I’ll Take a Mulligan

My pinpoint accuracy in golf is legendary.

If by “accuracy” you mean my ability to inadvertently hit objects that I am not aiming for but would be pretty impressive to nail if I actually was.

Anyone can hit a tree or a golf cart or even another golfer (sorry about that random middle-age guy circa 1985 in Pound Ridge, N.Y.), but hitting small man-made objects from takes a certain talent. These include:

A divot repair box.

Fairway yardage markers.

Golf cart directional signs.

My specialty, however, is tee markers. These are placed at the start of a hole to show you where you must tee up your ball depending on your ability. Below is an example of the white tees that most courses use to show where the average male golfer (me) should hit from: 
 
Some yards in front of these are usually a set of red markers. These are where the average female golfer tees off from and those are the ones that, roughly once a year, I hit with a low errant drive. As the ball skims the grass, you can almost hear the worms scream in terror.

In 2010, I have been very good about avoiding the ladies’ tee markers. Then I took a three-day golf weekend with some friends the other day.

Oh, I avoided the ladies’ tee markers just fine.

It was the mens’ markers – the ones I hit from – I failed to avoid.

And, as you can tell from the way the man is lined up in the above photo, that is a pretty hard feat to accomplish when the markers are not in front of you, but AT A 90-DEGREE ANGLE TO YOUR SIDE.

Since the tee markers were made of granite and solidly set and our tee box was elevated above the previous hole, this what happened:



I’m not expecting to be invited to next year’s outing.

Since You’ve Been Gone

My Love and I have not been sleeping together lately.

She’s been on the road for work a lot lately. Mexico. Miami. Fort Lauderdale. Yeah, yeah: cry her a river.

She called me today, sounding a little concerned.

“You haven’t been blogging lately,” she said. Her tone of voice suggested she was anticipating some questionable service charges on my credit card.

“It’s a little hard to string together a coherent sentence around here these days,” I said, “for one reason or another.”

REASON NO. 1: My Achin’ Hammie

I was not kidding you folks. Luckily, it wasn’t too bad. I religiously followed the RICE treatment (rest, ice, Corona, extra dry martinis) and it feels almost normal again. Attempting to write with one’s foot propped up on five pillows while the back of your leg melts through every bag of frozen food from the fridge (when and why did I every buy Brussels sprouts?) is hard enough, but then there was …

REASON NO. 2: My Achin’ Stomach

Thing 1 and I returned from Chicago with, oh, let’s leave it at “an intestinal disagreement.” I spent two days on the couch praying for death or the satellite TV equivalent -- a Dane Cook comedy special. Instead, I watched a lot of Little House on the Prairie reruns. Was there a major 19th-century disease that didn’t find its way to Walnut Grove? I witnessed rabies, typhus and the infamous Oleson family chlamydia outbreak.

REASON NO. 3: My Missing Bathroom

If timing a bad leg with an inability to hold down one’s meals didn’t make life challenging enough, then there was the matter of being down one bathroom. We are renovating the master – a project that conveniently started while My Love was on the road and not so conveniently takes place directly above my office.

And, of late, through my office:

If the banging that shook loose two light fixtures (including the one over my desk) weren’t enough, then there was this:

That’s the hole the plumber had to make in the ceiling, also above my desk, to drain the liquid from the hot water line puncture created by the flooring guys.

On the upside, I think breathing in all the sawdust and drywall powder help clog my internal plumbing.

“And that’s why I haven’t been blogging lately,” I said. “So today, I said ‘screw it’ and played golf.”

“How’d you do?”

“On one hole, it took me four strokes to get out of a single sand trap. It was the most productive day I’ve had in two weeks.”

Bear with Me

Two weeks back, some friends and I took a golf weekend in the hills of northern New Jersey.

I played my three best rounds of the entire year and was the big winner, collecting $2.25 from my friends in our friendly waging.

I lost only 10 golf balls and never my temper.

The beverage cart managed to find me every four or five holes. Mmm, frosty Yuengling on the links.

And not only did I make this putt ...

... but also the 300-pound black bear crossing the fairway behind me didn't eat my sorry, saddle-shoed ass.