Waiting for the faster group behind to play through

I was recently invited to play at Des Moines Golf and Country Club by my neighbor down the street. It was over the July 4th holiday, and I expected a crowded course, but rain kept everyone but the most serious golfers away. I played with JD, and we invited two other friends to join us, and the round was memorable for this.

A twosome came up to us on what had been an empty course, and we let them pass with a smile and wave. They thanked us, and played on with little delay, bothering us not at all. This little interaction speaks volumes about golf etiquette and why I’m so passionate about golf. Everyone there understood the rules and the conventions of play -the faster group is allowed to play through. When playing through, you understand that it’s a gift, and you play briskly and thank the group you’re playing through.

This is all taught, and universally understood. If only the world at large played in this way. It used to be that everyone went to the same schools and had a common civic culture that emphasized the importance of public life of the citizen. Then things became atomized and it’s difficult to find the same levels of socialization. Today, the country is split along socioeconomic class lines that make collective action for the public good difficult or in some cases impossible.

Life really is no different from golf -for a society to function well, there have to be not only laws but unwritten rules.

Addendum:

I am finally getting the Pete Dye greens. Where old line courses like Wakonda’s will have one general slope split by a secondary slope to the terrain, Dye placed topography creating miniature maps of mesas, plateaus, lowlands, and valleys so that two changes in slope will occur not within 30 feet which is typical of most courses, but within 5 to ten feet. He also emphasized the artificial organic -think avant garde white plastic furniture from the late sixties. Wakonda is art deco like the Chrysler building, while Des Moines Golf and CC’s Pete Dye layout is decidedly modernist like 2 Columbus Circle before it’s renovation.

Nothing wrong with it. The important thing was, after this epiphany, my putting improved because I looked for the giant beach ball buried in the green above the buried giant banana.

Speaking of which, putting has become the center focus of my efforts this summer, and it is beginning to pay off. I started a miserable 9 holes earlier today at Wakonda, going 10 over through the first four holes, and finished the latter 5 holes at 2 over after I turned on the putting. The key today was emphasizing the putting stroke as a stroke, with putting as a process, and focusing on seeing the line.

Golf reveals its egalitarian nature in the handicapping system. I played RG, a 16 handicapper who defeated me during my run at the cup several years ago in a memorable match that taught me a lot about myself. He is an excellent player and can spin off some marvelous golf shots that exceed the level suggested by his handicap. Golf allows such unequal competitors to play on a level field with the handicap system. He gave me 5 strokes which were instrumental in keeping the match even. Through 16 holes, we were level, after RG came back from a 3 shot deficit. We were playing in a thunderstorm, barely able to see the shot beyond 20 feet. I was further handicapped by having to wear sunglasses which were prescription sunglasses. Without it, I was basically blind, but due to the waning cloudy light, the ball and target were dark. I do think that the sensory deprivation allowed me to swing better.

I was able to line up, square, square, square and swing with my head still. This allowed me to make a natural bogey, net par with a concession, followed up by a ball on green on the final hole with RG’s unfortunately lost into dark woods. This match was very close, and could only have been so with accurate handicaps.

It makes me wonder why we this concept works in golf but not in life at large. It’s written in the constitution that All Men Are Created Equal, but this is not true, is it?

The first true spring day arrived with temperatures in the high seventies and low eighties, and everyone else got the same idea that I did. Wakonda Club’s greenskeeper, Mr. John Temme, did something magical last fall and the results are apparent. After being covered in a blanket of 3 to 5 feet drifts as recently as two weeks ago, the greens and fairways emerged and almost instantly greened. The turf is near perfect despite it being so early in the season and everything is green. The greens haven’t been rolled to Augusta speed yet, but challenging nevertheless. It’s the fairways though that have finally come to fruition, nearly two years after the club pressed a giant reset button on the whole course and resurfaced the whole course from tee to green. Last year, the greens came into full bloom, but it is this year that the fairways are back to true form. It is fully 3 years since the project was proposed and now we are enjoying some of the best conditions I have ever played on so early in the season.

I wandered into the Lower Grill and ran into T who invited me into his group. I grabbed an Arnold Palmer and marched out and met his playing partner K and we marched along, a happy company. Blogging and operating has made me a social retard because I can no longer make polite small talk.

Me: So K, do you think any differently about Tiger when your wife is not around?

K: You have a way of asking socially awkward questions to complete strangers.

Me: It’s been stewing in my mind for a while.

K, smiling: I think that I admire him for his talents and achievements on the golf course.

Me -looking for ball: Have you ever seen those bears in the Russian circus? They get that way from conditioning -from a life of negative and positive reinforcement from the time they were cubs. I think Tiger’s pathologies only mirror the pathologies in his development. I question the place from where his golf comes from…

Let’s say we have a whole professional tour based on people who love to balance on a ball and they practice and compete out of joy of walking around on that ball, and all of a sudden this bear comes in to compete. He takes all the prizes.

From this whole sad season, it’s become clear to me that Tiger is not unlike this trained circus bear who must be a bit sad and lost when he’s not walking on his giant ball. For Tiger, golf is what he does well. Come two weeks, and we’ll see him take the trophy. I’m rooting for it.

So I shoot a 48, not too bad for a peripatetic round of a triple, bunch of bogies, and three long putts for birdie missed by a hair, missing comebackers through carelessness. It was too fun an evening to care. That is probably why I am a much better surgeon than I am a golfer.

This made the rounds a few weeks ago, including a nice article on The New Yorker. Watching it, I had to smile. As a Harvard Alum, I can tell you there is no amount of glee at 86 Brattle Street that can match this gleeful video. You either get it or you don’t. They want to select for an even creamier crème de la crème. This goes beyond being able to understand and appreciate pink polo shirts, munching on pistachios, grapes, and brie with a Gewurztraminer, or liking to sing show tunes in the shower while being completely heterosexual.

If you don’t get it, you will snigger at this video and apply to Princeton. If you really don’t get it, you’ll stop watching when the singing starts and you’ll apply to a Big Ten School. If you get it, but don’t get in, you’ll be perfectly happy at Amherst. And so on.

This inspires me to hark back to college, to the time when I hijacked the microphone at Naples Pizza in New Haven and proclaimed, “Yale Sucks!” And now, we have proof.

The Greatest American

As a middle school student, we were assigned Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal. I laughed my guts out, but soon realized that many were appalled by the idea that Irish babies should be used to feed the poor. As I grew up, I read Vonnegut with the avidity that presaged the kind of fandom that we see kids have nowadays for video games, and for it, I was a bit of an outsider. The word I learned in medical school was concrete -most of the world is concrete. They can process black and white, but are blind to shades of gray. A pie in the face is funny, but a pie made of Irish babies, not so much.

You can see this in the audience for comedy -in the 90′s, it was fans of Leno versus Letterman (and now  O’Brien), Jeff Foxworthy versus Jerry Seinfeld, and Britney Spears versus Lady Gaga. It’s the divide that separates America into Walmart and Target. There are people who take Sarah Palin seriously and those who see a cosmic joke. It is with utmost seriousness that I propose a new DSM personality disorder -the Irony Deficit Disorder or IDD.

IDD is marked by a lack of curiosity of the world beyond the experience offered by life within earshot and immediate view. People with IDD have limited affect and rarely express themselves with their hands. They hew to orthodoxy and are great believers of world views constructed by dead people. They are suspicious of the new and generally feel uncomfortable around people who don’t share their background. IDD is found across the political and socioeconomic spectrum. People with IDD are easily offended. They will likely be offended by this piece. These people find change distressful and uncomfortable. At first, new things are regarded with disdain and suspicion, and the ethical and moral dimensions are weighed from the viewpoint of their particular flavor of orthodoxy. When change threatens to intrude, they usually have been able to withdraw from it and the world, but not anymore. The internet, which back in the halcyon days of the nineties offered a utopian view of world connectedness -a New World Order, functions as both the irritant and the balm to those with IDD.

Every country now has its native Taliban fighting the bare-legged, ochre-skinned, breast implanted, spangly-pole dancing march to progress. It is the loss of tribe, social norms, and social status to barbarian invaders talking, looking, and thinking differently and dictating change while secretly sneering at the rubes, or so it seems to the bitter IDD person. They look at their internet in shock and awe – How can it be not wrong for a man to kiss a man and marry a man? How can it be not wrong for a white girl to kiss a black man? Why are they trying to get me to eat that horrible looking food? Why do I have to look at that person dressed that way? Why are those signs not in my native language? Why do I have to pronounce that name the way they want to? How can it be not wrong to assert that America is a country whose only mention of God in the Constitution is in the separation of church and state? Their fears are straightforward -They are trying to change my core values and by extension, denigrate them.

Now, having IDD in no way handicaps that individual. These people buy Toyotas and GM cars, use Windows, and wear red Christmas sweaters embroidered with reindeer. They pay taxes and abide the law. In fact, they are the majority, and their concerns have to be respected up to the point where someone else’s rights are infringed. Those of us endowed with the third eye of irony and rationalism have a difficult position because we will always be in the minority and vulnerable (see Qin Dynasty -burying of the scholars and burning of the books, Spanish Inquisition, Nazi Gleichshaltung, McCarthy Hearings, the Cultural Revolution, the Gulag, Taliban Kabul Soccer Stadium activities, the Iranian Election of 2009, The Glen Beck Show). A candle is mostly wax with a fine evanescent flame, easily blown out.

The bright lights of our world have to make a stand. Rather than retreat to Starbucks to grope out discontented tweets for a limited audience, we have to reach out and actively defend ourselves and our civilization which is the Modern Civilization. Rather than sneer behind our Kindle’s, we have to speak clearly for our Constitution and rule of law. We have to make our votes count and work with our like minded brethren in the opposing camp to come to rationale, workable solutions rather than digging trenches festooned with figures hung in effigy. The rational center must hold true to the convictions of Franklin, Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, and Adams.

You now have the tee box.

If Tiger behaved this way off the course, who knows what guided his behavior on the course in relation to golf. You can obey the law out of fear of punishment or out of internal ethics and morality. Tiger is no golfist, but revealed to be the golfing equivalent of Deep Blue, the chess playing supercomputer, a soul-less automaton. The events of the past several weeks shows that Tiger has no moral compass, and excels at this great game for entirely banal reasons of conditioning and training from childhood. By this measure, the average golfer who takes stroke and distance for going out of bounds even when playing by himself is a greater custodion of the sport than Tiger.

The Lover

Stress tests are used to determine the quality of things. In medicine, we have a stress test that gives us an idea how strong a heart is. In auto manufacturing, there is the crash test. In professional golf, we now have the sex scandal.

The sex scandal is a stress test most often seen in the realm of politics. But the peccadilloes of a politician became passe after ten solid years going with the tapping of shoes in airport bathrooms sandwiched between Clinton and Berlusconi. This is a stress test that reveals dimensions to Tiger that we’ve never seen before.

Tiger married Elin, a beautiful woman, but his aloofness and occasional public displays -hugging wife/children after win, revealed little. The more cynical among us could only wonder -was this all scripted? There are plenty of wealthy men with exquisite trophy wives who are revealed to have predilections across the sexual spectrum -at least in movies and novels.

So what did the past week reveal. If we are to believe the rumors, Tiger likes women with a certain body type -athletic, muscular legs, size B cups, and serious lips. We also find that Tiger has a misunderstanding about the call history function and contacts program on his cell phone. The US Magazine’s voice mail audio reveals that the purported Tiger is worried that his wife is checking his phone call history and requests the woman that he is calling remove her name from her phone number. The problem is that names are not tagged with phone numbers, but do show up in call histories with names when said names are in the contacts directory. Meaning Tiger kept only one cell phone.

What does this reveal? It confirms Tiger’s legendary miserliness or naivete. Billionaires with mistresses usually keep separate cell phones for booty calls and keep it in the golf bag or with a trusted assistant like Stevie. They keep contacts for Ginger, Misty, and Nicki, under Frank, Otto, and Rocco.

If the rumors that he was assaulted with a golf club are true, that means that he took his punishment like a golfer who hits the ball out of bounds. I frankly think he was running for his life after being hit on the head with Elin slamming the club into the back window as he drove out of the garage. Passing out, he hits tree and hydrant.

But what does all of this say about us? Why all the schadenfreude? Why all the venom? First, there is the issue that if there was an assault, there was a felony, and to hide behind gates and walls of privilege stinks to a public that is economically stressed. Refusing the request of the FHP for an interview and all the second hand communication through blogs and lawyers is a poor substitute for a visit to our society’s confessor, Larry King. The second is our need to destroy heroes, crucify them, worship them when they’re dead but kick them when alive. And finally, the third is the need for men to vocally disown this and for women to narrow their eyes and purse their lips. I for one completely do not condone any of this. The cell phone stuff was given for informational purposes only.

As I have written previously on this blog, the half life of human desire is about 6 months. That romantic love, that dopamine rush of courtship which is pretty much the same reaction people get on crack, dissipates and we bond, replacing dopamine with oxytocin. Children help this bond. Ultimately, the strength of the bond is related to the strength of character of the parties involved. We should not be rubbernecking this terrible crash site, but rather focus on our own game. Keep your head still and your feet on the ground.

It goes without saying, I love my wife very, very much. Bad Tiger, Baaaad Tiger.

Three Wrongs Make a Wrong

In confronting the disaster of 9/11/2001, we made three mistakes which in hindsight have left us with a war that will not end until the apocalyptic scenarios of three religions play out to the satisfaction of each creeds’ fanatics. The first mistake was framing the terrorist strike not as a criminal act but as the opening shots of a war. The second mistake was squandering the capital of sympathy and solidarity with many nations and exchanging it for the false security of a coalition of the willing all under the banner of “you are either with us or with them.” The third, and gravest error, was falling into the trap of accepting the terrorists’ world view -that we are in a final war of religions, a crusade for us and a jihad for them. 9/11 changed the world, and we will have to face the consequences of our decisions for generations.

9/11 was unprecedented as a criminal act perpetrated on the world’s largest stage. It was well executed, but the use of suicidal airplane attacks is not an original one. Tom Clancy in 1994 turned a 747 into a kamikaze that was piloted into a Joint Session of Congress. Despite the carnage on 9/11, it was a criminal act originating from a cell of religious fanatics who claim to speak for all Muslims and not the actions of a nation state. The first action should have been coordinating the FBI, CIA, along with the Justice and State department in dealing with this as a purely criminal matter -international in scope, but ultimately something to be tried in Federal court.

By declaring it an act of war, it elevated the criminals to nation-statehood. Because these terrorists could not be easily found, actual nation states (Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan) were attacked. Over a trillion dollars were spent when bribes, a handful of car bombs, well-aimed 50 caliber rounds, and a six pack of cruise missiles could have done the job. We didn’t need to conquer Baghdad to hand it to the Iranians. Afghanistan could have been cleared out and righted years ago before we mortgaged our moral capital. We are now left with a region of misbehaving puppets -ours versus Iran’s. The only ones left acting as their own agents with their mission and philosophy intact are the same people who attacked us.

The second mistake was taking the view that the world was black and white when it has always been shades of gray. Simpletons, religious fanatics, and transistors cleave to binary logic. At the time of the tragedy, nations almost universally joined in offering sympathy and condemnation of the crime. It was a crisis which offered many opportunities for positive action, creative diplomacy, and lasting peace. It was an opportunity which fatefully was lost in the rush for vengeance. The position that you are either with us or with the terrorists was frankly insulting to our friends who wanted to offer advice and encourage discussion and planning. By isolating us and watching us spend hundreds of billions in weaponry and incalculable costs in precious lives, sow hatred towards ourselves for generations to come, and tear ourselves apart socially and politically, all from the comfort of some cave (likely with satellite TV, internet, an espresso machine, and a Nintendo Wii), they have been winning this war. They have been winning by just surviving and waiting. Look at our country and think where it could be if instead of a trillion dollars conquering Babylon, we pushed a billion here and a billion there to get some nice targets. You don’t hunt turkey by making a lot of noise, and by blundering into Iraq and Afghanistan, we have flushed the turkey out of the kill zone.

The third and final mistake has implications for the survival of the species. All three Abrahamic religions pine for an end to this life that we have in stewardship of this unique and precious planet, to trade it all in for paradise explained variously as an eternal family reunion of those who didn’t go to hell, an eternal orgy with virgin girls for those righteously martyred, or an eternal time share in Boca. All three claim with absolute certitude that they are right and the others are wrong. All three have access to nuclear weapons. The moment that our war was declared a crusade, the implications of this struggle went from a search for perps to take back to Foley Square in lower Manhattan to a religious struggle of apocalyptic proportions. Our foreign policy became informed not by diplomacy and political history but the Book of John. This is not a little thing as people are constantly looking for signs on all sides. Where is the Mahdi/Moshiach/Messiah returned? Who is the anti-Christ? Who is the Whore of Babble-On? Everyone who has read Sun Tzu knows that you want to first set the battlefield. What should have been the greatest episode of Law and Order is grinding on as an ersatz prequel to Left Behind. So not Ancient Art of War!

But this is what we have begotten. Prosperity makes us soft, coarse, and ill-educated. I had the fortunate circumstances of private school education from high school to graduate school, and I met many very bright people, but also had to get on with many not so bright legacies who were allowed to pass and get the same degree with relative ease that I had to struggle mightily to get even the opportunity to get, being an immigrant. These idiot children of the wealthy, famous, powerful, or accomplished have to keep up the appearance of doing something important to fill that void left by daddy/mommy. They have invaded politics in a way to makes this decade the new Gilded Age. They are joined by equally uneducated not as well off individuals who enter politics to push their parochial, moral agendas whether on the right and left. This union of the empty suits is a root cause of the sclerosis in our politics.

But particularly loathsome to me are those who yammer about family values as they fellate strangers in airport bathrooms, who espouse hatred for foreigners, minorities, or gay people, who cynically whip up the anger and support of poor people who they view with contempt and whose interests they betray in every corporate dollar they take from their lobbyist, whom, it seems from the news, are perfectly happy giving away money while on their backs. Who is the whore?

I believe in fiscal conservatism in times of prosperity. I believe in intensive care and active resuscitation when the country is in extremis and about to go financially flat line. I believe that war should be fought violently and totally, but only as a last resort, and not in creating a Maginot line “over there” built with the bodies of our brave men and women. I believe in the goodness of people and that religion has its place in the heart and actions of believers and not as an instrument of tyranny for a theocratic fascist state.

I believe that 9/11 represents an impenetrable glass wall that we return every day to look back through to a happier time, to see ourselves innocent of Abu Gharib, of a broken Iraqi nation, of a divided America, of our abandonment of rights that extend back to the Magna Carta, and most of all to see those still alive on 9/10/2001. I fear the solution lies in declaring the determination to blot out anyone and their neighbor who would strike the homeland and establishing this as our doctrine, as we leave the poor people of Iraq and Afghanistan to their fate. The alternative solution, to act in diplomacy what we have already done in war, by treating these Barbary Pirates as a nation state and sit at a table to discuss options other than annihilation is a fool’s dream that needs a generation to pass. The maintenance of mutual annihilation (and peace) became another just another government process during the cold war after the dangerous early decades. Like the Klingons say, “Only Nixon could go to China.”

regarding Cheney’s recent publicity campaign challenging the current sitting Presidents judgement and policies:

I think this is a campaign to shape public opinion, concentrate and shore up the base, to preempt some series of possible revelations coming down the pike. This is probably because they have nothing on Pres. Obama or his administration except for randoms bits. The revelation will do nothing less than result in the further marginalization of the GOP with a breakoff group of holdover moderates creating the seeds of viable opposition which we need in a democracy.

I used to track chatter on a great 9/11 conspiracy, and a good friend even divested in western civilization by selling out 401k’s, IRA’s, properties in San Francisco in 2002-2003 and put all of his money in oil and gold -now has built a beautiful house off the grid on a lake filled with trout in the pacific northwest -all based on the belief that there was a conspiracy.

I see now with Cheney’s ranting and the GOP’s loss that rather than conspiracy, it was opportunism and cronyism a la Teapot Dome. I used to vote GOP, was a big fan of Bush, Sr, but dropped out and voted for Gore in 2000 based on the treatment of McCain by GWB’s team and their appeal to the darker side of our natures. It’s the flight of moderates like me that have left the GOP in its current state.

We can’t print money fast enough to pay for this mess. It will be the duty of every citizen to hold, even cling, to the principles that created this country because we’re in for a long haul. Our minds aren’t geared to a ten year timeline but to the moods of our gut -and if we’re sated and typing away at the keyboard, it can’t be that bad, could it? Could it? &”(/.) -Mike Park

We’re in for interesting times.