Golf Wimps

It was a beautiful day today. When I went to do some Christmas shopping, I had to go passed two different golf courses. It was a lovely day but it was chilly. Winter is starting to settle in and it was in the low 40s with wind but blue skies and sunshine.

There were several golfers on the golf courses, all bundled up and riding around in carts and all I could think was, "Oh, you pussies."

Why might I think that, you might ask? Because I was remembering the way we played golf back in the Wild West.

We called it Pasture Golf. There wasn't all this nice pretty grass in the putting greens and fairways. There weren't lovely pretty pins marking each hole. Oh no. There weren't nice little carts with GPS to haul people around.

First, if you wanted to get from one hole to the other, you either walked or rode a horse. That's ride, no carts, but a horse. And you really only needed three clubs: a wood, a putter, and an iron of your choice. Trust me on this. Instead of hauling our entire golf bag, we'd put clubs in a quiver and strap it to the horse. A saddle bag was on the other side was filled with balls, beers, bullets, and whiskey. Tees really didn't make any difference. This was Wild West Golf. And you needed a gun to shoot rattle snakes.

The entire course was the "rough." It was sagebrush and dirt. Or wheat. And piles of sheep, horse or cow shit... EVERYWHERE. There weren't pretty little ponds to lose a ball. There were creeks or a stream. Or a coolie. Or a gumbo butte (think uber muddy hill). Or a place that was inhabited with rattlesnakes in their dens- here's where you took a mulligan. Trust me on this. And you automatically got a 5 stroke penalty if you hit animals: cows, sheep or horses.

There were somewhere between 9 and 15 holes. Everyone was too drunk to play a full 18. You had to play with someone who help set up the course or you could get lost. And there were bandannas that marked the general area where a hole might be. Maybe. It was 'somewhere over there'. And if you played enough you could bogey, birdie, and eagle. And some of the cattlemen I knew were some seriously good (if not demented) Pasture Golfers.

I played Pasture Golf a few times and it was good times. I don't think I ever got through nine holes because by the time I was drinking and climbing up and down from a horse, I was not in any condition to finish.

I've played golf on a lovey PGA course here in Civilization about 10 years ago and it made me a nervous wreck. It didn't help that I had smucked the golf pro with a club not once, but twice, when taking lessons so I was a basketcase at the thought of doing it again. Though now, with hind sight, I wished I had smacked CanadianSam a few times since my golfing was entirely his fault.

As a matter of fact, the whole "Golf Pussies" was really directed at him. He thought he was so great and wonderful on the golf course and always made such a big deal of it and I thought how much he would have dismally failed at pasture golf because he could never have seen the fun in such a 'sport.' He took it way too seriously. Pasture golf is strictly for fun and not for the faint of heart. When a game gets called on account of snake bite or birthing a calve... well, come on, Tiger Woods doesn't have to worry about that shit. Wonder if he could cut it?

So no offense intended to golfers who read... unless it's CanadanSam, of course.

Wonder where I left that 9 iron,
Maggie Mae