“Well if I’m going down, I’m going down swinging…” – Jim Furyk
Another year has flown by, and it’s time once again for me to play sacrificial lamb on the golf course. In two weeks it’s the sixth annual Writer’s Cup – the epic golf battle at Forsgate Country Club’s storied Banks Course between Philadelphia’s Fighting Donkeys led my buddy Mikey Kern and my New York team of loveable, but hapless miscreants and lugnuts.
Five times we’ve walked the hallowed fairways of Forsgate, the last course built by the Macdonald-Raynor-Banks Bloodline…and five times New York has flamed out in ignominious defeat.
After being named Captain last year I vowed that we would reverse the trend. We had lost four in a row to that point, “But no more!” I swore. “Jump on my back and I will carry you!” I shouted.
And then Kernsy pasted me 5&4 triggering a rout, and we silently and sullenly submitted to another massacre.
You know I just don’t understand how I can love golf so much as I do, yet play so terribly so often. I’ve taken lessons, I’ve practiced till I couldn’t see the ball, I’ve made burnt offerings of soft Cabrera gloves and plaid knickers to the Golf Gods, I’ve cooed soothing whispers to my putter at night after Britt has drifted off to sleep, and I’ve had the nuns over at Little Sisters of the Poor elementary school chant entire novenas for my tee to green game.
And what did it get me? Three birdies in one round at Tallgrass, including a hole-out of a bunker shot. After that, it’s been hit or miss at best, including a few soul-crushing moments…
I duffed a few hybrids at Olympic Club in front of Golf Digest and USA Today writers…
I had to scratch and claw to salvage a point in a match against Robert Trent Jones, Jr., who spots me 30 years and 40 yards off the tee…
I shot a grillion at the chichi private club I played this weekend…
But that was nothing compared to the worst single shot I have ever hit in golf this weekend.
I was in the middle of the fairway with a wedge in my hands. (Don’t all great golf stories start like that?) Money in the bank usually. I’ll give myself that shot all day…but somehow I offended the Golf Gods and they sent all their Furies riding down on my head on their Steeds of Vengeance…
I hit a worm burner that skidded down a hill, up another, and rolled on to the green about 25 feet from the flag, but I couldn’t just thank my good luck. No…I had to tell the PGA Head Pro and Director of Golf, “I’m gonna hit another, I have to do this the right way.”
And I promptly smother-topped it so badly that the ball popped straight up in the air, and while I was holding the finish, bounced twice on the top of my head, before dropping next to me. I’m pretty sure I saw it smirk impudently at me afterwards, just to twist the dagger a little more.
Your NYC captain ladies and gentlemen. We have met the enemy, and it is us.
Later, I took perverse delight in smashing that ball into the reservoir behind my house. Best shot I hit all day…
And so the whole crew of us are off to Forsgate, where we’ll play one of the most fearsome Biarritz holes in existence, (17), marvel at the perfection of one of the most marvelous examples of a “Short,” (12), and be mesmerized by the brilliant back-to-back par-5s at eight and nine. Stephen Kay did such a marvelous job restoring the course, it won multiple awards and has been a flagship facility in the northeat corridor, rising like a phownix. There’s the wonderful reverse Redan at seven. There’s the cool “Knoll Hole” at six. There’s Edens and Double Plateaus and chocolate drops!
And I won’t get to see any of it, because I’ll be in the woods.
I probably won’t be alone. We’ve been so pathetic as a team, after last year’s debacle Hank Gola wanted to switch sides!
“I live in New Jersey!” he said. Yeah, but you write for the New York Daily News. They didn’t let him defect – mercifully – or else we’d get beat worse.
Oh well – if we’re going down, we’re not going without a fight. I challenged Mikey Kern again – head-to-head, mano-a-mano this time, no wussie “matching of cards” nonsense. Last year he had the benefit of watching me from behind and knowing what he had to do to beat me. Not this time – Mark it Down! It’s the Battle of the Hobbits! As my old soccer buddies from Italy used to say when they had too many grappas the night before games, “Let us win! And if we don’t win, let us bust some heads!”
So do you hear me Kernsy? I may hit goofy slices and skanky hooks uglier than Joslyn James and Mindy Lawton, but I’m still gonna bang your monkey for 18 holes! Get ready for the mudshark treatment!
I’ll let him know what I want on my tombstone later…
As for the rest of my team – every other motivational trick has fizzled…so the only immortal words of C. Montgomery Burns will do:
“All right you ragtag bunch of misfits! You hate me – and I hate you even more! So I want you to remember some inspiring words that someone else told you over the course of your miserable little lives, AND GO OUT THERE AND WIN!!! Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahh!”
