Voice of Rage and Ruin

I hear hurricanes a-blowing, I know the end is coming soon.
I fear rivers overflowing,
I hear the voice of rage and ruin.

— “Bad Moon Rising” by Credence Clearwater Revival

All right, I confess: I am guilty of stomping on golf balls. Throwing my golf irons through the air. Screaming at the top of my voice. Not fixing bad divots.

All in the name of golf.

To play better golf, I have to do an adrenalin push to harbor enough energy and emotional stamina to make the best use of my lousy drive. This results in high blood pressure. Nevertheless, I can add 100 yards to a drive.

In my four decades of entirely unprofessional golf, I have uncovered four things:

▪ Good golfers have fantastic eyesight. Not having great eyesight is absolutely crippling in golf.
▪ Good golfers have wide shoulders. That’s so they can make use of upper body strength when “torquing” to make contact with the ball. It helps straighten the swing.
▪ Good golfers have narrow hips, to complete the torque extracted from the body to better drive the ball.
▪ While golf is 90% mechanics, another 10 percent is just having “good-luck-golf” genetic makeup. The ball swirls around the outside of the cup and goes in. I played golf yesterday and three times it swirled and did not go in.

Rage. Ruin.

When I was relaxed, I could not focus. When I focus, I am far from relaxed. You have to have the genetic disposition to do both at the same time.

Then, when you hit a tree with the ball, the ball, depending on your mechanics and luck, should bounce sideways into the fairway. Yesterday, mine bounced back and well into the rough.

Rage. Ruin.

I’ve played a lot of golf. My best score was 86, all time. Yesterday I golfed 106. That includes two mulligans.

Rage. Ruin.

I had one par. That was enough to celebrate.

Watching golf on TV and actually playing it are two separate entities. There are four or five extra dimensions to the game when you actually play it.

As Mark Twain once quipped, golf is a good walk, interrupted.

Golf is a beautiful, infuriating luxury, and costs a minimum of $36 a person. I spent a lot of money on golf in my lifetime.

Plenty of rage and ruin went with that hideous cost.