I never did understand the designated handicap in golf terms. My handicap was that I was a lousy golfer. I did what I loosely described as playing golf for about eight years when I was in my late 20s and early 30s. I hated it. So much walking! And always in the hot sun, resulting in sweating. I never cared for sweating.
But, I was an only child. I wasn’t a boy. And my dad was an avid golfer. So, I figured it was my responsibility to get out there and play golf with him. He probably looked forward to our golfing days with just as much enthusiasm as I did, which is to say, not so much.
I was playing with an old set of his clubs and I’ve been told that was part of my problem. My dad was about 5-foot-9 and I am 5-foot-2 and a half. His clubs were too long for me and the result was a huge slice when I teed off. We would start together, but that didn’t last long as he played down the fairway and I was over to the right, thrashing my way through the shrubbery. He would patiently find something to sit on and wait until I emerged onto the green.
I wasn’t quite as bad at putting, except my dad said I had an Arnold Palmer stance, with my knees touching and my feet splayed out. It wasn’t pretty, even on Arnie. My dad stood it for as long as he could but finally refused to play with me, his only kid. I didn’t blame him. He said I had the worst “banana ball” he’d ever seen.
So, I joined a women’s golf league. I just needed more practice, right? This league played at a brand-new (in the ’60s) course south of Rochester, Minnesota, built along the Root River.
One of the holes had the tee high up on a bluff, with the hole on a little island across a narrow stretch of the river. I lost so many golf balls in that river that I finally got desperate. I would wait until I didn’t see anyone around me, take my ball over to the edge of the bluff and throw it as hard as I could, aiming for the hole “way over there.”
I was much better at throwing the ball than hitting it and it took a while before my “straight-arrow” teammates noticed what I was doing and suggested kindly that perhaps golf was not my game.
After we moved to Duluth, I mentioned to a new friend that yes, I could play golf. Now, why on earth did I do that? But, she turned out to be one of the most patient people I ever met and stuck with me and my erratic golf game for about six years. I kept thinking that any minute now, I was going to be filled with athletic joyousness and I would turn into, like my dad, an avid golfer. Never
happened. Even though, by now, I had my very own “short person” golf clubs in a lovely green bag with wheels and cute little knitted socks on my clubs. I even wore my dad’s plaid golfing “tam-o-shanter” for luck. However, I still had to drag the bag and clubs all over the hills in the hot sun. Sweat, sweat.
When I started working for the Minnesota Ballet, I just didn’t have time to get out on the links and I had to stop playing. Oh, boo-hoo! My golfing friend and I both put on an impressive display of anguish, saddened that Enger and Lester courses had seen the last of me. But I’m pretty sure she was faking it and I know for a fact that I was.
Now, after moving to green blazer territory in North Carolina, several of my family members are taking up golf and seem to love it. I get pictures of the bunch of them in their golf clothes and they are all smiling. They even have golf carts parked in their garages and drive them all over the neighborhood. I’m sure my dad is smiling.
I think the high point of my golfing career came when I was invited by a friend to play in a tournament at our local country club. I was pretty nervous, playing with all those high-powered women golfers, who spent every summer day at “the club.” And, even worse, I knew there was a water hazard similar to the one down on the Root River, where you teed off on one side of a small creek and had to land your ball on the island green on the other.
I was getting really clammy-handed as I approached that hole. One of the other women in my foursome noticed that I had gotten quiet and was looking apprehensive. She said to me in a soft voice, “Oh, honey, don’t fret about it, just do what I do. Watch me!”
With that, she put her ball down on the ground and calmly putted it across the little ornamental wooden bridge that led to the island. She got to the other side, gave the ball a good smack and landed on the green. I looked around to see if the others were going to object, but they had suddenly become interested in something happening far in the distance. So, putt, putt, putt, across the bridge I went.
I guess, even with golf, a game noted for its scoring honor system, a little “creative rule-bending” can make all the difference between “I have to go play golf today” and “Hey! The sun is shining! Let’s get out the clubs!”
Claudia Myers is retired from costume design and construction for The Baltimore Opera and the Minnesota Ballet. She is a national award-winning quilter, author and local antique dealer, specializing in Persian rugs. Her book, “The Storyteller,” is available at claudiamyersdesigns.com.
