MICHAEL KIRAL / L’Observateur / November 8, 1999

“Golf is like a love affair. If you don’t take it seriously, it’s no fun; if youdo take it seriously, it breaks your heart.” – Arnold Daly.Maybe that’s what my problem is. Golf is too much like a love affair andI’ve had equal success in both. Which is to say I won’t be playing a roundwith Tiger Woods or playing around with Neve Campbell anytime soon.

John Updike once noted that “golf appeals to the idiot in us and the child” and I’ve been both on the golf course. I mean how hard can the game be?You hit a little white ball until you get it into a hole. It’s just that forsome of us, it takes few more strokes to do that. Ok, a lot more strokes. Itdoesn’t help that recently my drives have been as long as the Saints’.

Part of the problem may be in Woodrow Wilson’s words that “golf is a game in which one endeavors to control a ball with implements ill adapted for the purpose.” Wiser words have not been spoken. At least the club and ball makers are always trying to improve on their products, all to no avail for some of us duffers. Larger sweet spots, ballsthat won’t slice (want to bet?) and putters that all but line up themselves are all on the market. Want I want is those clubs on those infomercialsthat always make the ball go into the hole. In the sand, 150 yards out,boink, boink, in the hole. Every time. What I want to know, is why the prosdon’t use those clubs in that case.

No, what I want is whatever it is Tiger Woods has had this summer. Ofcourse, so do about 150 other players on the PGA Tour. The guy hits a rock,suffers a stinger and still birdies two of the next three holes that day and goes on to win the tournament. I say, where’s that rock? I might as well try to hit a rock. The Lord knows I’ve hit just about everynatural object on the course – pigeons, geese, squirrels, trees, sand, water. Ah, water. My balls have spent more time in the water than JackDawson.

I’ve just gotten back from attending my best friend’s wedding in Fredricksburg, Virginia. While there, we got in a couple of rounds of golf(golf and a wedding, let’s see the Men of the Masters top that next April).

Not that it was difficult to find a course. You can’t throw a golf ballwithout hitting one in that area (with my golf swing, hitting a course was a different story).

The first day I was there, we played at a course named Lee’s Hill. Thefairways there were narrower than Clarisa Flockhart. The rough remindedme of Lee Trevino’s saying of the time that he put his clubs down to find a ball and lost the clubs. I think I found Dr. Livingston walking through it.The course was a bear but fun. There were a number of historical civil warsites on it which was only appropriate because I probably set the game back a 100 years with my round.

The carts were computerized and had a GPS system located on them which came in handy considering where some of my shots went. Lewis and Clarkcould not have found those balls. Around the eighth and 17th holes, amessage came on the screen allowing you to order meals to be ready in the clubhouse by the time you get there. Talk about heaven.The second round we played was at Meadow’s Farm. Talk about fun. On thefirst hole, I split the fairway and parred the hole. This ought to be easy, Ithought. The second hole is an island green. My tee shot took off for thewater like a lemming off a cliff. Welcome back to reality.The course is home to the longest hole in the United States, 841 yards from the tips. Nothing like hitting three shots and being 450 yards away.Oh, and to get to the hole, you have to clear water. The Marquis de Sadewould have loved it.

Golf in Virginia is definitely different than golf in Louisiana. You see, theyhave a thing called hills. The only hills I’ve ever hit off before I got therewere ant hills at Bayou Oaks. And the trees. I always thought there wereonly two colors of leaves – green and dead. But there, the leaves actuallychange colors.

Riding along the lush green fairways and rough and seeing this portrait of colors, I was reminded of “The Many Lessons of Golf” by the Rabbi Marc Gellman, Ph.D. and Monsignor Tom Hartman in “Chicken Soup for theGolfer’s Soul”.

“Golf teaches us that, on some dewy morning or some golden afternoon, with the sun warming the world, we can find ourselves walking through an improvised meadow and realize we are not searching for the little white ball, but for a moment where the world of nature and the world of play are one. And then in the dew and sunshine we can understand that even thoughwe can make a ball perfectly white, only God can make a meadow perfectly green.”

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