I golf. Yeah, about once every five years I golf. I won’t go so far as to say I’m a golfer, that would be wrong. I would probably have to own golf clubs and shoes in order to say that I’m a golfer. Many years ago I actually did own clubs, the shoes might be somewhere in the basement, but they’re long out of style with their metal spikes. The new spikes are these round plastic discs, they don’t seem as long but they look to provide more stabilizing contact points with the ground. Losing my footing on my most recent round wasn’t the problem, losing feeling in my toes was.
My brother, on the other hand, is a golfer. This is good, because if I ever have opportunity to play, I can borrow his clubs, which also means that he and I can’t play together. He also has feet roughly the same size as mine, so shoes are part of the deal when he has very generously set me up like he did last week. These shoes, however, a gift from his father-in-law, we’re not of the ideal proportions. They’re close, so who am I to be the ingrate?
The band was hired to play a private party at the Wente winery in Livermore, a client holiday party put on by D.B. Makely, an investment product wholesaler. D.B. lives the life. He’s a member at Wente, he has a one year old house, with six or seven bedrooms, just minutes from the winery and golf course, where he lives with his lovely and charming wife, Lisa. His generosity and graciousness are clear indicators of his personal success. He’s a funny guy and a pretty decent golfer. (Now he’s a golfer!)
Our trumpeter Jeff is a pretty decent golfer, I think for him it’s part of the whole financial planning and investments career. To me, that looks to be a world largely made up by golfers.
I like to hit balls, I enjoy the design of good golf courses and the meticulous care that the finer ones receive. I like to track the flight of a well-struck tee shot, or follow the high arc of a wedge from 100 yards out. The smooth, even greens, the manicured fairways and sand traps. Chasing shots down, searching for the OB ball, watching them skip off cart paths, that’s not so fun.
Here’s my idea of a good time on the golf course. It would have to happen at a private club, on a moderately warm spring morning. The group would make most sense as a twosome, any more and it would not only bog down, but it might get dangerous. We could start somewhere on the back nine, so as not to hold up any legitimate golfers, who are bound to be playing much faster than my group. Bringing along about two dozen balls each, we’d hit three or four tee shots each (hit till you’re happy), then drop and hit another four from the vicinity of your best lie. That could continue until you got to the green, then you could play maybe one or two, just so putts aren’t bouncing off each other.
This could start on about the 12th or 13th hole, play for a couple of hours, then have lunch. It’s not so much a round of golf as it is a moving driving range. Score? Why?