Golf Is Stupid (Pat Perez/Holes-In-One)

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.

-I’ve been waiting for a golfer to genuinely hate. First it was Vijay Singh, but he seems like he does good charity work. Then it was Phil Mickelson, just because he’s an overrated doofus, but again, he seems like a good guy even if he isn’t a personal favorite. I’ve cycled through others, never totally being able to decide on anybody. Paul Azinger has been my current fallback position, because of his outrageous arrogance in John Feinstein’s Good Walk Spoiled, a book I won’t link to because it sucks.

Fortunately, Pat Perez just walked into my life. Perez is the sniveling jackass profiled in this column in which he says, apparently with all seriousness, that he doesn’t shoot 82. 82, I guess, is a score for the masses and since he is a professional PGA player, the possibility that he’d falter under intense conditions is nil.

…except he did shoot an 82 today, during the morning rounds at the greatest golf tournament in the world, The British Open. By all accounts, the conditions at Royal Birkdale were insane: wet (driving rain), windy (gales of up to 35 mph), and cold (the temperature didn’t top 50 degrees). Perez expected to be let off the hook, thinking that because the weather wasn’t cooperating, he’d get a break from the British Open. He was wrong, and forced to play, he came apart at the seems.

He whinged about the conditions, about how unfair they were, about how terrible they were, about how impossible they were. Meanwhile, Tom Watson, 26 years older than Perez, managed a 74, and then didn’t whine about it, because he was man enough to realize that if the conditions are rainy, wet, and nasty, then you figure out how to score well in them. There’s a reason Watson won 5 British Opens, and Perez has yet to win on the PGA Tour, anywhere, even in the most ideal conditions.

For people that get everything for free, for people who play the greatest courses in the world, for people who live a pampered life, for people who can win a million dollars a year by merely being the 99th best golfer in the world, golfers can sometimes be awfully whiny. Needless to say, Pat Perez is my new least favorite golfer.

-I hit my second hole-in-one last Saturday, on a 210-yard hole at my golf course. Although it is listed on the scorecard, by virtue of a typo, as a par 4, it is really a par 3. I used a 4 iron. I was very, very lucky, hitting a trapped four iron with a fade on a dry day. It bounced once before the green, rolled on and dropped in. I can’t even claim to have seen the ball drop in though; I only figured out that it was a hole-in-one when I got to the green and couldn’t find my ball before looking in the hole. Golf’s a funny game.

Golf Is Stupid (Tips)

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.

I’ve played golf for almost my entire life. I started when I was eight - I’m 27 now, and I’ve played at least once a year for those 19 years. It started with my hitting golf balls into my grandparents’ hayfields in Maine. I started playing from there, until I was 15 or 16 and realized that The Comedian Joe, my playing partner, was about 3000 times better than me. I walked away from anything but the most casual of golf for about six years, before starting up again seriously. And now, as when I was a child, I am pathetically obsessed. I hit golf balls whenever possible, including in the backyard. I spend hours at GolfDiscussions, pouring over the game’s minutiae (and being told that my liberal-tarian politics are bad for the country). I visit EBay, either selling old clubs or pursuing new ones. I own literally hundreds of golf balls, and clubs that I’ll never use but picked up anyway at garage sales. Really, it’s pathetic.

The one pride I can take away from the game is that my game, and everything good and bad that comes with it, is self-made. I’ve never had a lesson. I have taught myself everything I know about the game, and that, for me, is a good thing, because it is literally the only way I learn anything. In high school, I went to chemistry class day after day and never learned a damn thing. The teacher lectured, and the students around me learned, while his words just bounced off my forehead into a little pile on the ground. I just can’t learn by being told or shown. I have to do things myself; I can cook, write, shoot a bank shot, and take a photograph not because anybody told me how to do it, but because I took it upon myself to figure out how to do so.

Golfers pursue their own personal greatness through exhaustive practice, endless self-examination, and, most of them anyway, by pursuing tips about how to play better. Which is how you hear guys saying, “Well, if I just turn my hands over during my swing, I’ll really start shooting lower scores!” Whatever that means. Golfers love tips, and most are interested in whatever they can get their hands on. They’ll read instruction books, magazines, talk to anybody at their course who will listen, or anybody anywhere who will listen and might possess that one game-changing miracle. They’ll also try literally everything they’re told.

They’ll grip firmly and loosely, swing slowly and quickly, aim toward their target and away from their target, use the ten finger grip or the Vardon grip. Anything if it might mean that they’ll suddenly shoot whatever a good score is in their mind.

Although my method of learning is generally a terrible one - there’s a reason I’m a struggling graduate student instead of a chemist, an architect, or a computer scientist - in golf it has its upside, particularly because I am free to ignore all of the tip crap that is floating around. If I want to learn how to do something, I’ll get to work learning it. I have, for example, learned how not to hit a slice (a massive movement of the ball in a left to right fashion) by practicing like crazy. Similarly, I have learned how to hit the ball high in the air, by opening up the clubface, and I have learned how to keep it low, by backing the ball up in my stance. None of these things are particular accomplishments, but they are things that I know I can do if necessary.

The problem with tips is that people start to believe they are a shortcut to such knowledge. I can tell you to open the clubface to hit the ball higher, but until you practice that and really ingrain it into your skillset, it doesn’t mean anything to you. The same goes for almost every other tip that exists in the world of golf. (I would be remiss if I didn’t observe that there are two universal tips which any old man worth his salt at any municipal course in the world can give you: keep your eyes on the ball, and swing slowly. But if you’re a golfer, chances are you already knew that.)

My fury at golfing “tips” boiled over the other day when I read putting advice from Padraig Harrington’s putting coach in Golf Magazine, in which it was legitimately suggested that golfers, when addressing the ball, keep 45 percent of their weight on one foot, and 55 percent on the other. If you honestly believe you’re capable of such nonsense, I’ve got news for you: you’re not. Physiologically, you’re not.

Putting is by far the worst part of my game, a real score wrecker that has consistently ruined rounds for me for the entirety of my career. It’s sad, but true, and there’s little I can do about that. I practice, and tinker, and play, and repeat, but generally, I don’t putt well. In a funk, I called The Comedian Joe, who has always given me sage advice. As usual: “Stop thinking, pick a target, and do whatever it is you do to get the ball to that target.” I knew all of that of course, as does probably every golfer.

The only way to truly get better at the game of golf is to grind it out, teaching yourself the things that you think you need to know. There is no golf magazine, no golf bible, no golfing show and no guy at your course who can do anything for your scores. Only you can. It requires the willingness to experiment, to make mistakes, to take bad scores, and to repeat as much as possible. It also requires an almost Zen like realization that you can only do so much on a given day. Improvement takes time, and anybody who believes in golf tips is selling snake-oil. Either you work hard at it, or you don’t. Either you learn to hit the shots, or you don’t.

That, at its essence, is golf, and it is what makes the game so fantastic.

Golf Is Stupid (The Golf Digest Blog, Again…Again)

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.

I have often whinged about Golf Digest’s totally inane equipment blog Bomb and Gouge. The disconnect between the real world and what the blog’s two authors advocate is unbelievable, and unfortunately, the beginning of the year 2008 hasn’t improved things. At all.

One of the favorite complaints of the people at Bomb and Gouge is that the use of belly putters so undermines the game of golf that it defies our ability to understand it…you see, because the belly putter connects to the hands and the belly. Even worse is the long putter, which connects to the hands and the chin. You can imagine the horror, can’t you? The club is connecting to two parts of the human body. I’d argue that the game’s lingering tarnish of racism is doing more to harm the game than putters designed to connect to two parts of the body, but hey - I don’t work at Golf Digest. What in the hell do I know?

(Unfortunately, you’re going to have to trust me that they hate belly putters. The blog, inexplicably, doesn’t have archives that I could find. Idiots.)

Anyway, the appeal of belly and long putters for the people that use them is that it helps them to make putts. Made putts equals lower scores. But beyond that, a guy who figures out how to take less putts plays a shorter round, a point that will be important in a minute.

In this post’s fifth paragraph, “Bomb” - honestly, writing under a pseudonym while putting your real name on the same page is so unbelievably silly - is excited about the legalization of rangefinders. What are rangefinders? Well, they measure distance so that golfers can better know what club they need to hit to reach a particular target. “Bomb” is so overwhelmingly excited for this technical innovation because it will, and now I’m quoting,

Anything that helps speed up play (and these devices do) is good for the entire game of golf.

Now, I’ll leave it you to decide, if you’ve read this far, the following. What is more foreign in the game of golf: a flat-faced club used to putt that is connected to two parts of the human body although still manipulated with the hands or a computer that figures out your distances for you? For me, the answer is clear. Rangefinders, which I detest beyond words, are clearly more outrageous in the game of golf than putters using belly or long putters. Either know how to judge distances or suffer the consequences. That’s one of the key elements of the game of golf.

But, let’s forget about my opinions for the moment, because although I may not like rangefinders, I’m willing to (barely) tolerate their existence if golf’s governing bodies legalize them. I would never use them - I have two eyes firmly attached to my brain - but if they’re legal, they’re legal. Bomb and Gouge have suggested that anybody using belly or long putters be disqualified from tournament play. Again, I’d point you to their archives, but since they don’t know blogging from their own ass, it doesn’t seem to be available.

Bomb sets his standard as advocating that anything that speeds the pace of play be legalized. If a guy thinks a belly or long putter will help him make more putts, and if in fact he putts better with one, thus decreasing his number of strokes and his overall playing time, well…they’ve got to be acceptable, right?

I won’t bother waiting for an answer.

Golf Is Stupid (Putting)

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.

My bugaboo, my entire golfing career, has been the putter. Whereas I know some absolutely fantastic putters, their considerable talents never wore off on me. I am constantly shooting good rounds in the foot whenever I get to the greens. Case in point, this past weekend I shot a 65, three putting the final green from eight feet for what would have technically been my course record. (My own I mean, not the course’s.) As it finished, I shot three over on the front (three putting the ninth) and six under on the back, and had been at seven before that final putting disaster.

By most accounts, I have a bad putting grip. I stole it from my friend Joe, who was/is an excellent putter, the kind of putter who leaves me surprised when he misses. Basically, my hands overlap one another, left hand over right. I have fought with this particular grip for going on four years now, trying desperately to control it, as it is a grip that allows me to stand a little straighter, and thus go easier on my bad lower back.

This must end though.

I decided this morning that I’m changing my putting grip, and have chosen one that I’ve toyed around with for a while. It involves interlocking fingers and the left hand being dominant and all sorts of things that might serve to…

…seriously? Am I seriously doing this? Am I seriously blogging about something as unbelievably unimportant as how I grip my putter? Yes, yes I am, because not only is it important (to me), it literally dominates my thoughts. I walk around my house with a spare putter constantly trying this new grip out. I worry about it, think about it, agonize about it, and for what? The unlikely possibility that this might actually help.

Speaking of help, I need some. Nobody should ever think about golf this much.

Golf Is Stupid (Bomb Squad Golf)

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.

Almost a year ago, I wrote this a screed against golf equipment manufacturers, golf media, and the various people who try to convince us as players that our salvation lies not in how much we practice, but rather how much we spend. The arguement seems to go something like this:

“Practicing is for suckers. You’ve got a couple extra thousand lying around. Spend it on our clubs and poof! You’ll be shooting lower scores and feeling better about yourselves in the showers.”

One of the worst offenders, I wrote, was a website called Bomb Squad Golf, which has posted five hilarious equipment reviews, all of which are condescending and insulting to anybody with a half a brain’s worth of ability to think. BSG is actually part of the much larger problem that I was describing above, so maybe it wasn’t fair of me to come down quite so hard on those particular fellas. Maybe they actually believe that scoring is the result of equipment; maybe they actually believe that swings and squaring the clubface and following through are overrated concepts for losers who don’t have enough money to spend on TOUR QUALITY MERCHANDISE!!!!! Maybe.

But that didn’t stop Todd, from BSG, from stopping by this morning and commenting on my eleven month old post. I’ve broken down his commentary for you.

People who post such obvious falsehoods and lies make me sick. They’re envious of success and jealous of the hardworking people who want the best of everything, including their golf equipment.

That’s definitely it. I’m jealous of Todd, and the other players at BSG, because they’re hardworking types who want the best of everything. Accusing me of jealousy is a fantastic way to dodge the criticism that clubs don’t make the player. Instead of having to prove that, in fact, clubs do make the player, all Todd has to do is sit back, stop hyperventilating, and remind himself that I couldn’t possibly have any idea what I’m talking about. No, it’s that I’m jealous.

To the people buying the equipment sold on BSG the price is irrelevant it’s the performance that matters and the products sold on BSG flat out PERFORM PERIOD.

Golf clubs do not “flat out PERFORM PERIOD.” To test this truth, go outside and tee up a golf ball, and then take out a club. Take out whatever club you want. Put that club next to the teed up ball and stand back. Is the club swinging itself? Is it ripping a 300-yard-drive-straight-down-the-middle? Is it hitting a shortside pin after a high flop? Really? Because you’ve got a magical club that nobody else on Earth has. Clubs don’t swing; players swing. Clubs are secondary.

I’ve personally spoken to many customers who have told me they feel like THEY’RE ripping me off because of the dedication I show and time I spend getting them the right product.

I guess that’s good. Of course, nobody was suggesting that Todd is anything but a dedicated salesman. I was suggesting that he is completely full of shit when he and his reviewers claim that clubs will fix wayward games. That just isn’t true. It doesn’t matter how the argument is formulated, clubs will not make a player better.

Several have suggested BSG could EASILY put up its prices.

In the world of salesman, this is called “doing us a favor.” Oh sure, Todd could be charging his customers way more to save their games, but he wants to do them a favor, and so he’ll keep his prices low (high!). As a favor. Because it isn’t the job of a salesman to make as much money as he possibly can. No, it’s the job of a salesman to do favors for his customers. Anybody with a mediocre understanding of salesmanship can see right through an absurd argument like this. Anybody.

BSG sells the Ferraris and Lambourgihis of the golf world.

I don’t even know what that means. Clubs are clubs are clubs. Incidentally, if you think that my Toyota Corolla can’t get me to work as well as a Ferrari can, you’re again mistaken.

People who can’t accept that and snipe and whine about BSG simply have no class or tact.

The final retort of people without arguments. What all of this ultimately comes down to isn’t Todd’s unbearable rightness; it’s that we’re assholes for daring to criticize his business, his claims, or the man himself. He doesn’t like being criticized, and he’s going to let us know about it. Whatever. Grow up, be a man, take some medicine, and shut up.

Golf Is Stupid (More Equipment Blog Accolades)

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 other day, after calling the authors of Golf Digest’s Equipment blog fuckwits while at the same time complimenting them, I figured that my one-sided interractions with them would be finished. But lo and behold, I went and snooped around on the blog, and I found this:

Hey, obviously you guys are never going to publish this, because you never publish any comment, but are you ever going to update this blog? Are you even aware of what a blog is?

My guess is no, and my evidence is the month it takes you guys to update the damned thing. The best part of all of this is that the blog proposes to discuss golf equipment technology, and yet you still seem to be unable to utilize the publishing technology at your finger tips. Way to go, geniuses.

GOUGE responds: You are entirely correct, and we offer our sincere apologies. There have been some internal difficulties that we are resolving. We’ll give this another go. This time with more diligence. We greatly appreciate your patience and your cooperation. Thanks.

Gouge was responding to a comment of mine. So more cheers to both Bomb and Gouge, even if they are industry hacks who keep recommending game improvement solutions that involve spending vast sums of money on clubs. This is what I’d call progress. Again, I’d like to stress that I’m not taking credit. I’m just happy to see those two getting it right.

Golf Is Stupid (The Equipment Blog…Again)

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.

Holy shit, the Bomb and Gouge Equipment Blog has started posting comments. From actual readers! And readers that dissent from the opinions of the two authors! Explanation points! Loud Noises!

Although the blog has yet to post any of my comments - “Hey fuckwit, quit being so goddamned stupid,” apparently isn’t Golf Digest worthy - this is progress. I’ve been killing those idiots for awhile now about their lack of understanding about blogging and commenting. Even though their new stance on commenting has nothing to do with my hardwork - calling somebody a fuckwit isn’t easy - I’m still happy to see the change.

So credit where it’s due. To those two fuckwits.

Golf Is Stupid (The Equipment Blog Sucks)

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.

I’ll admit it: the course I play at is a working class place. It’s short, it’s relatively easy, and the players who frequent it aren’t swimming in bags of money. In fact, you’ll see many of the regulars swinging knockoff clubs (available from places like Pinemeadow and from our resident pro).

Knockoff clubs are copies of namebrand clubs, the difference being the price tag. Here’s an example: you can pay full price at $1,299, or you can purchase the knockoff copies of the set for $229. Are they exactly the same clubs? No - the name brand clubs have slightly different steel. Oh, and a sticker around the bottom that says Callaway. Your ball, upon recognizing that sticker, will go farther and straighter and truer and if you believe any of that, I’ve got a bridge in New York City to sell you.

People buy knockoffs because buying the real thing is too goddamned expensive. They want to play the game, they want to have nice looking clubs, but they cannot afford to do both. So they purchase the knockoffs, which are nice enough looking, and go on their merry way. Incidentally, my only hole-in-one? Hit with a knockoff.

But leave it to the dumbasses over at Golf Digest’s Bomb and Gouge: Equipment Blog to condescend to those golfers who purchase knockoffs. Here’s what Mike Stachura, a.k.a. Gouge, writes:

And we’ll get into this some other time, but if you’re making knockoffs or counterfeits you should be put in prison. The cell next to yours should be reserved for those pathetic losers who actually purchase and use illegitimate golf clubs.

Yeah, pathetic losers. Like the old men whom I play golf with, living on coal pensions and Social Security payments. Like the kids trying to pick the game up without their parents being forced to add a mortgage payment. Like me, a couple of years ago, when I was learning the game as a social worker, and thus not able to purchase brand new sets of name-brand clubs.

One of the reasons that golf is very slowly dying are attitudes like concerning who should, and shouldn’t, have access to the game. It’s clear that for Stachura, the only people who ought to be playing should have enough money for the newest, and most expensive, equipment. Well he’s a dumbfuck, the kind of worthless animal who is ruining the great and wonderful game.

Golf Is Stupid (Golf Digest’s Top 100 Golfers)

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.

In some sort of apparent attempt to seem both hip and cool, Golf Digest occaisonally insists upon releasing lists of Top 100 Golfers. Sometimes we get lawyers. Sometimes we get doctors. This month, we get musicians.

The musician that they identify as the best? Kenny G. The jokes actually write themselves. But what of the others on the list? Are they too whitebread? Well…no.

5. Adrian Young - No Doubt’s drummer is apparently an excellent golfer. That’s punk, right?

20. Dweezil Zappa - Frank thrilled that his son is recognized for his golfing skills. And by thrilled, I mean deeply and truly horrified.

T-53. Luther Campbell - seriously, Luke Skyywalker! Of “Oh, me so horny,” fame. If Golf Digest’s regular readership figures this out, they’re dead. Oh, and if any of Luther Campbell’s friends figure this out? Well, he’s dead too.

T-64. Snoop - See above.

T-87. Mike Jones - See above.

T-89. Raekwon - “The Wu-Tang Clan ain’t nothing to fuck with/The Wu-Tang Clan ain’t nothing to fuck with/The Wu-Tang Clan ain’t nothing to fuck with/Seriously, Raekwon’s a hell of a putter.” Wait, what?

97. Natalie Maines - why is this traitor allowed on this list? Whore.

Golf Is Stupid (Tips of the Day)

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

Golf Digest, in its neverending quest to infuriate me, has started up a Tip of the Day portion of its website; or maybe it was always there, and I just missed it. Point is that the magazine’s web editors are pimping it this week. I’ve written it before, and I’ll surely write it again, but…

…well, you’re kidding me, right? A tip per day? How about the same tip, published everyday: go practice. Does anybody get better at anything without steady practice? Anybody at all? It’s great that Tiger Woods is going to show you how to hit a low hook, but you ought to be figuring out how to hit the ball straight every time. It’s a rare day when you’re going to need a low hook.

It’s almost as if golf magazines aren’t interested in your improvement, but rather, your confusion. It’s as if they want you to be struggling to figure the game out, what with the massive amounts of conflicting information that they routinely offer to readers. And maybe, like the Golf Equipment Conundrum, that’s the point. By always telling golfers that there’s an exciting new way to improve your game (”With this new tip!” or “With this new club!”), the magazines stay relevant. But if that’s really the point, then the game’s cynicism is simply off the charts.