Golf Sucks
O.K., that's a bit harsh.  It's not that bad...what other sport can you use as an excuse to blow off an afternoon of
work, all in the name of client entertainment?  But it's the golf course etiquette that drives me nuts.
Here's a few interesting things I've learned over the years about the game of golf:

  1. You can't drive the golf cart on the tee box (found that out from personal experience).
  2. You're expected to neatly rake the sand to perfection, should you ever have to walk in the sand trap and <gasp!> leave
    footprints.
  3. When your ball hits the green, you're supposed to use a funny-looking tool to poke around the miniscule indentation
    left from the ball striking the ground.
  4. People get irritated if you talk while they're swinging.
  5. People get irritated if you accidently drive your ball into the women's tee box marker and it ricochets straight back and
    knocks the beer out of their hand (more personal experience).
  6. Many golf courses are built parallel to major interstate highways, as if everyone's gonna be a friggin' pro golfer and hit
    the ball straight.  Geez, car windows are expensive.
  7. Teenage drink cart girls are never impressed when you brag about the titanium in your shaft.
  8. People actually spend time lining up their shot, as if the ball's really going to go that direction anyway.
  9. There are players who actually care how many yards they are from the hole.  Grab a d*mn club and swing, already!!
  10. This one is for real...I was on the green, standing well behind the guy putting, minding my own business, and all of a
    sudden everyone stops what they're doing and they're all staring at me.  So I'm thinking, maybe they want my advice as
    to how the guy should approach his shot.  Then a half-second passes and I realize how ridiculous that just sounded.  
    So finally I give up and ask what everyone's problem is.  Answer:  "You're casting a shadow between the ball and the
    hole."

I rest my case.
"You got
no game,
Bush!"
"I got your
game right here,
Nike Boy!"
Dubya, playing
the sport that
sucks.
Tiger.
He's got game.
The following is my report from a 2-day corporate golf outing at Kohler, Wisconsin in May 2007, confirming once again that golf does, indeed, suck:

Thursday
7:00 a.m. departure from Casa del Stichnoth in Big Bird (a/k/a the Blazer), one hour of gridlock followed by two hours of driving. The Whistling Straits golf course was about 75
degrees with a 20 mph cold wind blowing in from the lake. No carts were allowed on the course, only caddies, so I dropped off my Wilson golf bag (came with the club set)
which sat helplessly on the ground in contrast to the tripod-equipped bags of the real golfers standing fully erect (the bags, not the golfers, that I know of anyway). Next to the
bags was a line of 20-something dudes dressed like house painters. These were our caddies. My caddie asked if I wanted to practice putt and I replied “Why would I want to
do that?” So we walked out to the course and I was jacket-less, hatless and sunsceen-less with no idea I'd be getting roasted by intermittent sun. Me and my partner, a client
named Tim, kept sending balls to opposite sides of the fairways. I'll give our caddy credit, he found some balls that should have been hopelessly lost. He was carrying both
our bags and got the workout of his life. About 12 holes in I finally hit my 4 iron straight and for about 3 seconds I admired the shot, then saw it was headed straight for another
client, this one named Bruce, who had his back turned toward me. I yelled just in time for him to see it coming. The bounce off his left foot was enough to kick the ball back
into the fairway. After our round ended, one of my 4 bosses showed up in salmon-colored shorts and the investment bankers had a field day with that. I changed into dinner
clothes and saw the nice new company-logo golf shirt I'd been given for the event had a big bird shit on the shoulder that I'd been carrying for who knows how long. That night
at the Kohler Design Center (a showcase of their products) the salmon-shorts boss introspectively inquired if we could just pick a toilet on display, sit down and go, this in
front of about 5 clients.

Friday
Lucky me, got to golf again with Bruce at Bear Wood or whatever they call the other course Kohler is famous for. Bruce is a fast learner - never had his back to me when I was
hitting. Since I’d used up my entire supply balls on Thursday, I decided to buy a dozen at the pro shop, this consisting of walking up to the ball display and grabbing the box
nearest my outstretched hand. These balls happened to be manufactured by Nike, who at some point around the time of hiring Tiger Woods decided world domination
should extend to the world’s most boring sport. Now, it's been so long since I bought balls, being that I've played golf on my own dime a total of, say, ZERO times ever, I
couldn't tell you what they're supposed to cost. I thought maybe $2 per ball would be fair. Yeah right. Try $5. For 12 friggin' golf balls, I paid $63 (my employer picked up the tab
on that one). For that price I was thinking they ought to be half ball, half homing pigeon. On a per-stroke basis I got a pretty good deal though - my score was comparable to
the round of golf that won me the Hit & Hope prize at the 1995 Ag Professionals Golf Outing in Momence, Illinois. Would have been a respectable bowling score, actually.  On
the bright side, nobody got hit, not even a car*. That night my legs, forehead and neck would have blended in nicely with a Harris Bank billboard (sunscreen is for pansies).

*in 2005, I drove a tee shot into a car driving down a street next to the Briarwood course in Ankeny, Iowa. Clearly, it was the shot of the day and for my effort I won a $2 prize.