain just before 7:00 the following morning.

I sent an email to the Sunday Morning Group saying I’d bring a couple of decks of playing cards, and Hacker (real name) suggested that we eat our cheeseburgers and hot dogs (supplied by Barney) for breakfast, instead of lunch. But the lightning had stopped by 7:30, so we played golf instead of setback. One very good thing about rain is that it scares away slackers: twenty regulars showed up, and we had the course to ourselves.

Getting soaked was better than inhaling pine pollen—something we’ve done a lot of this spring:

Because I was up early on both Saturday and Sunday, before I left for the club I watched some of the Irish Open — by which, of course, I mean the Dubai Duty Free Irish Open Hosted by the Rory Foundation. The D.D.F.I.O.H.R.F. was held this year on a course that many golfers would pick as the best in the world: Royal County Down, in Newcastle, Northern Ireland.

Among its many memorable features are its bunkers, which are maintained by vengeful demons:

During a round at Royal County Down in 2013, my playing partner and I waded into a jungle of whins and briers near the eleventh tee to look for a century-old relic that a caddie had told me about two years before: the remains of a small stone building, which the maintenance crew had uncovered during an aggressive gorse-removal project. We found it, at some risk to our clothing, although it was so overgrown that we couldn’t see much more than one corner.

Later that day, Harry McCaw—a past captain of both Royal County Down and the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews—told me that he thought the structure might once have served as the literal “club house”: the place where early players stored their clubs.

I had driven to Newcastle from Dublin, a hundred miles to the south, and during part of the trip I followed Mourne Coastal Route, a scenic highway. Irish roads are narrow under any circumstances; they become narrower if your eyes are repeatedly drawn to the hills and out to sea—a danger that day, because the sky was so clear that I could see the Isle of Man, halfway to the English mainland.

My parents once visited Ireland with another couple, and on an especially harrowing stretch of road my mother, who was sitting in the back seat with the other wife, yelled at my father to stop steering so close to the edge. He innocently raised both hands, to remind her that, in Ireland and the U.K., the driver sits on the right, not the left. During my own trip, I knocked the cowling off the passenger-side mirror of my rental car. I told the clerk at Avis when I returned the car, but she said it happened all the time, and not to worry about it.

Will the Open Championship ever be held at Royal County Down? Fingers crossed.

How to Hit a Lob Shot From the Back of a Pickup Truck

Posted on May 25, 2015 by David Owen

Recently, the Sunday Morning Group held a shootout in which the prizes were some stuff sent to us by Famous Smoke Shop, our tobacco sponsor and smoking connection, which sells cigars online, by mail order, and in person (at the company’s headquarters and retail super store, in Easton, Pennsylvania). The format was lob wedge over the patio to the practice green, closest to the pin, from the bed of Fritz’s pickup truck. The prizes were a cutter, a butane lighter, a humidor, and a handful of cigars. The cutter, the lighter, and the humidor had the awesome logo of one of Famous Smoke Shop’s subsidiary websites, CigarMonster, which sells cigar-related gear. The cigars were Infernos.

Fritz backed his truck up to the fence and dropped the tailgate. The truck’s bed has a plastic liner—good for spin. Climbing into the truck while holding a wedge, a ball, and a beer took some doing. Here’s Hacker (real name) using the bumper as a step:

And here’s Nick P., taking a shot:

Nick’s ball didn’t stay on the green, so he didn’t win anything, but he did earn points for bringing lunch, including an SMG semi-first: barbecued chicken.

Mike A. and Peter A. came in first and second in the cigar shootout, and took the cutter and the lighter, respectively. Chic came in third and took the Cigar Monster humidor:

Chic is our golf chairman. One Sunday, he came close to shooting his pants: waist size on the front, inseam on the back.

After the shootout, we held a quick meeting to decide whether to play a second eighteen or go home and do chores (i.e., take a nap).

My Usual Game: David Owen

ADVENTURES IN GOLF

Category Archives: Sunday Morning Group