Scent of a Liar An “unsanctioned” round is a round you don’t want anyone outside of your golf friends to know about. These are the rounds where a perfect shot on a par 3 heading towards the flag is met with “Don’t go in!” Rounds during real work hours require sunscreen, shower- ing with the same products as at home, work clothes put back on and laundry slid into the hamper over the weekend (laundered into the laundry, if you will), and all of this must be done with precision. One Friday afternoon, as I strolled in smelling vaguely of body wash and wearing the same clothes I wore when I left that morning, my wife asked, “How was work?” I confidently began my spiel; all the while my golf glove was dangling just so from the back pocket of my “casual Friday” khakis. She let me go on for a while before calling me out for being the horrible golf thief that I am.
THE OBLIVIOUS TOURIST A colleague and I played Carnoustie and were paired with a father-son tandem from California that we didn’t know. We each had caddies – my colleague had a veteran, and mine was a guy in his late teens. The round was what you might hope for in Scotland – a mixture of sun, wind and rain, and an exhilarating walk around a legendary course – except the California tandem was what you would expect from “Angry Americans.” They complained the entire round about the changing weather, the reads their caddies made, the wind, the yardages – everything. When we finished, the veteran caddie waited until the California guys walked away grumbling, then asked us if we had time for a drink. We went across the street to the Carnoustie “clubhouse,” and as we entered, we saw the veteran caddie looking at us from over the bar in the form of an oil painting. Turns out he was the club captain and had been a rules official at the previous Masters. We drank many pints, heard many stories and laughed about what our California pair missed out on.
TURNING A FRIENDLY MATCH CUTTHROAT
Marking Decks An old tradition at some clubs is to draw cards from a deck at the turn, and low card buys the drinks. Members at one club noticed a few of its old-timers seemed to have remarkable luck in never drawing a bad card. This little marvel went on for years until one member had had enough. While examining the deck, he discovered barely visible pencil marks on the back side of some of the picture cards. The deck was corrupt, and the offenders busted.
For nearly a week my golf trip to Ireland with a close friend had been everything we could have hoped: a half-empty Aer Lingus flight to Shannon Airport; white- knuckle car rides on the left side of narrow, winding roads; pints of Guinness post-round; nights at an old- world bed and breakfast; and golf on some of the most beautiful links in the world. My buddy and I had played a weeklong casual match. Remarkably, we were all square as we began the week’s final round on the most spectacu- lar weather day of the trip. Early on my friend missed a short putt to win the hole and had barely 15 inches for the half, a length we had given each other all week. Before I could concede, he raked it away, and in a moment of competitive pettiness, I said, “I didn’t give you that.” We carped a bit on the walk to the next tee. Then, hard feel- ings kept us from speaking again until the 17th green, when, sensing the end of our Irish adventure, I took in the panoramic views of the Atlantic Ocean, snapped to my senses and apologised. We laughed at the ridiculous- ness of the whole thing as we soaked in one last hole.
MISLEADING THE WIFE
heard from a friend that her “Jim comes home after four hours” and confronted the husband. The deceitful d!#k didn’t miss a beat in his reply: “Right, Jim only plays half-rounds – ya know, 18 holes.”
For the first decade of a marriage a husband had his nongolfing wife convinced that golf was an eight-hour game, plus an hour or two here and there for drinks and social time with the fellas. Inevitably, the wife
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