Bomb And Snooze…Err…Gouge

That stupid Golf Digest blog, Bomb and Gouge? Still hasn’t been updated. It has been weeks. Perhaps the editors over at Golf Digest need a reminder on what a blog actually is.

 (Updated: 10-5-2006)So I just posted the following comment: 

Updated Again: They finally got their shit together to post again. About nothing, except to hint that fantastic new equipment would soon be available.

Golf Is Stupid (Golf Courses)

I might love to play the game, but what can I really say about it? It’s stupid. This is part of an ongoing series about the game’s lesser qualities.

The temperature today in West Virginia? Roughly 237, plus the goddamned humidity. But unlike intelligent people who climbed into their freezers, I went golfing. The course? Bel Meadow, a Robert Trent Jones design 45 minutes from my house. Upon arriving, I purchased a Powerade (flavored: yellow) in the clubhouse because, as previously stated, it was hot enough to cook eggs on the ground.

By the third hole, I’d consumed my beverage and was, not surprisingly, thirsty. But I didn’t find any water after the third hole (courses tend to put water every three holes, or, if they’re really fantastic, on every single hole). And there was none after the fourth. Or the fifth, sixth, or seventh. The eighth? No. So I play the ninth feeling like a damn camel, and then crawl into the clubhouse having sweat off 126 pounds.

“Is there water on the course that I’ve missed?” I asked the polite woman behind the counter.

“Oh no honey. Would you like some ice water?” She answered. I couldn’t respond because I was on the floor, dead.

Look, I understand that turning a profit is difficult in the golf business. Bad courses with bad business strategies lose boatloads of money because they can’t figure out how to make the unprofitable profit. But shorting players on water, thus forcing them to purchase their water in the clubhouse after nine holes?

Let’s ignore the fact that this strategy is immensely cheap. It’s dangerous. Players need water, particularly when they’ve been stupid enough to play golf in an oven. And a majority of those players aren’t 25-year-olds, as I am. They’re old men, for whom extreme heat can be intensely dangerous. (Hell, it isn’t particularly safe for me.) Refusing to provide those players, who have paid mind you, with water every few holes is just plain bad business. Here’s hoping that Bel Meadow quickly rectifies the situation, before someone passes out…or worse.

Golf is Stupid (Golf Writers)

I might love to play the game, but what can I really say about it? It’s stupid. This is part of an ongoing series about the game’s lesser qualities.

Bad sportswriters are among the lowest forms of life inhabiting our fair planets. If they aren’t kissing ass, then they’re generally making asses of themselves, proclaiming this or that or the other as the biggest travesty in sporting history. But that isn’t the point of this micro-complaint.

Over at GolfDigest, the bloggers Bomb and Gouge (cleverly named for a terrible golfing strategy that involves nothing more than driving long and chipping, a strategy that regularly fails to win competitors anything) have decided that the reason you aren’t playing good golf is that you’re playing with a bad ball. This is classic bullshit, as only the best golfers will notice any real difference between golf balls. Give a 20 handicapper ten different golf balls without labels, and (s)he won’t be able to tell you the difference between them.

Does that prevent Bomb from recommending that players purchase the most expensive golf balls for themselves? Of course not, although in the process he sexistly accuses women of shopping on QVC (at the very bottom of his post). So, uhh, there’s an accomplishment: bad advice and sexism.

The fact remains quite simple. Money doesn’t equal skill. It never has, and it never will.

Another Man Freed From Prison

At some point, our justice system - on both the local, state, and federal levels - is going to have to deal with this sort of thing, right? We can’t keep finding out that that innocent people are being unjustly jailed for crimes that they most certainly did not commit. And while we’re at it, shouldn’t we now just begin to accept the almost certain fact that innocent people have been executed on Death Row?

Sigh.

Pat Robertson Is An Idiot

Ignoring the fact that Pat Robertson most certainly did not leg press 2,000 pounds, does anybody genuinely believe that this “explanation” cuts the proverbial mustard? Anybody? Anywhere? There is no evidence offered to us, just an explanation that doesn’t necessarily make an ounce of goddamned sense. Or, to put it another way, until we get videotape of this incredible lift, nobody’s ever going to believe it. (While I’m at it, isn’t lying a sin? These people are claiming that there’s a doctor pressing 2,700 lbs, which is a huge amount of weight for a single person to be moving. These are most certainly lies; what’s the deal?)

How Golf Tournaments Should Work

If you believe Matthew Rudy over at Golf Digest, professional golf tournaments ought to be structured so that Tiger Woods wins. Or, if Woods isn’t going to be in it, then Phil Mickelson. Outside of those two competitors, anybody who wins a tournament are “almosts, sort-ofs, never-wheres and probably-shouldn’ts.” To put it bluntly, this attitude is fucking stupid for the following reasons.

1. Phil Mickelson certainly would have won the tournament if he hadn’t taken driver off 18. Or, if he’d simply pitched back to the fairway instead of going for the green. He played like an idiot (as he himself acknowledged), and as a result, didn’t deserve to win. In fact, all of the players played like idiots. The scoring was certainly bad in this tournament, but that had far less to do with the course than critics would have us believe; if players hadn’t insisted on hitting their drivers off of every tee, then we would have seen a competition of shotmaking instead of shotsaving.

2. Tournaments shouldn’t be structured so that a few small number of golfers are capable of winning; they should be wide-open events that allow the best player, that week, to win. It would be the absolute opposite of fun if I had to watch the same three golfers win every fucking tournament. (To put that another way, does Rudy cheer for the Yankees? For the Red Wings? For the Spurs? For Johnny Knoxville in that movie where he sneaks into the Special Olympics? Plainly and simply, underdogs winning is fun.) Rudy seems anxious to see as much “Bomb and Gouge” as possible, which is a fine strategy, except that there was no way it was going to work on this golf course. The tournament should have been won by the player who played the best, and not the idiot who was capable of hitting the furthest. As a result, we have Ogilvy winning, and Mickelson losing because he couldn’t put his pride back into his bag.

3. As I get older, my faith in sports journalists slowly dwindles. It seems that nobody is willing to tell the truth anymore. Rudy should have excoriated Mickelson, and every other golfer who choked away the championship for doing exactly that. Instead, while criticizing the golfers, he claimed that the course was too hard for golfing professionals. Give me a fucking break. They’re professionals for a reason, even if they didn’t play like it this weekend. The fact of the matter is that you’re responsible to play the course in front of you, not the course that you wish it was, or the course that you think it could be. If the criticism about courses should be directed anywhere, it should be toward those courses that leave us with winners at -17; there ought to be a modicum of challenge in these events.

Someday, we’ll start getting journalists who are willing to write such things, but until we do, we’ll be stuck with the sort of jackoffs that Golf Digest seems to regularly offer us: fawning over players, critical of “challenging” golf courses, and basically worthless when it comes to the game.

Don’t Want To Wear A Helmet?

If this story is true, and you’re one of the people who thinks that riding a motorcycle without a helmet is a good idea, then I’ve got news for you: you’re an idiot. Fortunately, natural selection is occuring every day, and you’ll soon be culled from the herd.

The Problem With Golfers

The other day at my own small home course - the magnificent Meadow Ponds - I played with a guy aghast at the course’s conditions. The fairways weren’t perfect! The rough was far too shaggy! The tee boxes were chopped up! The problem with idiotic complaints like this is twofold:

1. It’s fucking Meadow Ponds. The course spends little money on maintenance and literally everybody who plays there knows this. For Christ’s sake, we didn’t have gasoline for the mowers until the middle to end of April. Shut up already. If you want to play Augusta, it’s about 500 miles away.

2. Golfers need to quit being bitches. The fact of the matter is that you show up at a golf course, and you agree to play the golf course. If the course isn’t in the condition that you like, well…don’t go back. Hell, tell your friends about the course’s rough condition. But don’t act as if the reason you hit a bad shot was because of the course conditions. You hit a bad shot because you didn’t know how to hit that particular shot, or because you were so busy thinking that the rough was too long that you didn’t bother really getting the clubface square on the ball.

What really irks me is that this incessant bitching and complaining goes all the way to golf’s best players. “Oh, the sand wasn’t perfect for me to hit out of,” bitched the millionaire golfer who didn’t bother to spend enough time learning how to hit the shots. If anything course conditions ought to be made worse, just to fuck the golfers who insist that the course ought to carry them, instead of the other way around.