Bits & Pieces

By Kim J. Harmon

I wish I could play for a golf team, but I couldn’t.

It’s not that I’m not good enough (even though I’m not – not with a 21 handicap. that’s for sure), but it’s because I can’t play by all those darn rules.

For instance, it’s weird to see Ben Moore or Andrew Fiscella or Ron Shimko of the Newtown High School golf team walk up to their ball lying there in the fairway and – jeez, it’s hard for me to imagine this – hit it where it lies.

It may be a mental block with me, or it may be that I’ve become used to playing on goat paths and dog tracks, but I can’t hit my ball without first rolling it over. Even if it has a good lie. I won’t move it more than an inch or two, but I simply can’t go on until I do.

Then there is putting. I saw a guy from the New Milford High School golf team run a putt to within a couple of inches of the hole at Candlewood Valley Country Club and I waited for one of the Newtown kids to say, “Go ahead – that’s good.” But, of course, in stroke competition the hole does not end until the ball hits the bottom of the cup.

Me, I’ve stood over three foot putts for two minutes waiting for someone to get bored and tell me to pick up.

There is all kinds of other things – moving loose impediments (which I do with reckless abandon), grounding your club in the sand trap (which I don’t do, but wish I could), moving a ball out of a hazard (and where to drop it) – that bug the heck out of me.

I heard of a magazine story (possibly in Golf Digest) where the writer followed an average foursome around the golf course and kept track (without their knowledge) of all the rules infractions they committed. Apparently the group (wittingly or unwittingly) committed infractions in each of the major sections of the rule book and should have racked up – get this – more than 120 penalty strokes.

Believe me, I can sympathize.

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The Newtown High School golf team finally – finally – got out on the golf course and Candlewood Valley Country Club in New Milford was virtually underwater.

Well, that’s an exaggeration. By and large, the course appeared to be in superb condition, but it was soaked and pock-marked with numerous small lakes large enough to house a school of trout. How those guys hit off those fairways is beyond me.

I would have been splattered with mud by the end of the first hole.

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Now, something must be wrong with me if I’m actually trying to figure out how I can explain to my wife why I need to spend $399 (plus tax) on a new driver. I can explain all I want about how it will revolutionize my golf game and save me money in the long run (the $4 or $5 I dole out in losses each week), but I know she will argue that we could be spending the money on, I don’t know, food or something.

There won’t be any reasoning with her.

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Golf club manufacturers are always trying to “revolutionize” the game of golf, creating new sorts of golf clubs with all these space-age materials. If you don’t see the words titanium or tungsten somewhere on the label, then you’re probably playing with a piece of junk.

I can see the benefit of swinging a driver with a head the size of a dinner plate, but it will be hard for me to shell out $400 for it.

Now, if someone invented a club that will enable me to hit out of the water, I’d be all over that. And never mind food; we’d just eat macaroni and cheese for a few weeks.

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Since when did car salesmen become “client advisers?”