Golf Looks Way Easier on Television

I would rather get a root canal then watch the US Open or the Masters, which is saying a lot since I'm petrified of the dentist. As a football fanatic, golf in comparison seems just plain uneventful. Its a group of typically wealthy older men wearing loud checkerboard pants with ostentatious sweater vests getting carted around acres of pretty scenery. They don't even have to do any of their own leg work! They have a young kid (or a homeless man if you're Happy Gilmore) lugging around a golf bag that usually weighs more then they do. After a "long days" work, the winner of the US Open last year took home a check for $1,260,000. Even the person is 60th place took 17,000! All of this money, to get a small white ball in a small round hole.

At least in football it seems like those players earn their multi-million dollar salaries. Contact, violence, fumbles, fancy thoroughly thought out plays, fights; its exciting to watch. No wonder America, the most desensitized nation in the world, is the only country to have this brutally addicting game. Nonetheless, I plop myself on the couch every Sunday to watch grown men rip through running backs and linebackers try to rip off a quarterback's cranium. Despite the barbarian nature behind the sport at least it seems like there's some skill involved. Whether it be Ladainian Tomlinson dancing his way to a first down or Hakeen Nicks makes a one-handed catch through double coverage in the end zone, this is a sport I can appreciate.

My father, being a sports fan in general, loves golf. He wakes up at 5 am on a Saturday in 30 degree weather (wearing shorts) to enjoy this so called game. So one Monday morning (at 8 not 5 thank God), he extended the invitation to play 18 holes with him at the Baiting Hollow Country Club, and by play he meant chauffeur. So it was either drive a golf cart around and hit a few balls or hang out with the cleaning lady that was coming that morning. Even though I'm not the game's biggest fan, I dislike the smell of ammonia even more.

We get to the club and order some breakfast. I got an egg white omelet with peppers, onions, and swiss cheese and my dad got a tower of french toast sticks that looked like they should model in a food magazine, we were off to the driving range to warm up. We stretched and I watched him hit a few balls. Psh simple. I get up there, pretend I'm sitting on a bar stool as my father so hysterically says I should know how to do, straighten my left arm and bend my right. I wind up and swing. Whoosh! I completely miss the ball...again and again and again. By the 10th try I think I must have sprained a muscle in my ribs and a blister is taking over the bottom half of my palm. Discouraged, I get back into the cart.

Golf looks way easier on television.

So on to the first hole we go. My dad makes me stop at what look like metal plates in the ground that have numbers engraved in them. As he using his feet to measure the distance between his ball and those plates, he spits out mental math like a savant. He checks where the hole is on the guide in the cart and carefully chooses his weapon. As we sail over to the green, I get out in an attempt to putt. This has to be easier than the driving range I think to myself; I'm a pro at mini golf. Well there are no clowns heads or secret passages here. Just getting a small white ball into a small round hole, seems easy enough. Guess again.

Golf is a game of opposites. If you try to lift the ball up in the air, it will line drive. If you pull your club back too far to putt and stop short to avoid it catapulting across the green, it will hop over the hole and down the ruff like its desperately running away from you. It's not a game of brute force and strength. It's a game of patience and finesse.  In this game you cant plow down a field simply because you ate more Yodell's and weigh more then the next guy. Its about strategy and delicacy, which is harder to translate through a TV screen than spin moves and 80-yard passes.

At the 14th hole, my father found himself in the sandpit which was positioned slightly underneath the putting green with the hole being on the opposite end. He made his way through the dwarfed desert, multitude of clubs in hand and took his shot. I watched the ball pop up out of the sandpit like a pop-fly at a baseball game, bounce onto the green and slowly roll right into the hole. I never saw that on TV and that was one of the few holes he had gotten a birdie (one stroke below the number of strokes allowed to complete a hole). At the end of the day, he shot a 79, the first time he got below 80 on that course, which I now understand is really difficult to do for the average human being.

Now I'm not saying I'm going to become the next Michelle Wie, but now when the Masters is on the television I won't storm out of the room. I can now watch it through different eyes, ones that have failed miserably at a game I never took the time to understand. I mean I would still choose to watch Justin Tuck flatten Tony Romo like a tortilla, but now I can root for Phil Michelson not just because my dad tells me to. Plus, I found a new way to enjoy a beautiful fall day even if I do wake up the next morning feeling like I've been kicked in the ribs by a donkey.