Fore Score and Plenty More

So as I tweeted yesterday, today I went golfing with Bro and Boss Lady. Boss Lady is technically not my supervisor, she’s Bro’s supervisor at the post office, as well as a family friend and an all around great gal. She’s also a damned good golfer, to which I say “fuck”, ‘cause I’m not, and I established that beyond all doubt today.

No, I’m not going to tell you my score. If I did, I’d have to spend the rest of my life walking around with a paper bag over my head. I’m not sure that would actually hinder my game, but it would most certainly suck during a sudden downpour.

After last weekend’s debacle – my single worst game ever – Bro called and said “Boss Lady’s coming with us next weekend.”

My initial reaction was “I didn’t know we were going next weekend” and “Yeah, right.” Boss Lady had said she would go before, and hadn’t. Hey, she’s busy. She’s the boss. Yet she did come to play with us today, and after having not swung a club for two years she still managed to make me look like a goddamned fool.

Naturally, I had fun. Hey, I usually look like a fool anyway. This time I just had some help.

We teed off at 8 am, and I got teed of pretty damned quick. The two of them used irons to get pretty close to the green, and I used my driver to land maybe 20 yards in front of the lady’s tee. It was not pretty.

They encouraged me anyway, and frankly the only time I like smoke blown up my ass is during my golf game, so off we went. It was a bit early for Cart Boy to come around with the mobile bar, but other than that the day was perfect, especially the weather.

By the time we got to the 4th tee my game was already in the sewer and Boss Lady and Bro were competing for bragging rights. I was the last to tee off and I sliced – yet again – into the thistle and thorns.

“Gimme another ball,” I said to them. Surely I could do better than that. I’m not a good golfer by any stretch, but usually I have a pretty accurate drive even if it’s short.

Bro launched a ball at me. “You’d better not fucking lose it!”

The problem with Bro and me is that we go through balls like they’re free instead of hideously expensive. We buy the cheap Wal-Mart ones, cause we’ve both lost our expensive Christmas gift balls Daddy-O gave us. By the 4th hole, we were both down 2 balls.

“Yeah, yeah,” I said. I focused, swung the club, and launched his brand new ball into the drink on the left side of the fairway. That I actually missed them standing only slightly diagonally forward to me shows you how wicked the hook really was.

I guess I overcompensated a bit.

“Goddamn it!” Bro yelled. “I fucking KNEW you would do that! You owe me a new ball!”

Boss Lady was enormously amused by the whole thing, even though she herself had done the same damned thing only a few minutes earlier and was also forced to take a drop. I have to say, when she’s accurate, she gets a lot of distance. She’s been golfing since I was a kid, and I like her a lot, and I’m totally jealous.

We got past Steve-O to start up the back nine, and with my back turned to them, I heard Bro say to Boss Lady, “Wash my balls, woman.”

I won’t tell you what kind of images that momentarily invoked, but if I can’t shake it I’m likely to spend the rest of my life and most of my finances in therapy. Believe it or not, she complied, and even dried them off when he insisted. I kept shooting furtive glances around, hoping no one would overhear, but the group queued at the 10th tee with us was too busy with their own conversation to pay attention to the gross sexual innuendo going on near the ball washer. Thank God.

It’s bad enough we sound like lunatics to each other most of the time. It gets harder to explain it to complete strangers, especially at a snooty golf course. Especially at 9:30 in the morning. Especially when sober.

Speaking of the group in front of us, it was the same damned group of 4 again. Steve-O thinks they’re all that and a bag ‘o chips. He told us they come every day – they’re retired (and apparently rich) – and that they’re good, never more than a few over par. I think either Steve-O’s delusional or these cats cheat on their scorecards. I’ve been following them for weeks now – not willingly BTW – and they’re not much better than me for crissakes. They 3 and 4 putt every hole, and they spend more time looking for balls than swinging at them.

I’m not sure how it is we’ve managed to end up behind this group for three weeks running, especially as we’ve had a different tee off time each week as well. You couldn’t plan that shit. Yet there it is.

They guys are S-L-O-W, though they deny it. We kept catching up to them at every hole last week, and Blue Shirt kept saying “We’re really not that slow.” After a dozen holes of this exact same statement, Bro finally got tired of it and said, “Yes. You are.”

That was pretty much the end of that conversation. I did notice that they didn’t even bother to acknowledge or talk to us today, which I guess means they don’t want to be Bestest Friends Forever. If I wasn’t already suicidal over my golf game today, no doubt that would drive me over the edge. Yeah right.

At the end of the day, neither Bro nor Boss Lady got bragging rights. They tied, of all goddamned things. Meanwhile, I hung my head in shame and did the slow long walk back to the car. OK, not really. Instead I made it a standing bet that if anyone ever gets a hole-in-one they win a free dinner courtesy of the other 2 at the restaurant of their choice. What the hell. If I can’t win at golf, I can at least try for entertainment value.

As for me, I think the 17th hole was the only one where I didn’t actually mow the fairway and I actually elevated off the tee. Naturally it sliced right, high onto a berm. I did manage to recover, and played that hole half-decent, which was a double-bogey. Other than a single bogey on the front nine, the rest of my day consisted of quadruple bogeys. I shit you not. You do the damned math.

At least we all had fun, including our talented guest. Next time Boss Lady is promising to bring her husband or her son. Apparently neither is good either, so I’m looking forward to it. I’ll try to remember to bring a couple of paper bags, just in case.

BTW - Re: the Montreal Canadiens trading goalie Jaroslav Halak - I did blog about it, but on habsaddict.com in the Addicts Alley column. That is a hockey blog. This is a personal one, though the two may occasionally overlap.

Feel free to pander to my ego. It's taken a beating today.