Category Archives: golf culture

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A Surfeit of Casual Water and Relief

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The vexing thing of late has been the torrential rain which occurs almost exlusively at night resulting in us in Iowa waking to flooded roads and basements. Some point to global warning, others to a ten year sunspot cycle. I think it’s life imitating golf -nature gives you the conditions and you play through without complaint.

These collections of casual water remind us how important it is to have balance -too much water, too little water both cause problems. Golf’s rules allow you to move the ball out of casual water, but no closer to the hole. In sand, I believe the rule is you can move the ball to relieve but no closer or take a one stroke penalty and get out of the bunker but no closer which means you can walk it back to your pitch length and get it on the green and move on with life, medicine taken. And know it, the grounds crew will repair the damage.

But can we expect such equanimity in life? We’ve had a bunch of water trouble in Iowa and some areas had turned down Federal insurance because of politics, now only to rue that decision. No one likes a bailout, financial or actual, but I believe civilized society mandates relief from casual water in real life as well. We get relief at Wakonda because of the rules of golf and because of the dues we pay. Our taxes are merely dues that we pay to be members of the society at large.

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The Deacon of the Turf

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This handsome gentleman is John Temme, the Grounds Superintendent at Wakonda Club. He is up before dawn every day grooming the course into a quality that I have not seen matched often in my golf travels. It is with his leave that I can play sunrise golf before his crew get to the holes. He has a golfer’s mind with regard to maintenance which really lets the course be front and center for the player. Despite heavy play, for example, the greens are still amazing (please repair ball marks even on away courses). He maintains a great blog: http://wakondagrounds.blogspot.com which I think is of interest to anyone who maintains a lawn -a great big 40 acre lawn.

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The Womp Rat: Wakonda Club No. 14

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“Like targeting womp rats back home,” or so the quote goes from Star Wars. Luke Skywalker was referring to the ease with which he he used to vaporize small desert rats, intimating that the small exhaust port on the Death Star was no big deal. At Wakonda, we have our womp rat. Actually, it’s a heavily defended thermal exhaust port.

The fourteenth hole at Wakonda is a Rorshach test of a golfer’s mindset. From the blues, the hole is about 165 to the middle of the green. The prevailing winds are left to right. The problem is the three foot differential between the upper and lower tiers. Also, there is about a two foot drop over a thirty feet length going from back to front. This means that balls tend to roll right and off the green.

The pin position shown is front left. Depending on the mood of the greenskeeper and the pro, the pin can be placed right next to the precipice. This translates into a challenging two putt from below the cup. Anywhere else and a three putt bogey is a relief. In terms of score, this little bantam of a hole behaves like a par four or five, leaving grown men with tears.

Success on this hole requires command of your swing and fearless putting. Ideally, you want to hit into the fringe up front with a draw and roll onto the green below the hole. My ball ended up with a fade, landing hard in the center of the green, on the incline, which squirted the ball hard right and off the green. My chip landed short, sending my ball rolling back to the right fringe. A long putt failed the hill climb and three more putts later, a 6 was my reward.

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Mid-summer night’s ice cream

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Ice cream has always been an mystery and it was solved by my cub scout G who learned it during a recent mosquito infested camp. It’s simplicity is as wonderful as the the ice cream which is perfect. Made with whole milk, it is basically a vanilla gelato, tasting less fatty but just as good as the thick buttery premium ice creams. That it’s homemade adds flavor notes that can only be summed by by G -“It has a better taste than processed because it’s made by a human.”

It just takes a large plastic bag (or large Zip-loc) and a sandwich sized Zip-Loc bag. Into the sandwich sized Zip-Loc goes a cup or two of whole milk with a tablespoon of sugar for each cup, and a half teaspoon of vanilla extract. Seal the bag and mix the ingredients.

Into the larger Zip-Loc or plastic sack, you place lots of ice, a cup of salt, and a cup of water. You put the small bag of milk inside and you shake the bag holding up sides of the bag. After ten minutes -voila -the best ice cream you’ve ever had!

Everything I’ve tried this summer in terms of cooking which has been mysterious to me is in fact amazingly simple. This lets you make just enough ice cream for about 3 people, a perfect dessert.

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Golf manners, and a bit about DMGCC’s Pete Dye greens

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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.

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The Rabbit and the Dog -a drill to teach a newbie putting skills

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Rabbits about to run for the hole

The hard part about teaching putting to a child who thinks he already knows putting is the fact the child remembers every crazy putt he drained by drilling the ball straight at the hole. So it was with a bit of excitement that I tried out this drill which may or may not be original. I took one ball -the rabbit, and tapped it out about a foot away from a second ball, the dog, and I told my son, G, to go and chase the rabbit. To get half credit, the dog had to end up within a club head of the rabbit. It took only a few minutes before he was hitting most of the 3 footers, and started making a few of the 5 and 10 footers. The best part was when he began to get bored with the drill, I sent the rabbit into the hole from 8 foot away, and he chased it in with his putt!

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Sunrise Golf

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For several years now I have been asking the club to allow me to play golf at daybreak. It would allow me to get in 9 holes from a cart in way under an hour, 35 minutes was a recent time. This year, sunrise golf has been instituted and it is a roaring success.

Speed golf off a cart is like speed chess, it seems like the same game but different factors come to the fore. first there is the lack of warmup – you knock it down the fairway and play it as it lies. The other is that it simplifies your mental prep – playing alone and fast means I have to find the ball so I become very good at tracking and finding balls but foremost, I try to keep it in the fairway. I count every stroke but will allow a free drop if I never saw the ball in flight -I figure a playing partner if one had been present would have tracked it. The course is mine and that is the most important thing. It’s meditative and calming to be alone in all that splendor.

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Golf Transparency -the egalitarianism of golf

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My GHIN number update came back, and my handicap index is 18.4, with a course handicap of 21 for Wakonda. I have been playing poorly, but I always do better in competition. Golf takes on a different, truer aspect when its played in formal competition. Yesterday evening, I played in the Wakonda Match Play Championship, handicapped flight.

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?

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Apple passes Microsoft in stock valuation

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This must break some sort of apocalyptic seal presaging the end times. Apple has passed Microsoft in terms of stock valuation (NYT link). Who would have predicted this fifteen years ago after the Newton debacle and the clone wars? In those dark days, I actually took it upon myself to help sell Macintoshes at the CompUSA in Columbus Circle, and I was not alone. It was strange how anti-Apple the sales staff was. I see this ultimately as the proof that people appreciate simplicity and perfection in design.

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Golf Passage of the Mysteries

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A poem written driving from Detroit to Des Moines after we missed a connecting flight, we were returning from a spring golf trip to Hilton Head, myself and several most excellent golfing companions. As we pulled out of a convenience store lot, I had the vision of a wizened old man, a specter, hailing us with the following words…
Five and One man, on a journey!
Heading westwards, on into the night.
Burdens shared, and sleep neglected,
Y’all crossing the river, and arrive at first light.
Great joy you have found, and more do you seek
Onwards and onwards, for promises to keep,
Hammer on the right foot, no shoe on the left
Still many hours, before you shall sleep.
So go, I say go, and listen No More,
I am an illusion, but so is your labor,
That ball is not a ball, that hole is not a hole,
And that last hasty meal, you will not savor.
And when you are home, and you lay in your bed
Alive you will feel, alive with no dread
And in seeking all that golfin’ pleasure,
You realize the truth that the company is the treasure.