The first time I ever golfed was back in the '60s, at the Silver Lakes golf course on Staten Island in New York City. My pals humbled me totally. To get even, I went to a driving range and learned how to really wallop 'em. Next time we teed up, I left a soapy ball mark on my driver's sweet spot and the ball sailed 300 yards. It came to rest just on the edge of the green, and I proceeded to drop it right in the hole--fifteen putts later!
Not long after that I dropped the sport altogether. Or so I thought. Little did I know that golf is a lot like Kuru or Scrapie. These slow-onset retroviruses won't manifest any symptoms at all for decades, and then WHAM!
A few years back a twenty-five-years-older me stood at the top of a cliff up in Nova Scotia, Canada, where the geography causes a 30-foot difference between high and low tides. Maybe you've heard of it: the Bay of Fundy.
Anyway, Fundy National Park has a lovely nine-hole golf course, where--like the famous Fundy tides--the path of a golf ball is greatly affected by the tug of the Moon.
This makes sense if you think about it. Just look. Golf balls and the Moon are both covered with lots and lots of shallow craters. Obviously, the Moon thinks golf balls are young planetoids, and wants to reach out and help.
I got a demonstration of this tidal influence at the very first tee. Minutes before, I'd walked into the clubhouse and rented a set of clubs. "I'm a little rusty," I said. "Sell me some balls that know the course." That got a smile from the gal behind the counter. And--call it a premonition--I purchased thirty-six "experienced" golf balls.
Now, out on the first tee, I placed my small sacrifice upon the tiny wooden peg, took up the ceremonial wand, and let fly.
So to speak. Glory be! Just like the old days, my club struck the ball with a most satisfying thwak! Yet this match-strike of satisfaction was promptly dowsed by the rip-sizzling sound of my ball mowing an inch-wide swath through the grass. Oops. A "worm-burner."
Double-Oops, in fact. Like I said, Fundy's first tee is atop a cliff that's a hundred feet high, if it's an inch. So, after scorching the grass like a runaway hair trimmer, my ball had pretty much spent its juice. There was little left for it to do but--with its last gasp of forward momentum--topple limply over the precipice.
With a mix of urgent curiosity and great caution, I dashed to the brink to see what had become of the thing. Needless to say, there was no sign of it on the rocks below. The corpse had vanished!
Thirty-five balls, and counting.
My next shot got airborne, but after bursting like flak it turned kamikaze and dove meteorically straight down to attack some passing twig in the stream far below, just beyond the base of the cliff. Apparently the current was either quite swift, or a passing tuna had snapped it up. I couldn't tell which. In any case, another ball was "history."
Two down; thirty-four still in my bag.
Maybe I should have left them there. I won't recount the many glorious episodes that followed. Let's just say that, like Ponce-de-Leon, I sampled many waters in my quest. Like T.H. Lawrence, I criss-crossed Saharas. Like Dan'l Boone, I blazed woodland trails. And like Ishmael, I alone survived to tell thee. Meaning that--thankfully--except for me and a few hysterically laughing deer, the course was empty.
After nine holes, I had only six very nervous golf balls to sell back to the fair maid at ye olde clubhouse counter. She accepted them with a twinkle in her eye, and asked "Well, at least did you have fun?"
And truth be known--I had.
So that was it. I was hooked. Sliced. You name it. Dormant no longer, golf had broken out in full force. Years' more practice followed, and on a good day I now play "bogey" golf.
So just last week while I was driving in Genesee County with a friend to the Le Roy Country Club, and--well, you see--I mean no disrespect--but upon finding the Calvary Baptist Church on Route 19 just north of town, I just had to pull over in absolute, total awe.
Image based on a photo by Sheila Cahill, 1998
Appeared in "The Wayne Weekly," September, 1998.
Every year our kids’ Montessori school hosts a big golf fund-raiser. Naturally, I volunteered to do the poster.
