The good, the bad and the ugly
I just returned from an in-law weekend visit and had an opportunity to play eighteen with a different kind of foursome. It's not a completely unfamiliar crew in that I've played with my wife's uncle-in-law on many of our regular visits to their small rural town. He's one of a few golf enthusiasts in her family and is always ready for a round when we roll into town. The rest of the foursome consisted of his 35 year old son, whom I had never met, and my twenty-one year old niece's boyfriend, a strapping young football athlete who has only very recently taken up the game.
Our impromptu golf destination was a micro-municipal course in Dyersburg, Tennessee. A decent layout with relatively well-managed greens and fairways. Twenty two bucks covered the greens fee and cart so there was no major financial setback for this Saturday round. And that was all good!
We set out for the first tee with that uneasy feeling that an unfamiliar foursome experiences at the start of the round. Lots of "After you. No please... After you. I insist!" We carefully measure each others golf etiquette and degree of experience in an attempt to find that golf rhythm that comes once everyone has topped, skulled or whiffed a shot or two. And we had a bad bunch of those swings, to be sure.
Then there are those municipal course holes that time forgot. That out-of-the-way par four that seems like the designer finished up seventeen and had to shoe-horn in just one more to complete the course. Not much fairway grass, a microscopic, sun-starved green that is nestled into a shady area surrounded by a dead pan dirt surface. That hole where someone asks if it's OK to bump their ball to one lonely clump of chickweed in hopes of getting a bit of club face on the ball. It was an ugly scenario but we somehow managed to play through unscathed.
And like so many times before, somehow the final six or seven holes brought us together as no other game can. We're now trading jokes, laughing at each others mishits and congratulating the good shots like celebrated color TV commentators. It's funny how this great game always manages to work it's comradery magic regardless of who's playing.
noisemaker
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Getting those rounds in now before the weather turns...call me for your next one!