Brutal Sport
One of the oldest Professional Golf tournaments gets underway this week in Scotland. What I grew up calling the “British Open” is now just “The Open”. I would guess because in Scotland they aren’t British, they are Scottish. If you are seeing plaid kilts and hearing bagpipes right now, good for you because I sure do! I watched Braveheart so I understand kilts as good as anyone. Men in plaid skirts and knee socks make me wince a little because of the “breezy” aspect to that choice of apparel. The way I understand it, real kilt wearing Scotsman leave the fruit of looms in the drawer for such occasions.
I love the bagpipes too, when they buried Mr. Spock in the movie Star Trek “The wrath of Kahn” and Mr. Scott played amazing grace on said bagpipes, I cried the same way I did when they shot Old yeller. It was a shameful display of weakness on my part but no one knew about it until now.
You see, Bagpipes are moisture extracting wind instruments designed to reduce men to blubbering babies and it has nothing to do with wearing plaid skirts, so there. Weeping uncontrollably at a fictitious funeral is not my fault, it was the bagpipes. As far as old yeller is concerned, I was much younger then and had not obtained my man card at the time.
I think I went astray just then, I meant to talk about golf. I love golf, I am terrible at it but where else can I curse freely and out loud at my own ineptness? I’ve seen men throw perfectly good clubs in the lake out of pure frustration. I have seen men snap a putter in two pieces because they missed a putt that they were never skilled enough to make in the first place, but yet something in their brain went haywire and they decided the best way to get even with their lack of skill was to destroy an inanimate object that they probably overpaid for. That’s why I simply curse, I can’t afford a new putter, I know my limits. With cursing, all I have to do is apologize if I become too rank for anyone who happens to be playing alongside me. But please understand that Golf is a Gentleman’s game…Apologies are required.
What has always amazed me that for a gentleman’s game, the terminology that is used inside the game is head scratching at best. For example, the way to keep score is by counting “strokes”. That word in itself sounds deadly but where else can you say I had 72 strokes and I feel great! At my age, one stroke is way too many…
There is also the term Bogie, (pronounced BO-GEE) which indicates that you had one MORE stroke than you were allowed on a particular hole but, if you have one LESS stroke on a hole, you have managed to secure a birdie and if you have two less strokes on a hole than required, you just secured an Eagle. Who doesn’t want a birdie and an Eagle? Let’s not overlook that the holy grail of all golf is the coveted “Hole in One”. This event is so rare that if you achieve it, you have to buy your group all the beers they want to drink. That’s never made sense to me, if a hole in one is so rare and three of your buddies saw you do it, they need fork over some cash.
Now, on all 18 holes, there are many “hazards”, “traps” and “roughs” on the course that are strategically located so that you never have a clear shot at the hole. Often you try to avoid these hazards causing you to accidentally hit a wayward shot “out of bounds”, even when you didn’t mean to. When this happens, it adds two strokes to your score. Bummer.
What’s even more amusing, is the number of terms to describe bad strokes such as, skull it, shanked it, sliced it, Duck hooked it, hit a worm burner, I Chili-dipped it, and one of my personal favorite’s right after “I got the shanks” is… you hit it “fat”. Golf is a gentleman’s game, yet the reference to fat is thrown around as freely as a sailor using soiled language, or me when I hit a bad shot. I’ve yet to hear that anyone has managed to hit it “skinny”. Shameful behavior all the way around if you ask me.
If you know anything about the game, you never want to get the shanks. Yes, I know that “shanks” sounds like a side effect from a sexually transmitted disease but despite the cute plaid skirts you might see watching the tournament in Scotland this weekend, I can promise you, sex had nothing to do with it.
You see, a “shank” in golf is the worst possible affliction a golfer can acquire while playing the game. Now that I think about it, I can see how the sexual disease reference could apply… A “shank” in golf basically means, STOP PLAYING someone is going to get hurt! This is an affliction that even penicillin can’t cure. Once you’ve acquired the “shanks” in golf, the only cure is time and a perhaps a physiatrist.
Did I mention the instruments used to move the ball down the fairway are called “Clubs”? It sounds prehistoric, Me want Woman, Me want fire, Me want meat, Me want Birdie, Me want Eagle, Me hate Bogie, Me settle for Par. Come to think of it, putting a little white ball into a 4-inch hole from 500 yards away doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, but I sure enjoy the heck out of it. Enjoy the Open this weekend and please don’t have a stroke.